Council Monday: "If what I write is literature, I guess you'd better emphasize the 'litter.'"

Title quote by Lydia Lunch.

It's been almost exactly four years (February 2013) since the 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps led the fight against porch furniture and appliances.

Panhandling in the middle of the street about to be abolished. That and porch furniture.

As for the ordinance ridding the city of "indoor" furniture and various appliances arranged tastefully (although usually otherwise) on porches, I'm mostly down with the notion, although (a) it's yet another aesthetic Band-Aid that addresses symptoms, rather than the fundamental rot of slumlordism, and (b) if there's any one thing we've learned during the past decade, such a Band-Aid is meaningless without concrete enforcement plans.

Don't ask me why this nearly forgotten memory occurred to me just now while reading tonight's anti-littering ordinance.

Insert your own weary sigh in this space.