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DUMPSTER_RUN

                                             November 13, 2013

                                                     CELLSPACE_GLORY

   When the old non-profit called it quits,
   the return of the collective had many
   different problems, not the least of
   which was a huge, unpaid garbage bill.

   There was no money available to pay              CELLSPACE
   this bill-- we were struggling just
   to meet rent, plus pay down some other
   debt that couldn't be ignored--

   Various schemes were kicked around to
   try to get garbage service restarted--
   might it be possible to use a
   different address, such as the upstairs
   apartment (two digits off from the
   downstairs area)?

   For some reason those ideas came to
   naught-- I suspect because we would
   have trouble paying the new bill,
   even without the past due-- so the
   solution, for many years, was to
   sneak the garbage down the street
   in the dead of night, into the dumpster
   of another organization next door...

   It was a Thursday night ritual for a
   number of years to do these clandestine
   midnight garbage runs, loading up large,
   flat-bed dollies with garbage bags full       A common sight was to see
   of the refuse from the various weekend        the head of the events
   events.  And squeeze as many of them as       group climbing up on top of
   possible into whatever empty space was        the overflowing dumpster,
   left in the dumpster.                         doing a trash compaction
                                                 fandango.

   At one point, one of the gang went next
   door and got permission to do this-- the
   original goal, actually, was to see if
   they'd be willing to order a larger
   dumpster if we kicked in the money-- it
   was not clear that this made stealth any      I should say that the
   less necessary, because I had no idea         bottles and cans
   *who* was asked about this.  If there was     tended to be taken
   any sign of someone hanging around back       care of by crack
   there, it was a good idea to wait for the     teams of homeless
   coast to clear, to discretely avoid the       people, who were
   need to make any explanations.                willing to cart them
                                                 away for the sake of
                                                 the 5 cent bounty
                                                 imposed on them by CA
                                                 state law.

                                                 And what we couldn't
                                                 squeeze into these
                                                 midnight dumpster
                                                 attacks, we would find
                                                 volunteers with pickups
                                                 willing do runs directly
                                                 to the garbage dump.




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