Heap of the week Featuring Historic Northeast's worst trash heaps
To suggest a Heap of the Week, call (816) 241-0765 or e-mail northeastnews@socket.net. Or feel free to take your own photos of a heap and send them to northeastnews@socket.net or bring them in to the office at 5715 St. John Ave. Be sure to write down the address.
August 14, 2009
Last week, we learned of an Independence Avenue business that paid some vagrants to remove some brush from a vacant lot near Independence and Myrtle avenues. Apparently, the offending brush was loaded into shopping carts and carted off to a nearby alley and unceremoniously dumped next to an abandoned house. This is pictured above. The house has obviously seen better days, given its open-air construction.
What really unsettled us was the open prostitution, drug dealing and lawlessness that pervaded the street. During the short five minutes we were on site to take this photo, we were accosted by apparent drug users twice and solicited by prostitutes.
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July 10, 2009
It’s a well-known fact that if you put it out, they will come.
True to form, an uncaring slumlord evicted a tenant and now all of the tenant's belongings are at the curb for every beggar and vagrant to rummage through and spread up and down the block. This particular residence is on Prospect Boulevard, right next to Garfield Elementary School.
We didn't stop to ask the man rummaging through the offending pile if he found anything worth keeping, but we think his pallet-house down in the woods is sporting some new art on the tar paper walls!
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May 13, 2009
Once one of the crown jewels of David & Joan Miller and featured in Scarritt’s 1991 Historic Homes Tour, this 1899 Victorian has obviously seen better days. It is, unfortunately our heap of the week this week, given trash is strewn from one end of the property to the other, down the drive and all over the frontage of the once grand home.
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April 22, 2009
It's not a party if it happens every day.
What started as a diminutive yard sale one Friday has morphed in to something that looks like its straight out of ‘Lil Abner!
Growth was slow at first, but this past weekend, the resident of 5720 St. John Ave. initiated a hostile takeover of the front yard next door and strung up clothes line and set out tables and tarps, covered with a wide variety of flotsam and jetsam recovered from landlord eviction piles throughout the neighborhood and offered up for pennies on the dollar compared to new. If you’re lucky, you may even get a glimpse of the Hampshire pig that roams the grounds on a regular basis.
This lil pooch likes livin here as much as the next hound, but pigs and permanent garage sales just make for a horrifying combination.
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March 18, 2009
A bed with mattress, several couches, an overturned television set, scattered bits of garbage and a beer case for good measure. These are the contents of the front yard and sidewalk at 6819 E. 12th St. To top things off at the house-cum-apartment building, there’s graffiti sprayed right on the side of the house. It’s too bad there’s such a mess blighting the neighborhood just down the street from Whatsoever Community Center and right across the street from baseball fields.
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February 25, 2009
It’s a pretty safe bet these absentee landlords really don't care about the neighborhood. When we went by and snapped these pics of their lovely pile at 3710 E. Seventh St., loud music was emanating from the domicile that was occupied by "rehab" contractors.
Maybe our illustrious City Council — you know, those "smarter than you" types on the 26th floor of City Hall — could pass another ordinance regarding larger, more prolific piles of trash. But that would be fascist, and we certainly couldn't have that.
The house is owned by a Donald Keith Roberts out in Eastern Independence. Rest assured Mr. Roberts doesn't have this mess on HIS front lawn. But he's more than happy to leave it on yours.
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February 11, 2009
Set an example for our children
To the Editor:
The trash-lined street in front of Gladstone Academy is getting worse every day. Children have to walk past and around the piles of rubbish every morning on their way to school. Trash, limbs, yard waste and discarded furniture create an obstacle course for small children on their 7 a.m. walk to school. I fear the combination of blocked sidewalks, dark morning streets, large rodents and wrong-way drivers on Elmwood create an unsafe commute for our children. It would be nice if we could be proactive and solve the problem before an innocent child gets hurt.
We teach the children to respect each other and the school community. We want them to carry these lessons outside the school into their home and neighborhood. It is difficult when they are reminded twice a day that lessons learned in school don’t apply to the adults lining our streets with trash.
Beth Stroud, Gladstone Academy
seventh-grade teacher
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January 28, 2009
Might a wild pack of family dogs or even rabid raccoons have ravaged this heap at 5613 Anderson St. to cause such patterns of garbage dispersal? With both aspects that make up a truly horrible heap of the week — discarded furniture from the 80s and trash bags torn to hell — this heap ranks right up there among Northeast’s worst. It’s really a shame such a lovely house in as good a condition as it is should be marked by such an ugly heap.
And as a side note — is that a giant cooler there open beside the couch? We’ve never seen anything like it.
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January 22, 2009
We got a tip from a vigilant resident of the Pendleton heights Neighborhood about a couple of huge trash piles in the 400 block of Montgall Avenue.
The first, at left, appears to be a slum lord eviction at 444 Montgall. We're relatively certain bulky item hasn't been called.
The second heap, shown here at right, is directly behind 437 Montgall Ave. We've heard of "out of sight, out of mind," but this is a new low. Apparently throwing their trash over the back fence into the woods that border Chestnut Avenue is the new way to meet the city's stringent two-bag a week dictum.
A quick check of the Jackson County tax records indicates both of these structures are owner occupied. Residents who live nearby beg to differ, however, noting that turnover at the 444 Montgall Ave. is high. Given the "For Rent" sign in the yard, we'd have to agree.
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January 15, 2009
This heap of brush isn’t the kind of litter that will destroy Mother Earth — but it is the kind of trash heap that will destroy traffic patterns on Thompson Street between Elmwood and Cypress. Someone must’ve had a heyday trimming trees. Unfortunately, he or she left the pile of sticks out in the road, reducing it to one lane of traffic. Reminds us of a pterodactyl nest.
Not too far from the pterodactyl nest, you’ll find this classic Northeast pile ‘o trash at 437 Spruce St. With a couch, mattresses, carpets and loads of other junk, this heap takes up about a half a block. As the French might say, “heap classique.” Or maybe “heap tragique” would be more appropriate.
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January 14, 2009
For the inaugural Heap of the Week, we chose a public space that everyone can share in lamenting. The bluffs off Cliff Drive near the fountain on the east end have become dumping grounds for tires and other junk, despite posted signs declaring “No Dumping.”
