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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 07/18/2003 5:29:18 PM PDT by Diddle E. Squat
TAKE A WALK down the Suburban Station steps to the patio at 16th Street and JFK Plaza and you'll find yourself in a wasteland of wasted humans and human waste.
There's pee on the patio. Pee on the walls. Pee in the hot summer air. And something much stronger than a pee smell emanating from one fly-swarmed corner.
Poop.
What used to be an oasis of planters and picnic tables for SEPTA commuters is now a thoroughly-trashed hobo camp where the homeless eat, sleep, urinate and defecate amid their bedrolls and their junk.
Inside the Suburban Station concourse, commuters can watch this pigsty patio through dirt-streaked picture windows.
Sniffing around town for the past month, the Daily News Stinkmeister, voice of the pee-and-poop-plagued public, found that an alarming outbreak of attacks by private orifices on public edifices is leaving Philadelphia stinking of urine, and worse.
Despite an aggressive army of city workers, SEPTA crews and Center City District sweepers and pressure-washers, stink is winning the ground war and the (gag) air war.
While much of the surface-streets malodor emanates from Philadelphia's growing homeless population, one of Stinkmeister's faithful colleagues has twice spotted well-dressed men peeing in the Suburban Station concourse, blissfully ignoring its 24-hour restroom.
Leslie Hickman, chief officer of SEPTA's High Speed Operations, said the homeless are ousted nightly when stations are shut down for cleaning, so the subterranean system's most prolific pee-and-poop perps are regular rail riders, not drip-dry drifters.
Joan Schlotterbeck, the city Public Property facilities director, said it's a "daily challenge" to prevent Dilworth Plaza on City Hall's west side from becoming "one giant toilet."
"We have to make sure that our employees who pick up the 'stuff' every day have the right gloves and the right bags so that they are perfectly safe," she said. "We power-wash daily - twice daily if needed - with a detergent that removes bacteria, germs and disease. We always find big messes all over the walls."
Out on the streets, the most visible odor-invaders are homeless.
Paul Levy, executive director of the Center City District, whose mission is to attract residents, tourists and businesses by keeping downtown clean, said Philadelphia agencies have housed and social-serviced "all but the most shelter-resistant, most seriously addicted, most mentally ill people."
Those hardcore homeless who refuse care "may be physically incontinent or totally unaware that they are urinating and defecating in public," he said.
Guaranteed civil liberties prevent outreach workers and police from forcing the chronically homeless to accept shelter and services, Levy said, "but a person lying out in the street in his own urine or feces is not a person exercising his civil liberties. He's a person in desperate need of help."
Stink has a profound affect on the city's image - and on each person who encounters it.
Pam Dalton, an odor scientist from the University of Pennsylvania's Monell Chemical Senses Center, said we are repelled by the stink not because it can harm us, but because it represents something that can.
"Even though urine and feces odors are not urine and feces, we're breathing the odor in. We're ingesting it. We're incorporating its molecules into our bodies. So even though the odor doesn't have a health impact, it's an invasion."
Here's a sampling of Center City's stinkiest hotspots:
Dirty movie
The long-shuttered Eric's Place theater on Chestnut near 15th has long-been an open air toilet.
The vestibule reeks of urine. A beat-up baby stroller is piled with plastic bags filled with junk, and cryptic messages handwritten on scraps of torn cardboard: "Sick World Mind," "Walkin Tour Blues," "Egg In and Out," "Noise In and Out," "No Honor," and "Watch your Mouth on Me."
The man living under the decaying Eric's Place marquee wears similar messages and shouts gibberish at passers-by. He needs mental-health services. He isn't getting them. He needs indoor plumbing. He isn't getting that, either.
A prominent Realtor's sign is propped against the theater's pee-stained lobby window: for sale or lease. Fat chance.
"I'm here seven years," said Danny Ganon, who manages Classic Kids Clothing a couple of storefronts away, "and for seven years it's been like this. It's horrible, man. It always smells of urine.
"The one bum lives there, sleeps there, pees and does everything else there. We called the guys from the Center City District. They hosed it a couple of times. The bum came back. The owner of that building doesn't do anything. Somebody needs to close that place up, so the bum can't live there."
"Every day when I open the store, I smell the urine," said Tal Jacobson, manager of Moda women's fashions next door. "It's especially bad in the summer. Customers will say, 'What's that smell?' But they know what the smell is."
Stairwell of stench
On a good day, the SEPTA stairwell on the 15th Street side of the Municipal Services Building reeks of urine. But this was a bad day. Descending the stairs toward Suburban Station, the Stinkmeister almost stepped in a cowpie-sized deposit of human excrement. Luckily, the sight of flies landing on it alerted the Stinkmeister in the nick time.
Exit of excrement
Directly across 15th Street from the Stairwell of Stench lies the Exit of Excrement, an ancient SEPTA stairway that opens on the west side of LOVE Park. Recently, a stinking pile of feces, covered with a hyperactive posse of flies, lay on the urine-stained landing. It did not look fresh.
S----y Hall
The stink-weary Stinkmeister was almost pooped in more ways than one while ascending the City Hall SEPTA stairwell at Broad and Juniper streets, and encountering: Manpie!
A takeout menu from a well-known pizzeria had obviously been used as toilet paper. Flies buzzed. The stench was overwhelming. Emerging at the top of the pee-pool-pocked stairwell and taking huge gulps of fresh air almost gave the Stinkmeister the bends.
A couple of days later, SEPTA had poured so much disinfectant on the stairwell that the Stinkmeister had tears in his eyes. A few days after that, the forces of feces had returned.
Wall of wetness
The Stinkmeister was strolling down the west side of Broad Street, nurtured by nature's tree-lined block between Arch and City Hall, when a park-bench dweller casually lowered his gray sweatpants and peed a few liters on the Thomas Paine Plaza wall.
The man pulled his pants up with a no-big-deal look, and resumed his conversation on his bench. Several square feet of urine glistened on the much-abused wall behind him. The overpowering smell emanating from that pee-stained wall indicated that this was not a first offense.
City Councilman Frank DiCicco said the excrement storm will continue until the city deals with the root cause: homelessness.
"In recent months, I've noticed an increase in people sleeping on sidewalks in Center City," DiCicco said. "The other night, around six o'clock, I saw 50 or more men sitting on benches on the Parkway between 16th and 17th, waiting for the food trucks to arrive.
"These so-called humanitarian do-gooders come in from the burbs and feed these people out of the back of a truck or a van, and then drive away. It's just like putting out a bowl of milk for a stray cat that you don't want to take in.
"And the homeless guy figures, 'I'll eat my meal and go piss and take a dump and find some place to sleep, and tomorrow I'll beg for money to support my addiction.' The number of beggars is getting back to where it used to be years ago. And they all know that six o'clock is feeding time on the Parkway."
"The ultimate problem of these street people is their addiction," said City Councilman Jim Kenney. "If I fell down on the street and split my head open and the rescue squad came and saw that I was unconscious, would they ask me if I wanted to go to the hospital? No. They'd take me to the hospital and fix me. Well, these people are broken, too.
"But instead of taking them before a compassionate community court judge who would compel them receive proper treatment, we force our police to ask them if they want treatment. If they say no, they're right back out living on the street. So the homeless problem is like a hamster wheel. It just keeps going around and around. It never ends because we are unwilling to end it."
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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It is in the breaking news sidebar! |
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Just think, if the current city leaders of Philly get their way, and "urban sprawl" ends...will all of those extra people who get stuck inside the city limits add or subtract from the overall stench?!
Makes me wonder why they're not using the bathrooms - maybe because the ass rangers are using them to exercise their rights? Note to the whiner, er, writer: pinkos like you fell all over yourselves to show how tolerant and compassionate you were toward the "downtrodden." Now live with the consequences.
"but a person lying out in the street in his own urine or feces is not a person exercising his civil liberties. He's a person in desperate need of help."
Someone finally said it. Bring back the psych hospitals. Fund those instead of all these 'services' for the homeless. These people should not be on the streets.
Stinkin' BUMP!
FMCDH
I did too!
"but a person lying out in the street in his own urine or feces is not a person exercising his civil liberties. He's a person in desperate need of help."
Someone finally said it. Bring back the psych hospitals. Fund those instead of all these 'services' for the homeless. These people should not be on the streets.
I agree. That would be the truest sense of "compassion" for these people. But the liberals and their "services" still don't get it.
Stinkon' BUMP!
FMCDH(Borders,language,culture)
The solution is stunningly simple - cut off their food. Just like any other animal, these homeless bums have to move on if no food is available. They essentially choose their "lifestyle" because so many poor chumps cough up enough money for food AND booze, drugs, etc.
The Stinkmeister was strolling down the west side of Broad Street, nurtured by nature's tree-lined block between Arch and City Hall, when a park-bench dweller casually lowered his gray sweatpants and peed a few liters on the Thomas Paine Plaza wall."
I personally do not have the courage. :o)
If a place named JFK Plaza smelled like anything other than crap and urine, I'd be mighty disappointed.
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