Category: the uptown
Redemption
I shot the cover story for this week’s East Bay Express. The article is about the rising cost of the curbside recycling program in Berkeley, as well as the “poachers” who raid the bins and take the cans to recycling centers and redeem them for cash.
I had always thought that the curbside recycling programs paid for themselves by selling the recyclable materials. But it turns out that they’re not free, and never have been. We pay for the recycling pickup along with the garbage bill, but the bill isn’t itemized, so nobody knows how much it costs.
To some extent, I can sympathize with residents who don’t want to pay more for curbside recycling when the bins are just getting raided by scavengers. But I have a lot more sympathy for the guy who has to go out and collect cans and bottles in order to feed his family.
I can’t help thinking how great it would be if there were some way to turn this situation into a real jobs program. If we could actually employ people to walk around with carts and collect the bins instead of driving around in big diesel powered trucks, that would be a much greener way of collecting the trash and recyclables, right?
Anyway, I took a lot of photos for this assignment. Here are some of my favorite shots and some outtakes that didn’t make it into the article:
-
- Martin Bourque of the Berkeley Ecology Center.
-
- Martin Bourque of the Berkeley Ecology Center.
-
- A truck full of mixed recycling is dumped at the Berkeley Ecology Center.
-
- Glass bottles, sorted by color, at the Berkeley Ecology Center.
-
- A pile of glass bottles at the Berkeley Ecology Center.
-
- Carlos Campos collects bottles and cans from restaurants and bars.
-
- Michael Chevalier collects recyclables up and down San Pablo Avenue.
-
- Raymond Graham collects recyclables from Dumpsters and bins in Oakland.
-
- Berkeley resident Ann Riley has taken to locking up her recycling until the last minute.
-
- Ben Bartlett, owner of Bartlett’s Organic Coffees & Teas, a coffee shop in downtown Berkeley, and heads up the subcommittee on poaching.
-
- Ben Bartlett, owner of Bartlett’s Organic Coffees & Teas, a coffee shop in downtown Berkeley, and heads up the subcommittee on poaching.
Video from The Uptown Unveiled
I made a little video from footage I shot at the Uptown Unveiled last week. I’m looking forward to making more short videos like this, but it’s actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. I think the night shots look great, but it’s really difficult to keep people in focus when shooting video in low light. In fact, it’s really difficult to keep things in focus in general with this type of camera (manual focus/35mm sensor). The audio is also not great, obviously.
But it does have its moments. I love the people in the video who think that I’m taking a photo and start posing. Also the kid dancing with his mom (right around the 3:45 mark) is possibly the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.
The Uptown Unveiled
There was a big festival in Oakland last night called The Uptown Unveiled. There was a lot of stuff going on (skateboarding, BMX, bands, dancing, welding demos) and everyone seemed to be having a good time. Plus there were no riots or shootings. So that was nice.
I took a few pictures, but I shot a ton of video. It’s going to take a little while to get the video footage edited into something I can post online, but here are some photos:
