These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray
Right in the very pile of shit
New York, New York

I want to wake up in that city
That doesn’t sweep
To find I’m king of the hill
Deep in a heap.

These little town blues
They’re melting away
I’m gonna find a brand new pile of it
In old New York

If I can step in it there
I’ll step in it anywhere
It’s up to you
New York, New York

(Doesn’t really work as well as it would have in the 70′s, since NY is now notable for being clean and well-kept instead of notable for being filthy.)

Even in Paris, which is famous for having a lot of dog shit on the sidewalks, they finally faced the fact that “curb your dog” doesn’t work, and they enacted a pooper scooper law in 2002. Dog waste became such a contentious issue in a small city in Israel that they have established a DNA database of all the pet dogs in the city, so that they can test the DNA of any uncollected dog waste and fine the owner of the dog. Since Oakland can’t even afford to maintain its small parks anymore, I doubt we’ll see a dog DNA database here anytime soon.

Sort of unrelated, but one of the few things I remember from “Gotham,” the 1100-page history of NYC, is how incredibly filthy the city was until late in the 19th century. There was practically no sewage system or garbage collection, and you would have horses, cows and various other animals constantly shitting all over the city (and sometimes dying in the streets, where they would often be left to decompose).

One still has to look down when you walk on Telegraph in Berkeley, to make sure you don’t trip over some teenage runaway from Modesto. Did you used to hang out with fictional characters from a Richard Brautigan novella? Are you a fictional character from a Richard Brautigan novella? I have to admit that the thought has crossed my mind before.

True.

Even I, with my high tolerance for dog-related filth, get pissed off when I see dog shit left on sidewalks—not only is it beyond inconsiderate, but it only takes a small percentage of irresponsible dog owners to make us all seem like selfish jerks (just as it only takes a small percentage of inconsiderate or dangerous cyclists to make pedestrians and drivers feel like bike riders are all reckless jerks, or a small percentage of maniacal drivers to make cyclists feel like all drivers are unfit to be controlling very fast, very heavy machinery). I try to pick up other people’s abandoned dog waste if I have a suitable plastic bag with me, just as I try to be ostentatiously thankful when a car driver does something nice on the road when I am on foot or on bike. I feel like responsible people need to overcompensate for all the irresponsible people who are giving us a bad rap.

I’m generally in favor of public shaming as a way of disciplining anti-social behavior. Someone in my neighborhood caught a dog walker failing to pick up her dog’s waste on his home’s surveillance system. He printed out a few still images of the crime in progress and posted them on trees in front of the house, with a polite but angry note demanding that the dogwalker clean up the mess that her dog had left on his treelawn. I don’t know if she cleaned up the mess, but I hope she was suitably embarrased to see herself in the photos, I bet she’ll be less likely to leave her dog’s poop lying around on people’s lawns in the future. You can also be sure that other local dog owners will be less likely to leave poop on his treelawn in the future. It’s really the “You suck!” on the note above which seemed like it was more likely to encourage further misbehavior than to discourage it. Rewarding good behavior and disciplining bad behavior are great human-training techniques!