Sunday, August 1, 2010

Cleanup On Aisle 1

A reader sends in the following pic & info from Wilson & Hazel:
"From clothes, to shoes, empty bottles of beer, and yes - even rotting meat - it looks like Uptown residents have stepped up to support the Gaia Movement by bringing their unwanted possessions to the donation bin outside of Uplift on Wilson. Even the taggers are getting involved!"

9 comments:

  1. Gaia boxes usually end up being pseudo-trash bins no matter where they are. There's one at the Broadway/Foster Marathon gas station and it's often just as bad. If memory serves, the Reader did a expose piece on them some time ago ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think these two sites were what I was thinking of: the Tribune's 2004 article and the "Clothing Bin Cult" website.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I use to know the women that owns Gaia as we bought some of her donations for various thrift stores I operated. The operation she has collects donations of clothing and resells them to other thrift stores as Unique Thrift and Value Village. Most of her collection cans are always overflowed and alot of others have made her move them off their property. She had a operation in Europe years back and she was saying profit was going to save trees in the forest. The green was only going into her pocket and had tax problems on unreported earnings and so she moved from Europe to here and is still running it now. There is a law in this city that she has to keep the can and area clean. Report her to City Hall. Inspectors Department. She can get a fine as well as the property owner that allows her to use their property for these collection boxes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. GAIA aka Tvind, aka The Teachers Group, has a checkered past and long history of neglecting their boxes. According to tax records and audit information, the bulk of the money they accumulated during 2004, which was an estimated 2 million dollars, wasn’t spent on what they promised. In fact, it’s not clear what they are doing with the money.

    What does this information have to do what the photo? Well, if they aren’t keeping their promises and they are neglecting their property, maybe GAIA is getting what they deserve - garbage. But that certainly doesn’t mean the rest of us need to be subjected to this mess.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oddly enough, I just walked by a Salvation Army? bin on Sheridan today, that had a similar plundered look. But honestly, I was too busy dodging white tee shirt guys with cel phones whirling around on bikes.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It doesn't help that people dive into those things and throw all the crap they don't want all over the place. I see the same thing at the jewel for the salvation army's box. It's like a party at that thing, families come in and the small one digs stuff out and the mother/father/other kids will sit and sort through what they want and what's garbage to them, and just leave the "garbage" in the parking lot.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I agree with Bill...the Salvation Army donation bin by Jewel is always an utter disaster area.

    That said, the SA store is pretty cool...I've bought several high-quality dress shirts (Land's End, Hilfiger, Nordstrom) and pants there for 3-5 bucks each. Well worth checking out if you're trying to save some money.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sexy. This definitely makes me want to stop by and donate.

    ReplyDelete
  9. The sun-ripened beer looks like the tastiest piece of the pile. Speaking of clean-up... a custodian from the school was out cleaning this morning. Doesn't seem like it should be the school's responsibility to clean this up...

    ReplyDelete