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01/17/03

Guarding Garbage    or The Dangers of Dumpster Diving  

11:07 PM

My usual route to the White Hen involves cutting through an alley, and like most alleys here, it's lined with dumpsters.  Nothing unusual there.  The dumpsters are also chained and padlocked shut.  Which is something I had never seen before I moved to Chicago, and something that I still don't completely understand.  I don't know how many times I've rounded the corner unwrapping a new pack of smokes and tried to stuff the foil and cellophane under the lids of one of those dumpsters - a nearly impossible task thanks to those super-duty chains and padlocks.  So I'm left with either tossing the trash on the ground or stuffing it in my pocket.  In a city strewn with trash, does it really make sense to lock up trash receptacles?  I mean, can they possibly make it any harder to dispose of something properly?

Tonight it's the same old story, except this time when I round the corner I see two guys, who, judging from their attire did not work at the White Hen, or the Kinkos next door, or anywhere else.  So anyway, these two guys are straining so hard to get the lid of this dumpster open that they've shucked their jackets (it's 4° F windchill) and have what appear to be either vagabond platyhelminthic worms or their carotid arteries about to burst clean through their skin.

Which brings me to a couple of questions:

1)  What in the hell could be in a Kinkos/White Hen dumpster that could be worth all this anguish?

2)  Why in the hell do you lock up something you're throwing away?  

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