“Here’s a question. When you walked the dog this morning, was the trash can at 24th and Locust still there?”

Anyone who has a dog in Center City likely knows of the Schuylkill River Park by its officially unofficial name: the Dog Park. (Other Philadelphians know the place by its other officially unofficial name–Judy Garland Park–but that’s a different bag of tricks.) Dog-walking traffic is sufficiently high around here that having generously spaced trashcans is really quite necessary, and believe me when I tell you that most dog owners can tell you exactly where the neighborhood trashcans are and how best to plan their routes to make sure that all doggy “clean-up” bags are deposited in a waste receptacle.

There were already two such bags tonight starting a memorial poop pile on the corner where the trash can oughta be, and where, Matt attests, it was as recently ago as this morning. I shudder to think of how things might look by tomorrow morning.