New one
March 23rd, 2005 at 1:16am |
Just as the sight of shopping carts has become more routine for me, I see something different.
A guy wearing a wife-beater rides a bicycle while guiding a shopping cart. It is raining, so the cart is covered with a piece of plastic. This guy looks a little younger than your normal shopping cart facilitator.
Heather points out another person on the other side of the street, also helping a shopping cart closer to its goal of freedom, but I miss him.
Posted in Cart sightings
I wonder how many people now you’ve prompted to start ’seeing’ carts everywhere they go.
Here in Be this phenomenon isn’t possible. In fact, at the supermarkets, carts are connected by chains. To use one for shopping, you must insert one of several coins or a plastic coin-like disc from the store itself. And to obtain your coin back, you must insert the stick attached to a chain from another cart.
Also, from what I see so far, the homeless aren’t as visible hee as in Fr. In fact, they have something here (and thruout the EU) called squads. The governments must allow folks to take up residence under certain conditions when a building isn’t being used. I’ve already been to two (1 in Zurich, another in Amsterdam).
It’s an infection.
My boss mentioned this phenomena in connection to shopping carts as well as roadside memorials. He said once you have someone point them out to you, you realize that these roadside memorials are everywhere. Often wooden white crosses with a name and a date, and faded, battered silk flowers. Sometimes long deflated balloons.
They have plenty of these at home, too, but now I’m on the look out for them here too. There’s one near a park trail we’ve been to a couple of times.
That’s really interesting with the chains in Be. I wonder if that’d work here.
And I wonder if the locking shopping carts are working at the store with the warning signs.
That’s also interesting about letting homeless people live in unoccupied space. That seems like a better approach. As long as the buildings are safe, I suppose, it’s better than sleeping under a freeway or in shrubbery by the freeway.
I don’t know if I’d call them homeless. The ones I’ve met are young types, generally with some college education. Some squads are communal. Another one I saw was a couple who found out about this great building and snagged it. But in general the living standard here is rather high and state assistance is generous.
That’s very interesting indeed.