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On December 8, 2013, a Detroit Lions fan was beaten unconscious for wearing a Barry Sanders jersey. When the Eagles won their first-ever Super Bowl, there were smashed windows, stores were looted, an awning collapsed under the weight of too many fans climbing on top of it, and cars were overturned. And that’s what happens when we WIN!

Photo by Thom Carroll / PhillyVoice

This astonishingly bad behavior is not exclusive to drunken sports fans, though. In 2020, the nation was still dealing with being caged in our homes in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. As summer began, nationwide civil protests began, sparked by the death of George Floyd. Philadelphia was no different. There were protests in the street. That is one of the principles this country was founded on: Freedom of Speech. I respect everyone’s right to speak their mind. I may not always agree with what is being said, but I respect your right to do so. Suddenly, there was a fine line drawn between protesters and criminals when the civil protests became civil unrest. It changed fast like a fire out of control. Looting began in Center City, West Philadelphia, and Kensington. I watched on the news as people broke into Mom & Pop stores, taking whatever they could get their greedy hands on. As helicopters flew overhead, capturing the damage as it happened from a safe distance, one man was caught on camera running with a cart-full of stolen merchandise out of Target to a waiting van with a driver. On the side of the van was a magnet advertising their business. That business was the target of online ridicule and was forced to close.

In Northeast Philadelphia, I watched as Franklin Mills Mall was broken into, and multiple stores were looted inside the mall. Philadelphia got so bad that the National Guard was called in. I watched as the National Guard sat outside of Franklin Mills around the clock to protect it from looters.

Photo by NBC10

Whenever there is a crisis in this city, there are always people ready to pounce and make us look bad. We never handle it with dignity and respect. Most of the time, the people making us look bad are not even FROM Philadelphia. The flipped car after the Super Bowl win in 2018 was a man from Malvern, Pa., whose father at the time was a sports announcer for a local university. He spent no time in jail but served a year-long probationary period. No wonder this keeps happening. The punishments are not severe enough.

Photo by 6ABC

In the summer of 2025, the AFSCME District Council 33 went on strike demanding a pay increase. District 33 controls public pools, recreation centers, the Medical Examiner’s office, some airport maintenance functions, water services, 911 dispatch, and the collection of trash in the city of Philadelphia. That is the most random list of departments to group together that I have ever seen.

Anyway, without regular trash collection, the city needed an alternative until a contract could be agreed upon. Sixty-three trash drop-off sites were set up throughout the city for Philadelphia residents to bring their trash to. Meanwhile, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker was ridiculed by residents for statements she made during her press conference. When addressing the rumors of giving herself a pay increase at the start of her term, she denied these allegations, but she told the city that she was given a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) of 3.14%. Then Ms. Parker turned to her staffers and asked, “Is that Pi?” Mayor Parker urged residents not to put their trash on the curbside during the strike, but to drop it off at the designated sites on their regular trash pick-up day. Not an absurd request. Dropping off regular trash on your regular pickup day would cut down on the chaos at each site. Online, people interpreted this as “fill your cars with trash to take to the drop-off sites” and lashed back with how they do not want to fill their cars with trash. That was not her statement, though. She was criticized earlier in the year after the Eagles' Super Bowl win when she did the famous team chant but spelled it “E-L-G-S-E-S”.

When it came to deciding what should and should not be dropped off, most of us used our common sense. Here is the official list, just in case you lacked the common sense needed.

What to Drop Off:
~ Bagged Household Waste: Stick to up to 8 sealed, leak-proof bags of regular household trash.
~ Dried/Solidified Latex Paint: If dried or solidified with an absorbent material like kitty litter, it can be placed in regular trash.

What NOT to Drop Off:
~ Loose Trash: All trash must be bagged.
~ Recycling: Do not drop recyclables at these temporary sites; use Sanitation Convenience Centers for recyclables during regular business hours.
~ Bulk Items: This includes items like tires or construction debris.
~ Business Waste: The sites are strictly for household waste.
~ Hazardous Waste: Items like computers, chemicals, batteries, or needles and syringes should not be placed in regular trash or at these drop-off sites. Instead, take them to a Sanitation Convenience Center during normal business hours, or check for specific household hazardous waste collection dates.

Most of us had the common sense to only drop off things that would rot and smell. Anything that could wait to be picked up when the strike was over, we left home. If everyone stuck to these guidelines, this city would have handled the strike in a civilized manner, keeping us off the national radar.

This is where the parasites come in. The only three explanations for disregarding these guidelines are:
1] You lack common sense. If that is the case, a specific set of guidelines were put in place to help you navigate through this small part of life.
2] You simply don’t care and will do what you want anyway.
3] You believe you are above the law, and rules don’t apply to you.

In my quest to capture current events, I saw all three examples displayed. All at one drop-off site in particular. I had driven around to other sites in the Northeast Philadelphia section to see if there were any good shots to be had. They were all very organized without an abundance of abuse of the guidelines. I was shockingly proud of my city for being so well-maintained. The Ryan Avenue site even had people there to help Philadelphia residents drop their trash off and monitor what was being left behind.

Then I got to the site of Red Lion Road and Calera Road on a Sunday afternoon. Growing up in this neighborhood, this empty lot of grass was a cut-through for residents to get to and from the stores at Academy Plaza. Later, it was organized into a Tee-ball field. I found it nice that the neighbors put that together for the youngsters.

Some people were not as smart as others. Take, for example, this couple. The woman is wearing a shirt that advertises the Bux-Mont Labor Union Chapter 920, as she illegally drops off a set of drawers at the trash drop-off site. The drawers were the only thing I captured, but I watched as they emptied their white van full of things that should not have been dropped off.

My curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to look up what the Bux-Mont was. Lo and behold, the man with this woman, the shirtless one, is Jerry White. How do I know? Because he is listed as the Bensalem Branch Officer with the title “Sergeant-At-Arms". There, on the Bux-Mont website, is a list of his credentials going back to 2013. Further research shows that Mr. White is a mail carrier at the Bensalem Post Office and lives in Trevose, PA. So, he works for the government and is not even a resident of Philadelphia. He came into our city to illegally dump his unwanted furniture in someone else’s neighborhood.

Meanwhile, residents in this family-friendly neighborhood have to endure this eyesore of a scene, while kids have to navigate through the electronics, construction material, and bulk waste that is not only not supposed to be there, but has spilled over blocking the sidewalk as they travel to and from the playground and sports fields. It must have been worse in the days before my arrival. The neighbors attached a sign to the fire hydrant reminding dumpers not to block it because it saves the lives of the people who actually live in this neighborhood. I have always said that if someone took the time to make a sign telling you not to do something, it means that someone already did it, warranting the sign.

Residents of the neighborhood were not happy about seeing this chaotic scene either. One couple was walking their dog to the nearby Academy Plaza while the woman yelled to them, “It’s Sunday! There is no trash pickup on Sundays!”. Another young woman live-streamed the chaotic scene. Not wanting to interrupt her reading information to her viewers, I didn’t catch her name. Another man hiding from the brutal sun in a nearby shady spot while waiting to catch the bus commented how ridiculous these dumpers were. One couple pulled up to drop off a single legally allowed garbage bag from home, stopped to talk with me about how absurd these dumpers were trashing up their neighborhood, while another passerby who dropped off his legally allowed single garbage bag agreed.

The ones who had to deal with it 24 hours a day during the 14-day strike were a couple of next-door neighbors. The first thing they see when leaving the house every day is this dump because they live directly across the street. Out of frustration, you can hear them yell to the lazy dumpers who tried to drop off their waste in the first dumpsters they saw, regardless of whether it was full. “The dumpsters on the other end of the block are not as full,” one neighbor could be heard yelling. After all, when these dumpers pulled away, these neighbors were left to endure the aftermath.

Thankfully, city leaders came to an agreement with District Council 33 on July 9, with curbside trash and recycling collection to resume on July 14, 2025. However, I am sure it will not be long until the opportunists find another reason to come out of the woodwork to make our city look bad yet again.

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