I also want
to make one last comment. Tagging is also ruining the beauty of this city.
Graffiti artwork is fine and often very striking and pretty. Tagging is just
ugly, and is a type of litter too if you ask me. I don’t know what it will take
to make people care again. I don’t have the answers, but perhaps it’s time for
some kind of ad campaign to shed light on this problem.
Monday, April 9, 2012
The ugliness of litter
I’ve said
it before and I’ll say it again. Nothing makes a city uglier than inordinate
amounts of litter and garbage strewn about on streets, in parks and on different
properties. I bring the topic up yet
again because I spent some of my Easter vacation walking around Oslo together
with two friends from New York who were visiting me for the week. It was actually quite appalling, the amount of
litter that we saw in different places—paper, plastic wrappings, plastic cups, empty
beer and wine bottles, not to mention dog feces and human spit clumps here and
there. I’d like to say that it was mostly localized to the center of the city;
but that was not true—there was just as much litter in the residential areas
that ring the city. I guess it’s time for the annual spring cleaning of the
streets and different properties after the long winter, and that may account
for why the litter, garbage and feces have not been cleared from the streets,
but overall I find it rather sad to consider that a number of people in this
city apparently don’t care too much about how
their city looks, either to themselves or to visitors. And I really cannot
understand this, because the litter and garbage strewn about are ugly, and make the city rather unappealing
to look at. We also spent a day walking around the city of Bergen, and the
contrast was striking. No litter anywhere—not one piece of paper, empty cup, or
empty bottle strewn about. And no spit clumps or dog feces. What’s up, Oslo?
Why are there no litter and garbage in Bergen, and so much of it in Oslo? Is it
just that Bergen has had its annual spring cleaning of the streets and grounds?
I doubt it. It is a beautiful city, and it seems as though its inhabitants want
to take care of it and to preserve its beauty. I wish that could be said of
Oslo’s inhabitants. I think it’s time to wake up and take a look around,
Oslo-ites. This city is also lovely in its own way, and could be even more so
if there was no litter. One of the most beautiful areas of Oslo is the
Akerselva river that divides the city into east and west; there was even a fair
amount of litter along this beautiful waterway. My visitors were left with the
impression that Bergen is the prettier city. Perhaps that doesn’t matter to
anyone; it matters to me, because Oslo is a pretty city when it is clean.
The Spinners--It's a Shame
I saw the movie The Holiday again recently, and one of the main characters had this song as his cell phone ringtone. I grew up with this mu...