Video of Community Clean Team event

Shannon sent us the link to this YouTube video of our big day - check out all the hard workers in action!

Dumping

Rob and another neighbor for 1025 17th St yelled at a guy attempting to dump mattresses on the newly cleaned street last night. The guy took off, but someone else dumped some wood on the opposite side of the street.

Today I put up 3 "WARNING: DO NOT DUMP" signs. I have more (from DPW) but I need more zipties to fix them.

More ideas!

A great deal of ideas for the 17th and Penn area were talked the at the street cleanup on Saturday.  Mostly focusing on the HIGH cost of a retaining wall, but the real need for it as a means of flattening the slope at the North end of the street and making it inhospiotable to those who'd like to sleep, camp, start fires and do drugs there.

One idea that came from Stephen was putting boulders in the spot, inestad of a wall. This would accomplish our goals for a lot less cash. We'd also use rocks to create a barrier to cars parking on the street getting up onto our sidewalk. Here is a very quick and dirty sketch of both a side and front view (click for a larger version):

We could then plant the area with cacti and agaves to create a Southwestern feel - perfect for the very dry spot and in keeping with our nickname for the street when we moved in - the Wild West!

What do you think?

Street cleanup day a success!

We had an astonishing turnout at the 17th and Pennsylvania Urban Renewal (SPUR) project's first official clean up today! We enjoyed homemade cupcakes and scones (baked by Claudia and Arum), as well as coffee and sodas, and more sodas, water and baseball caps from Fregosi Paints, and afterwards a BBQ put on by DPW! Regent Cab let us use their parking lot, Brickley Production Services loaned us tables and chairs and Hilti their deck, and Fregosi their bathroom.

Who else was there? Too many to list! (And to remember... my feeble memory - someone help me!)

Emily, Elliot, Matt, Eddy and Maile, Gina and Ron, Ben, Jan, Stephen, Jo, Janet, Alison, Jeff, Shannon, Cat, Stacey, Tony, Steve, his dad and nephew, Melissa, Meka, Renee, Maya, Kuzauri, Anne, Eddy, Jan, Leslie, Will and Claudia, Monisha, Marie, Eric, Malia, Nathan, Alisou, Theo, Shannon, Rudy, Jeff, Oliver, Marie, Bruce, Rodney, James, Steven, and ALL the awesome folks from United Playaz!

And from DPW we saw Sandra, Mike, Ed, Larry, Mohammed and the team who made it all happen: thank you guys!


We also collected vital pledges from the volunteers. We need 25% in matching contributions from the community in order to get the Community Challenge Grant, and today we secured a great deal of our match from you all generous people.

All in all, an extremely successful day: thank you all SO much for all your hard work: you made a real difference. I am so excited about what's to come!

More debris clearing pics

Emily and I stopped by to thank the DPW crew and took some more pics at lunchtime today. As you can see they took out that traffic barrier and a lot of weeds!

Debris clearing has begun!

No parking enforcement on Pennsylvania Ave began today, and DPW sent heavy machinery to the street. This morning they were ripping out the old traffic barrier, scaring up lots of very large rats, and tearing out weeds. I expect things will look very different later today, but here's a peek of the guys at work:

Announcing: SPUR!

We've come up with a new name, and acronym, for this project! We needed one for grant applications so this is what we came up with:

Seventeenth and Pennsylvania Urban Renewal - S.P.U.R.

Not bad at all.