Simone WilsonWilliam Schindler, a retired schoolteacher who walks his little terrier mix down Griffith Park Boulevard in Silver Lake every morning, says he recently started to become “disturbed, seeing all the uncollected dog poop day after day.” So he did what any self-respecting Good Samaritan would do: He started a cheap, convenient community business called “Poo No More.” And made adorable flyers. Lots of them.
(Why do we feel like we're writing a story about a first-grader starting her own chain of lemonade stands? Move over, kiddos: Old people are totally the new arts-and-crafts entrepreneurs on the block.)
Schindler hasn't received any orders for the $1-per-day service since he posted the fliers a couple days ago, but one lady did email to thank him for taking on this heated Silver Lake issue, doggie bag first. “She's the one who sent the tip to Curbed,” says Schindler.
So: Any takers? For $7 a week, payable via PayPal, Schindler will stop by your front lawn every day with a garbage bag/shopping cart contraption and remove your “annoying & unsanitary dog piles.”
Only requisite is that you have to live along Schindler's regular path, running down Griffith Park Boulevard between Lucille and Hyperion (an impressive one-mile stretch):
Schindler explains that an almost anti-dog culture has formed among residents along his route, thanks to the few dog owners who don't bother to clean up after their pets.
“If my dog started to pee on [someone's] wall, there was immediately an assumption that this dog was also shitting on their lawn,” he says.
One of Schindler's 100 flyers; Credit: LA Curbed
So, since he doesn't have “a great aversion to animal waste” himself, he thought it might be nice to turn all that community resentment into his own little fix-it, feel-good enterprise, as opposed to just fuming about it some more.
“None of that energy gets anything done,” he says. “It's just anger getting transmitted out to the universe, and there's already plenty of that. This way, everybody wins, and nobody gets hurt. If others share my vision, then it will fly.”
Poetic, really. A poetic pooper scooper. Imagine that.
And practical, to boot. “It's not a glamorous job, but its a necessary one,” says Schindler. “Maybe some people do have an aversion. But I'm not squeemish.”
The only thing this ridiculously good-natured, poop-friendly retiree can think of that he won't retrieve off your front lawn: Dead animals.
Oh, and diarea. “There are some things that are physically difficult to pick up,” he says, delicately. “When it's very wet, sometimes it's best to let the sun take care of that.”
Unlike in pet-obsessed West Hollywood, where key sidewalk corners have rolls of doggie bags and waste stations to deposit them in (just another reason to name it most walkable city in California), Schindler says that L.A. officials likely have bigger problems on their plates.
Dog-poop stations “are probably not a huge priority — not something the city's willing to allocate money on,” he says. “And god knows how long it would take anyway.” (Amen.)
Anyway, it's good to know L.A. still has some DIYists in its eastern ranks. And from here, Schindler mulls, if the “Poo No More” idea proves popular enough, he'd be willing to help set up similar services in other neighborhoods, now that the infrastructure is in place.
First step: Some subscriptions along Griffith Park Boulevard. And you, dear reader, could be the first. We double-doggy dare you, in fact. Just because the president of our delightfully first-world country scoops his own dog poop, doesn't mean you have to stoop to the same.
[@simone_electra/swilson@laweekly.com]
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