I thought that I would never see
An Uptown sidewalk with a tree.
An Uptown sidewalk with a tree.
Apologies to Joyce Kilmer, but the installation of a tree in front of Smoke Dreams -- after a year and a half of requesting it through 311 -- makes us break into doggerel.
Will the rest of Barren Broadway be getting the same treetment? We'd be grateful if it did.
Wow! Now that deserves a pat on the back.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they can also start replacing some of the trees on Sheridan and Clarendon that have died and been cut down too..
ReplyDeleteLOL... congrats. Now the street guys will have a new place to pee...
ReplyDeletekidding... I hope.
now if we can only keep kids and others from destroying the trees, we'll be in business. yesterday I witnessed some kids on the north side of Clarendon Park (Wilson and Clarendon) attempting to rip/ripping small limbs of the trees lining wilson between clarendon and marine drive. I called the police, but was too late to stop them.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at many of the trees in the neighborhood, there is all sorts of damange. Uptown is a bad place to be a tree apparently. Some of the ones that look particularly bad are along wilson where you can see evidence of previous limb-ripping. A lot of time what happens is the limb will break off and take a lot of bark with it, scarring the tree.
They planted some at LSD and Lawerence also..Chea!
ReplyDeleteI literally just saw a truck loaded with trees going Northbound on Clarendon. Could more trees be in the cards?
ReplyDeleteI was riding my bike home from the Niketown marathon pep rally and sat lots of trees in the park along the bike path from the Wilson to about Foster. They were apparently being prepared for planting. Maybe these are the trees you saw.
ReplyDeleteAndy, not to minimize the presence of trees in a neighborhood, but you mean to tell me you've never seen kids pull, rip, tear, whatever word you'd like to use, limbs, i.e., branches from a tree? You've never snapped tree branches before? I'm sure I probably have, and I'm a fine, upstanding citizen.
ReplyDeleteKids popping branches from trees does not at all seem criminal to me, but more like one of those mindless things kids do because, you know, they're kids.
Just to be clear, I'm not advocating the destruction of trees or anti-tree or anything, but I'm not sure that kids snapping branches off trees should become a police matter. I guess I'm a bit disturbed that the way you responded to what to me sounds like somewhat normal kid behavior was by calling the cops. Unless there's another element to the story, that sounds to me like an overreaction--cops and arrests are serious business, and I'm not going to turn tree-branch snapping by some kids into a police matter.
If Andy feels distruction of property is worthy of a 911 call then he should feel free to call it. He along with the rest of us pays for the service so he has the right to use it.
ReplyDeleteWhat I have seen from Chicago teens and kids is that they lack the freedom I had growing up in a much smaller town. They seem bored and caged. When they decide to get out of hand they do it violently and in large numbers.
Now about the trees..I am happy they are doing something about this stretch. We need more trees in the area so my neighbors can stop using the telephone pole next to my car so there dogs can piss.
Just because Andy called the cops doesn't mean anyone was going to be arrested. I suppose he could have asked each of them for their phone numbers and called their parents. Maybe he should have called Helen to come have a chat with the little darlings about destroying public property.
ReplyDeleteneighborlady said...
ReplyDeleteAndy, not to minimize the presence of trees in a neighborhood, but you mean to tell me you've never seen kids pull, rip, tear, whatever word you'd like to use, limbs, i.e., branches from a tree? You've never snapped tree branches before? I'm sure I probably have, and I'm a fine, upstanding citizen.
I don't know about Andy or you, but had I even dared to damage a tree when I was a kid, my parents would've given me an ass-whupin' to remember - the same kind I would've gotten had I ever dared throw trash on the ground in a public space.
I have no problem, upon witnessing someone discarding trash on the sidewalk, calling out, "excuse me, but you seem to have dropped something." I'd do the same thing if I witnessed a kid in the process of damaging a parkway tree.
I think if more of us were out there calling people out on (relatively trivial) shit like this right when it happens instead of relying on the cops (who already have enough on their plates with serious crime) we'd be getting the message out a lot louder and clearer, that we have our eyes wide open and we're watching out for this neighborhood.
Just my opinion.
Sure,ok, so next time I see a kid snap some branches from a tree, I should call the cops. But then, in all fairness, if I see a dogwalker pulling tree branches to play fetch the stick, maybe I should call the cops then, too. Or maybe that person who grows plants in their home and pulls a branch as a support for a plant should have their butt in the clink too--someone needs to put a little fear in the hearts of those wildin' green thumbs.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, though, I'm watching the neighborhood too. Like I said, I'm not advocating some sort of wide-spread tree shakedowns. However, tree-branch pulling I don't think qualifies as a 911-emergency (unless they are harming people with branches, which Andy's report gave no indication of). Kenny, maybe your parents would have beaten you, but really, you would have had the cops called on you for dropping a piece of paper on the ground or pulling a tree branch? Then a lot of people in Uptown need to be careful, what with all this watching going on.
And thank goodness you guys weren't watching me when I was in high school, cause with the prospect of those sorts of repercussions, I never could have completed that assignment on leaves for biology which required me to rip leaves from public trees (sometimes yanking a branch or two in the process) and then report on my nefarious activities.
Seriously, watching is one thing, reporting crime I support, but an over-zealous use of the police, and a too-quick leap to place certain people in the class of criminal in need of police response, I can't support.