Got Junk gets warned

Good news.

We may finally be getting through to 1-800-Got Junk. The trash collection firm has been steadfast in defacing our roadways with signs asking us whether we “Got Junk?”

They should ask themselves the same question. The answer is a resounding “Yes!” as is apparent by the sign blight they illegally scatter along the public right-of-way.

Now 1-800-Got Junk is at last in the cross-hairs of the City anti-blight enforcement folks.

A comment from a former Got Junk employee on one of my earlier posts moved me to complain to the City’s blight abatement czar, Marcia Dennis. (Her major focus is on fighting graffiti. No surprise there. Her e-mail is mdennis@ci.portland.or.us)

The former Got Junk employee reported that the owner of the franchise, located on SW Barbur, routinely laughs at the lack of City enforcement.

So I forwarded the employee’s comment and urged Dennis to take action. I also documented the problem by referring her to the Red Electric’s photos of my vast Got Junk sign archive. I must have 20 signs. (I picked up two more last weekend. )

I wonder whether the franchise owner is laughing after receiving the following:

1-800-Got Legal Pad Folder

In my never-ending quest to get the local 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchise to stop illegally littering the public right-of-way, I’ve come up with an irresistible new incentive.

I’ve concluded the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? people, based in Vancouver, B.C. (yes, you read that right. Canadians!) are a lost cause. Incorrigible.

And the local authorities, who, alas, have far worse (or is it "better") things to worry about, do zilch to enforce roadside littering laws.

No longer, dear reader, will I appeal to some goody-goody civic pride in taking back public space from irresponsible, corporate litter-bugs.

No, this incentive rewards you. Yes, you, personally. It's almost, but not quite, like money in the bank.

All you have to do is pull over, yank out these mini-billboards, and for the price of a strip of duct tape and a matter of seconds. . . .

Well, you'll see: the rewards are great!

Trust me on this.

I’ve always believed that the hard-plastic, corrugated raw material of your basic 1-800-GOT-JUNK? sign held huge recycling promise (Roofing shingles? Mortar boards? Floor tiles? Pizza platters?).

But it wasn’t until today, while out on my trusty motor scooter, that one of my frequent encounters with the nefarious signs led to a discovery with massive promise.

As with most great discoveries, this one was utterly serendipitous.

Because I was on the scoot, I draped the sign’s flimsy wire standard over my rearview mirrors. A bit awkward, but I had only three or four miles to scoot.

The sign itself would be impossible to carry unless — and here’s the key — I folded it. I decided to do a tri-fold and, by chance, got a perfect fold the first time. The corners lined up exactly. The package was close to being a tidy little square. It fit snugly in my bulbous, rear-mounted helmet carrier.

Once home I took a closer look at the tri-folded sign. A legal pad happened to be nearby. In our litigious society, it’s always good to have a legal pad handy. I have several scattered around the house — just in case.

Then it hit me. With a box cutter and good ol' duct tape, I could make myself a nifty 1-800-GOT-JUNK? legal pad folder.

The first folder took all of three minutes to make. That corrugated stuff is easy to slice.

I whipped out the second folder in half the time.

At the top of the photo (above) is the raw material (with dotted cut lines). The finished product, with white legal pad in place, is at the bottom.

So next time you spot one of these intrusive slabs along the roadside, think, “Wow, here’s my chance to make a great legal pad folder! I can't have too many of those!”

“1-800-Got-Junk?”

Not really.

Try 1-800-Got Legal Pad folder!

Saving 1-800-Got-Junk

It’s time again for me to save the 1-800-GOT-JUNK people from themselves by removing their signs.

Another way I'll help is by using the 1-800-GOT-JUNK name a lot in this post.

They'll like that, I know because the company likes having the 1-800-GOT-JUNK name everywhere.

That's the problem.

1-800-GOT-JUNK signs are going up AGAIN all over the neighborhood.

I really should invoice 1-800-GOT-JUNK for my sign removal work. Then again, I do get paid off in their 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs, which I keep after removal from the shoulders of our streets.

I’ve probably collected four or five dozen 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs over the years. I’ve even found 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs on Terwilliger Parkway. Who knows, 1-800-GOT-JUNK may plant its signs in our parks and cemeteries.

To 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the entire city is a billboard.

The 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs are moderately useful to me because they usually have a blank side where I can write with my medium-point Sharpie. When my wife has her annual pottery sale, I write stuff like “Pottery Sale today!” on the blank sides and put the signs up early in the morning.

I’ve also written “Impeach Bush” and “Peace Now!” on 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs.

Of course I mask out the “1-800-GOT-JUNK” on the other side.

Besides getting free signs to write on, why am I doing 1-800-GOT-JUNK a favor?

Well, it’s clear that 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs, which are not intended to come down after a day’s exposure on our streets, are littering the public right-of-way. You’ll notice that, with the exception of Realtors (who, alas, are a special case), 1-800-GOT-JUNK is the only company (except, until recently, Jobdango) to put up signs in the neighborhood. Oh, a few gutter cleaners and painters post on utility poles, but they are fairly cooperative when I tell them they are breaking the law.

Obsessed as I am, I carry a long metal rod in my car for knocking down such signs.

But 1-800-GOT-JUNK doesn’t seem to care that it is breaking the law by putting up the signs. 1-800-GOT-JUNK knows the city has better things for its police to do than bust 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Still, what company in its right corporate mind actually wants to be known for so blatantly and visibly violating the law?

And the answer is … 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Not smart. So I’ve taken to making 1-800-GOT-JUNK folks look smarter than they are.

Right now I have five newly removed 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs in my garage (see photo). I happen to know that each costs about $10, which I suppose is pretty cheap publicity. In this case it is cheap BAD publicity. And it junks up the neighborhood. Got Junk indeed.

In the past, I have called the owner of our local franchise to inform him about the problem with 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs. His name is Tom. His number is not 1-800-GOT-JUNK (which gets you an operator in Peoria or some distant American burg where they now actually pay people less than folks in phone call centers in Bangkok or Mumbai).

Tom’s number is — should you ever be so moved to call (hint, hint) — 503-209-9253. Tom is actually a very nice guy. After listening to me politely but firmly inform him of the downside of his sign advertising, Tom always assures me that he never. EVER, will put up 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs in Hillsdale again.

A few months go by and, as sure as the daffodils sprout in the March and local coyotes munch on neighborhood cats, out come his 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs.

Tom clearly has a recall problem. I’ve come to think of it as an occupational hazard resulting from years in the 1-800-GOT-JUNK business.

So I’ve given up on Tom’s getting the message that he’s breaking the law and alienating a lot of people like me. I also tell him, as an extra incentive, that I will publicize what 1-800-GOT-JUNK is doing, but he just doesn’t care.

A likely possibility is that Tom is getting his orders from 1-800-GOT-JUNK corporate headquarters in someplace like New Jersey, the Cayman Islands or Southern California where breaking the law in places like Oregon is written into franchise agreements. (Okay, okay, my on-line research tells me the 1-800-GOT-JUNK headquarters is in Vancouver, B.C. where they ought to know better.)

I sometimes dream that when the world is a much better place, the CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, who turns out to be one Brian Scudamore, will call to thank me for my years of service on behalf of the 1-800-GOT-JUNK company.

Until then, I’ll keep busy helping 1-800-GOT-JUNK in my own unassuming way.

City needs to crackdown harder on jobdango

So the City of Portland, invoking its anti-graffiti ordinance, is suing Jobdango, the job placement outfit, for its chalk scrawlings on downtown sidewalks.

Why doesn’t the city also file suit for the company’s illegally putting its signs on utility poles and planting them along the public right-of-way?

Jobdango also has strewn I-5 with its signs between here and Salem.

As I found out, complaining to the Jobdango about its corporate litter, earns you only insults. The CEO told me, “Don’t you have better things to do? Like get a job” and then hung up.

Jobdango and 1-800-GOT-JUNK are two of the worst offenders and should be fined for all their repeated infractions. Illegal signage is clearly part of their marketing strategies.

Interestingly enough, if you go to the Jobdango web site page describing their signage, the company says not one word about its illegal signs. They must know they are indefensible — and illegal.

I urge readers to join me and a few others in taking these signs down wherever they appear. (I have probably gathered 100 in the past three or four years).

And of course, refuse to do business with these renegade firms, and spread the word.

Barbur litter returns a week after clean-up

Since last Saturday, when we picked up litter along Barbur Boulevard, I’ve been enjoying our handiwork driving home from downtown. Barbur has looked like a parkway.

Until this evening.

A big bag of overflowing trash is dumped alongside the road. Someone else had thrown out a hamburger wrapper. A cardboard box was another 50 feet up the shoulder.

Less than a week after our SOLV clean-up, the litter is back with a vengeance.

Oh, and then there’s the corporate litter of the illegal 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs in the right of way. I’ve removed six of these miniature billboards in the last few days.

I know, I know, Saturday night I wrote a consoling thought in this blog about the malaise of trash along our boulevards. “Joy is whatever is in the present moment minus our opinions about it.”

I’m having a problem expunging my opinions about the new litter and the slobs responsible for it.

Tonight, driving home, I found no joy.

Oh, and I will call the local 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchisee, Tom Maryschak (believe me, he knows me), to tell him that his signs are still not appreciated and that I got HIS junk. Six signs now reside in my garage. Since the backs are blank, they come in handy for garage sale signs and peace placards or to cover work surfaces. I once made a bird feeder out of one.

Someone should write a book titled: “101 things to do with 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs.”

Any ideas?

Actually, I do feel an odd twinge of promise, if not joy, when I see 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs. I always pull over and yank them out. I know that, with a little imagination, they can be put to good use.

As long as Tom plants them along the roadside, I’ll happily and productively harvest them.

Signs of Spring

As certain as the daffodils’ blossoming in February is the flourishing of these vinyl “flowers.”

I "picked" this pair earlier in the week. They were “growing” illegally in the public right-of-way on Bertha Boulevard not far from the I-5 on-ramp. Maximum visibility, not sunlight, caused them to “sprout” where they did.

Other invasives are soon to follow. If past seasons are any indication, foremost among them will be the 1-800-GOTJUNK and JOBDANGO blossoms. Feel free to pick those too. I will.

I called the prominent number on the College Works sign. (Get the pun? College Works. There are others too, like “A Higher Degree of Painting.”)

“The company, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is simply a subsidiary of a larger company, National Services Group, based in Annapolis Maryland. The voice at the other end was “Steve.” He was in Irving, California. Of course I was calling about this little illegal sign infestation in Hillsdale, in Portland, in Oregon, in the Northwest.

It’s a complex world out there.

Steve apologized on behalf of College Works in Ann Arbor, but the problem, he said, was with student “business associates” who are unaware of the law in Oregon.

“We seem to be getting more calls like yours this year. I’ll pass this along.”

I suggested that he pass it directly to the executive suite. College Works’ top management, not student underlings, has ordered these signs made (in the fine print are references to business license numbers in several states.) Putting up the signs in the public right-of-way is clearly a directive from the top.

The problem begins with people who don’t care about places called neighborhoods, unless the neighborhoods happen to be their own.

We need to make them care about our neighborhoods as much as they care about their own — assuming, of course, that they do care about their own neighborhoods.

Come to think of it, they likely live in some gated, impenetrable cluster of “estates.”

Therein may lie the problem. . . .

Grip and Grab road-test

Saturday I road-tested the “Grip and Grabber” extension arm I bought at the vintage, ever-intriguing Best Hardware store on Division.

I chose Fairmount Boulevard on the flanks of Healy Heights for the road test because I had spotted a “1-800-Got-Junk” sign that I wanted to take down with my tree pruner. Somehow the Got-Junk crew had nailed it about 12 feet high on a utility pole for all the joggers and bicylists to see. It was well beyond the range of metal pipe "thwacker" I carry around to dislodge illegal signs on utility poles.

I’m sure the sign generated tons of business. As noted before, I go out of my way not to patronize businesses that post signs on utility poles, and I call them to tell them so.

That number is: 1-800-Got-Junk. The local franchise office is 209-9253. Ask for Tom and tell him Rick sent you. Believe me, we know each other.

After wrenching the sign off the pole, I set out along the winding road to grip and grab trash. I walked about a half mile and managed to fill up half a SOLV bag. A goodly portion was candy wrappers from trick-or-treaters, but there was some wet cardboard and an array of beer bottles and cans.

The real “keeper” was a metal Chevy hubcap. As you can see in the photos, it cleaned up well. Also in the photo to the right is the Grip and Grabber and the SOLV bag — offered in the interest of full journalistic context.

Don’t ask what I plan to do with the hubcap, but it joins the Mitsubishi hubcap (see photos) found on an earlier clean-up, scavenger hunt.

For now they are mostly curiosities, but if anyone is desperate for one or both, let me know. They’re yours for the asking.