Citizens Disconnect: Welcome to Southie!

With the Citizens Connect app and website, Boston allows its residents to take a picture of a problem, send it to the city along with their precise location, and request help. The site is filled with complaints about trash on the sidewalk, potholes, and dead trees. It also contains the occasional oddity. Welcome to “Citizens Disconnect,” the third in a series wherein we round up our favorite few from the past week:

Welcome to Southie!

This is exciting. We have some Citizens Connect infighting. First, this complaint …

Concerned Citizen #1: “Pigsty. This Gulf station is a dump! Constant trash all over the lot, overflowing rubbish, just plain filthy inside and out! Day after day , week after week, year after year! They don’t care about their property or the neighborhood! Reported to Gulf, the city several times ! Results s big fat ZERO!”

City Response: “Closed. Case Noted. Cited by unit 4 for loose trash and debris.”

But then, another citizens complaint from someone—someone who is definitely not the irked owner of the gas station—wrote their own complaint to the first complainer.

Concerned Citizen #2:  “Should have bought you’re 600,000,000 dollar 1 bedroom condo In newton sucker, gas stations are cleaner there welcome to south Boston ”

Well isn’t that just the most South Boston of South Boston exchanges ever.

CSI: Critter Edition

Concerned Citizen: “Raccoon corpse in road. Evidence suggests victim died as result of blunt trauma via bludgeoning with board. Please send medical examiner, photog, latent prints, crime lab team, and person with a shovel.”

City Response: “Closed. Case Noted. Dead animal picked up.”

We include this simply because it’s a pleasure when people take time to really compose their Citizens Connect complaints. It’s also a pleasure when their humor is greeted with the epic straight-man tone of the city response.

Tedesch-eeks! 

Concerned Citizen: “At 7:45pm at the Tededchi’s (Ashmont) an employee removed his sandals, climbed onto the coffee counter in his bare feet and adjusted window shades. PLEASE SEND HEALTH INSPECTOR ASAP.”

City Response: None.

Yeah, gross.

Something Stinks in Beacon Hill

Concerned citizen: “The ‘freedom festival’ or POT festival taking place right now on the Boston Common in front of my home is way above legal decibel noise limits. As an owner and 10 year resident of 57 Beacon St. and as a mother to 3 young children, I find this festival an appalling use of public space. There is foul language, pot and extreme noise that is disruptive to Beacon Hill residents and the city. This event needs to take place elsewhere or be more closely monitored.”

City response: None.

Yeah, we get where you’re coming from, but try not to sound so Beacon Hill-y while you’re making your point. You are raising your children in the middle of a major city. Occasionally, they’re going to run into a massive, tacitly-sanctioned mob of pot smokers. It’s the world we live in.

Rotten Apples 

Concerned Citizen: “There is an encampment of over-privileged, unwashed, hipster morons sleeping outside 815 Boylston Street. Don’t these people need a permit or something? Please evacuate these turds from our streets. Their pretentiousness is wafting all through the neighborhood.”

City Response: None yet.

That would be these privileged, unwashed, hipster morons sleeping outside 815 Boylston Street. And, your humble writer here has to say, there’s something strange about the amount of violent hatred people feel comfortable leveling against them from the safety of their keyboards. Sure, it’s kinda dumb to wait in line for an Apple product. But whatever. It’s weird to do a lot of things on this big planet. It reminds me of this essay written from the perspective of someone who became a hated hipster meme on the internet. Everyone should really read it before they leave nasty Facebook comments about hipster scum. Not to get all preachy, but calm down people. They’re just excited about something.