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Citizen complaint of the day: Put our anti-poop signs back
By adamg on Sun, 02/24/2019 - 10:17am
An annoyed citizen files a 311 request that the city put back the "Curb Your Dog" sign some nearby residents put up in Porzio Park in East Boston:
We paid for them to help the dog poop epidemic down Porzio Park there were 5 of them
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
Your signs should be on your
Your signs should be on your property.
What does that mean?
It always confused me - do you just let your dog shit on the street? Next to the curb?
Why not say "pick up after your dog"? Means a lot more when you are in a park, anyway.
Use of outdated euphemisms/idioms is confusing to those who did not grow up with them.
It may have roots in that
I actually saw it once, in NYC a long time ago. An older guy had his dog crouch with his hind legs on the curb and actually poop onto the street. Person I was traveling with said that's what 'curb your dog' means and the street sweepers do the rest. I thought it was odd, but the dog owner definitely had it down to a science.
I'm only 40 and I get what it
I'm only 40 and I get what it means. I mean look at the sign - there's a scoop. Not only is the meaning heavily implied if not outright stated (by, I guess, words you don't understand for some reason), it's also illustrated.
Oh I get what it means
But I'm over 50. Would anyone not as old know? Someone from another culture? That's the issue.
Oh come on now
The silhouette of what are obviously golf clubs makes this sign clear as mud.
Basic signs are super cheap
Golf clubs or ski poles? Or are we back to raking forests? What do dogs and curbs have to do with it?
More direct instruction is $11 from Chewy, plus four zip ties:
You can even find multilingual ones, if that is an issue.
Not a euphemism
Actually, as someone who grew up in a big city (New York) a long, long time ago, I can tell you that it wasn't an idiom. It was literal.
When I was a kid in the city, nobody picked up after their dog. I never heard of such a thing. The streets had lots of dogshit lying around. I don't know who cleaned it up eventually -- if it didn't just wash down the sewers in the rain, perhaps it was the Sanitation Department (the garbage-truck men had shovels).
There was no expectation that people clean up after their dog, but there was an expectation (possibly a law) that they "curb their dog" -- in other words, drag the pooch over to the curb so that it would crap either on the grassy strip where the trees grew (if there was one, usually not), or in the street (not the sidewalk) where cars parked, right next to the curb. Hard to control your dog that precisely, of course, but I think the idea was that it was so close to the curb that the parking cars might miss it, and there was a kind of depression there so the rain would wash it down the sewers or something. You really had to be more careful walking around in those days.
If you think that's bad, read some urban history about how city streets used to be covered in horseshit -- and, further back than that and still in some parts of the world today, in human shit.
Hope I didn't spoil anyone's lunch.
(I'm a fan of cultural history -- interesting stuff.)
Grow up. It is a polite way
Grow up. It is a polite way of saying pick up your dog shit.
Google it.
"Curb your dog"
Worded on some signs as "gutter" rather than "curb", means don't let your dog piss right in the middle of the sidewalk where everyone is walking, but instead, direct your dog to piss in the gutter. That is, of course, entirely separate from cleaning up dog feces, which is why they are generally mentioned in concert
I always thought it meant to
I always thought it meant to keep your dog under control a-la "curb your enthusiasm". But it looks like "curb" does have a dictionary definition about making sure your dog defecates at the curb.
Ayup
As a recovering New Yorker, I can attest that there was a time when "Curb Your Dog" signs were everywhere in the City that Never Sleeps But Sure Has a Lot of Pooping Dogs, and the goal was to get your dog to go in the street on the premise that a street sweeper would come along in a day or two (New York is also known for "alternate side of the street" parking, in which people would only park on one side of the street each day to allow for such things as street sweeping, if you can imagine such a bizarre concept).
So I thought the East Boston signs were kind of odd, because, at least over the last couple of decades, we've never had that concept here - the idea here is more Bring a Plastic Bag and Clean Up After Fido than Yeah, Move Your Dog to the Curb When He's About to Go.
Tradition!
It's always the same people who don't pick up after their dogs.
I modeled how to use a doggy bag for one of those people and let's just say they did not respond with an open mind.
The dog can dump a huge pile right in front of the owner, who looks up pretending not to see anything.
It's how they've always done things.
It's annoying, but then so are the jet fumes that hover in the air like a cloud at times, and the noise from the Boston harbor booze cruises, or the drunks spilling out their guts in our alleyways after drinking too much of that sweet cider at DownEast and then downing one KO pie too many from down under.
And if those sign posters don't like it now, they should have seen Eastie 20-30 years ago when dogs ran loose on the street, hung out at the parks all day, and took a dump wherever they wanted and NO ONE ever picked up.
Have a Beloved Day!
City Ordinance
There is actually a city ordnance regarding the posting of private signs on city property. If the sign initiative was made by private citizens, and there was a complaint, the city would need to react to remove the signs from city property. This includes any signs or poles that are on city sidewalks.
Yes... there are thousands of such signs posted all over the place and the city cannot keep up with them, but they do have to respond to those that get complaints.
There is a process to get permissions to post some kinds of signs. You can ask your city councilor how to go about that.
Such signs that are posted on private property are not at risk.
If you don't like the ordnance have your city councilor hold a hearing to see about changing the ordnance. Of course that will result in a flood of non-popular signs happening. That's why the ordnance went into effect a generation ago in the first place.
They can ask the city to put
They can ask the city to put these types of signs up too. That's what my neighborhood association did a few years back. Didn't cost us a penny or violate any city ordinance.
Yeah, it's amazing the shit
Yeah, it's amazing the shit ya see aftah thuh snow melts.