What’s Goin’ On? (with apologies to Marvin Gaye)

This is going to be long, but it will include plenty of photos. My second attempt at photojournalism, so to speak.

It is motivated by my continuing concern at the decay of my city, but it will also include what I consider to be a puzzle regarding London. I will ask below if my readers have any ideas regarding a solution to said puzzle, and in anticipation of that, I note right off the top that your proposed solutions should be sent via Canada Post to:

Al’s Puzzle
P.O. Box NaNoo-NaNay
London, ON. Canada

 Solutions will not be returned to the submitter unless the submission includes a SASE, with postage. Lots of postage. Or just enclose cash.The best submitted solution will win its author an all-expense paid trip to the Richmond Tavern on the first Wednesday of any month of the winner’s choosing.

Back to my essay. I have mentioned in a previous post my intent to vote for Susan Stevenson for Mayor in the October municipal election, and I have already sent her the maximum donation the law allows (a pittance) and requested a campaign sign be put up on my lawn. I think she has no real chance to win, and doubt she can change much if she does, the instances of lawlessness and homelessness that plague London being very much a provincial (health care) and national (law enforcement and judiciary) problem.

But support her I will because it is all I can do, other than the low-key rabble-rousing I present here.

I walk around London a good bit, and in particular I walk north into our ever-decaying downtown an average of twice a week. Another walk I have more recently started is due to the ongoing road construction on Wellington Road, which makes what used to be a short drive to pick up my old-guy prescriptions into an obstacle course. So, now I walk to the pharmacy, a 45-minute round trip, which is good for me. On that walk I go through a vacant lot on the corner of Baseline and Wellington, and below are a few photos I took of what that lot looks like.

Photo 1

That is a pile of garbage, photographed up close in that lot.

Here’s another:

Photo 2

A different pile of garbage, photographed from further away.

So far as I know, this lot has been or will be expropriated by the City as part of that aforementioned roadway reconstruction. Signs at the front of the lot at least seem to suggest that. Now I have not seen any homeless hanging about on this lot, so this garbage (there are more piles than these two, trust me) may have just been dumped there by random assholes looking for a place to dump their shit. Indeed, some of those dumpers might well have been neighbours of mine. The point from my perspective is that it has been there for some time, and no one seems interested in cleaning it up – including the City.

Let’s move on now to my walks downtown. There are two obvious routes for me to walk there and back, one of which would be along Wellington Road, but this time heading north rather than south. I never take that route. Taking it would involve walking under a railroad underpass for a ways. Here is a look at said underpass, the photo being taken one bright and sunny afternoon when my gal agreed to accompany me on a photojournalistic expedition.

Photo 3

 

This is taken from the north, looking along the sidewalk into the dark underpass.

Photo 4

This is in the underpass itself. Note that it is unoccupied.

Next is a photo taken of what is on the sidewalk on the southern end of that same underpass as you emerge into the daylight.

Photo 5

What you see in the centre-left of that photo is a little tent-and-umbrella village, which is indeed occupied by people. And garbage. Here’s a slightly closer look:

Photo 6

And another:

Photo 7

So, here is minor puzzle one: why is this little village not under the underpass? These photos were taken on a summer day, so weather is not an issue, but when it is hot, or cold, or raining or snowing, being under the underpass offers protection from all those things.

Hold that thought, and stay with me for a bit longer.

I don’t walk that route to downtown and back because I have no wish to be anywhere near that village during my walk, which is in the dark on the way back home, invariably.

Instead, I walk north on Richmond, which runs parallel to Wellington Road, and where the same railroad tracks run over another underpass. Here is a look at that underpass from the sidewalk south of it.

Photo 8

 

And here is a look at someone who has taken up residence just at the southern end of said underpass, on the other side of the street.

Photo 9

You can see the possessions and accumulated junk that such a resident typically brings with them. We were just across the street from this little scene.

Now, we head under the underpass, and although this photo is a bit dark, you can see the silhouette of someone relaxing there on this bright summer day.

Photo 10

As I noted, this guy’s chosen spot is out of the heat and sun.

Now we get to my puzzle. When I walk this route, on average twice a week each way, there is very frequently someone there, as we saw in the previous two photos. Sometimes it is just one person without much shit about them, but sometimes it is someone with a whole pile of stuff and accumulated garbage around them. Occasionally there are a few people cooking up drugs, sometimes just one person lying there looking dead, surrounded by debris.

The puzzle is this. None of those people are there the next time I come through, and neither is any of their shit. We did this photo tour on holiday Monday, and I went back through this Richmond underpass the following Wednesday to catch some tunes at the Richmond, and neither of the people in these last two photos were there, and the sidewalk was (mostly) clean.

This has happened too many times by now to be a fluke, I am convinced that someone or some org is making a sweep through that Richmond underpass on a regular schedule and clearing out anyone they find, and – most surprisingly – getting rid of their shit. Believe me, sometimes said shit is just that, half-eaten food and/or goo whose exact nature I prefer not to think about.

If I am right – and I see no other way to explain what I have observed over a period of a couple of years – who/what is doing this sweep and cleanup?

I am eternally grateful to whoever it is. When folks like this started showing up in that underpass way back when, my first thought was that my days of walking downtown and back were about to end. I would have to drive.

But, as I say, they are never there long, and often the underpass is empty, just like the one on Wellington.

So, readers, I ask: What’s Going On?

And, how can we make this happen more widely?