I really like stories of individual folks out there making the world a better place. A motivated individual with some level of exposure to the problem / solution often seems so much more efficient than other solutions.
There's a local group that helps folks find stolen bikes:
> “I like to randomly do things to help when nobody’s looking,” Benigno said. “I’ll do just random stuff to help improve things that will benefit random people that I’ve never met before … it’s just so that I can do a little thing to fix something so somebody doesn’t suffer down the road.”
So many people are unhappy these days because they feel they aren't doing anything that meaningfully helps their community. We're a social species. We thrive when we feel we are helping our tribe thrive.
It frustrates me to see people in my neighborhood complain about minor things on local social media, but do nothing about it or even go out of their way to make things worse (like complaining about trash on the sidewalk on an especially windy day, or walking their dog on the high school football field instead of the dog park, which is two blocks (!!) further, for example). It feels like it is hard to get people to to extend common courtesy towards their neighbors, let alone do something good for someone they think they'll never run into.
Online I saw a guy with a power washer cleaning hate-speech graffiti for free (e.g. swastikas in the US). I don't think he does it for fame or clicks but even if it's a net positive.
I don't understand the "even if" comment. This is the one benefit of these social platforms. If the attention really motivates people to do something good, then have at it!
I volunteered at an animal shelter that was not no-kill, because of sheer demand, sadly.
Of new volunteers, they ask "What's in it for you?"
Inevitably, "I get to help animals find new homes, etc."
However they'd say "No - that's what you'll do here. But what do you get out of it?"
And they wanted selfish answers. "I feel better about myself", whatever.
Because what they'd found is when things were a struggle, it was the "what's in it for me" that often pushed people to keep helping and volunteering, rather than (solely) "the mission".
Is it? I know of one case where someone cleaned some graffiti - but they didn't realize that there was priceless art under that graffiti and their cleaning also destroyed the priceless art. If experts had been called in they could found and used the proper solvent and saved the art. (often this means work a couple square cm at a time)
How much do you think it would cost the city to implement something like this themselves? It would probably involve hiring 2-3 bike riders, a manager, some people to oversee/analyze the efficacy of the program, an approved supply chain using approved vendors. They could probably get a couple bikes with magnets on them riding around the city for < 3m year.
The city would extend a no-bid contract to run a 6-month pilot in a 3 block radius.
It’d go to a random company that never did anything related to trash pick up, but one of the board members would be loosely related to the mayor.
The mayor will then do a victory lap in front of journalists talking about this revolutionary project.
The winner would then sub-contract a series of shell companies to handle ‘planning the design and implementation’ of the vehicle used to pick up the debris.
3 months will pass and the first community board meeting about the pilot in the neighborhood will happen, where the project will hit vicious opposition from people citing gentrification, how this pilot will rip apart the fabric of the neighborhood, cause gridlock, be dangerous for kids (What if a kid runs infront of the magnet bike??), etc…
6 months and $5M later, the pilot gets extended and another $50M worth of funding having never picked up an ounce of trash.
If your point is that it costs less to have someone do something for free than to hire and supervise workers to do the same task, I don't think that's particularly insightful!
I spent a summer 'rescuing' stolen bikes from (mostly homeless) chopshops and under-bridge/in desert settlements, and only found one or two of more than 50 former bike owners who wanted their property back. The risk to me was too great, and I had dozens of high-dollar, spraypainted, butchered former nice bikes stuffed into my garage.
>> The risk to me was too great, and I had dozens of high-dollar, spraypainted, butchered former nice bikes stuffed into my garage.
Possession of stolen property is still a serious crime. There is generally no exemption for vigilante people returning stolen goods. I honestly would not advise amassing stolen property in your garage no matter your good intentions. Batman wears a mask for a reason.
The more vigilante side of things, gotta be careful too.
I have no problem telling / hoping someone would pickup the trash they saw and helped out even if a little. But not so much retrieving stolen bikes, those folks, their call.
Did you ever "rescue" a bike only to learn that you had taken it from someone who legally owned it (or thought they legally owned it) and really needed it?
The author David Sedaris is apparently a compulsive trash picker-upper. He's said he has walked for up to 9 hours per days picking up garbage on the side of the road all the while. His town in the UK named a garbage truck after him, and he was invited to meet the Queen of England because of it (she used to meet with people who performed large amounts of community service).
i don't really know what a normal street sweeping schedule is, but this seems kinda infrequent? i know my town does a big sweep in the spring after the snow melts, but it seems like most of the major routes and all of downtown is on more like a weekly to monthly basis.
Most roadside debris is on the shoulder as it gets knocked there pretty quickly out of traffic lanes - and it can still affect the cars if you have to cross them.
Every time I've had a flat caused by a road item it has been on or very near the shoulder.
A nice bike tyre makes such a difference to bike speed, but puncture resistant models seems generally slower.
I love my Continental Grand Prix 5000s but they aren’t cheap and are easy to puncture.
Whenever I see a screw or nail in the street or parking lot, I always pick it up and naively hope that karma will prevent my tire from picking up one in another location.
I pick up empty bottles and put them in the nearest glass bin. There are glass bins on both corners approaching my apartment, so I don't even need to walk out of my way to do this.
Most of them would probably stay for a few days until someone cleans the street, but it only takes one unhappy drunk to knock a bottle into the street.
I probably look like a terminal alcoholic to my neighbours.
When my kids were younger I used to bring things to clean up / fix local playgrounds that I was at every day. Later I saw another parent doing the same.
As much as I or someone might feel I "shouldn't" have to, it's pretty efficient to just have someone do the job right then and there.
If everyone pitched in just a tiny bit, picking up a single piece of "someone else's" trash... we'd live in a significantly nicer world. There's a very stubborn "I didn't do it, not my problem" mindset in the US specifically.
There's a loose mount on a swing at a nearby playground that's been driving me crazy, because it goes klak-klak as the swing swings, but I can't reach it from where I stand.
The swing did undergo some maintenance in the meantime, but somehow that one part is still loose.
When I lived in Atlanta, there was a large line item on my annual property tax for street sweeping, which didn't seem to make much of a difference at keeping the roads clear of debris. There were many streets near me that obviously had not been swept in years, and while I did see them come up my street a few times, given the traffic volume, it has hardly frequent enough. They also didn't seem to have any kind of communication process between the police, who respond to traffic accidents, and the street sweepers, who never came by after an accident spread debris all over the road. Sometimes the police would have a stiff push broom in their trunk to do a quick sweep of the large stuff into the gutter but for the most part accident sites would remain a hazard until it had rained enough to carry the debris down to the storm drains to be clogged up by it.
People complain all the time about underfunded cities but if every property in the city was getting charged as much as I was per year, the street sweeping service should have been worldclass. It's things like this that make people distrust city government and not inclined to give them more money for little return.
I've noticed that things are lot better when it's actual city officials who are not overworked vs contractors; our little city owns the street sweepers and the road repair equipment and the tree equipment and the snowplows, and it's basically the same group of guys doing all that at different times, and it works pretty well.
Local politics is at the perfect junction where it's rarely held under an inquisitor's microscope, and a few developers/small businesses stand to benefit massively from any corruption.
For bonus points, their elections are often staggered separately from state and federal elections, which suppresses voter interest and turnout.
Readit News
There's a local group that helps folks find stolen bikes:
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/your-bike-just-got-stolen-these-...
We need all of this we can get.
So many people are unhappy these days because they feel they aren't doing anything that meaningfully helps their community. We're a social species. We thrive when we feel we are helping our tribe thrive.
I volunteered at an animal shelter that was not no-kill, because of sheer demand, sadly.
Of new volunteers, they ask "What's in it for you?"
Inevitably, "I get to help animals find new homes, etc."
However they'd say "No - that's what you'll do here. But what do you get out of it?"
And they wanted selfish answers. "I feel better about myself", whatever.
Because what they'd found is when things were a struggle, it was the "what's in it for me" that often pushed people to keep helping and volunteering, rather than (solely) "the mission".
It’d go to a random company that never did anything related to trash pick up, but one of the board members would be loosely related to the mayor.
The mayor will then do a victory lap in front of journalists talking about this revolutionary project.
The winner would then sub-contract a series of shell companies to handle ‘planning the design and implementation’ of the vehicle used to pick up the debris.
3 months will pass and the first community board meeting about the pilot in the neighborhood will happen, where the project will hit vicious opposition from people citing gentrification, how this pilot will rip apart the fabric of the neighborhood, cause gridlock, be dangerous for kids (What if a kid runs infront of the magnet bike??), etc…
6 months and $5M later, the pilot gets extended and another $50M worth of funding having never picked up an ounce of trash.
Hello from NYC
Magnets don't pick up broken glass.
Deleted Comment
Never again.
Possession of stolen property is still a serious crime. There is generally no exemption for vigilante people returning stolen goods. I honestly would not advise amassing stolen property in your garage no matter your good intentions. Batman wears a mask for a reason.
I have no problem telling / hoping someone would pickup the trash they saw and helped out even if a little. But not so much retrieving stolen bikes, those folks, their call.
Why didn't they want their bicycles?
But how about we actually fund street sweeping at a level that this isn't necessary?
Deleted Comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV9dOHRDb3c
i don't really know what a normal street sweeping schedule is, but this seems kinda infrequent? i know my town does a big sweep in the spring after the snow melts, but it seems like most of the major routes and all of downtown is on more like a weekly to monthly basis.
<https://sfpublicworks.org/services/mechanical-street-sweepin...>
I live in Atlanta, ride both car and bicycle and do not have flat tire more often than average. Perhaps thanks to his help!
Every time I've had a flat caused by a road item it has been on or very near the shoulder.
Most of them would probably stay for a few days until someone cleans the street, but it only takes one unhappy drunk to knock a bottle into the street.
I probably look like a terminal alcoholic to my neighbours.
As much as I or someone might feel I "shouldn't" have to, it's pretty efficient to just have someone do the job right then and there.
The swing did undergo some maintenance in the meantime, but somehow that one part is still loose.
People complain all the time about underfunded cities but if every property in the city was getting charged as much as I was per year, the street sweeping service should have been worldclass. It's things like this that make people distrust city government and not inclined to give them more money for little return.
For bonus points, their elections are often staggered separately from state and federal elections, which suppresses voter interest and turnout.
You get what the system is designed to produce.
Related >> https://bikeportland.org/2022/01/07/a-california-inventor-is...
Sadly they're unpractical and only last around 30mins ~
A minuscule effort up front avoids disproportionately larger effort later.