Features
Green Team leaves troubled pasts behind by cleaning up lives, city
(Photos by Andrew Knapp)
Source: American Observer
Published: Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Photos: 4 by Andrew Knapp
Web site: http://americanobserver.net/2007/04/25/greenteam/
Headline: Green Team leaves troubled pasts behind by cleaning up lives, city
BY ANDREW KNAPP
Beautifying Washington one can at a time
WASHINGTON – From S Street N.W., they walk a few blocks up Ninth Street, snatching trash from the sidewalk with plastic claws and throwing it into a can on wheels. Litter from the restaurant-heavy area of Shaw fills the can quickly.
Milk crates. Pennies. Vodka bottles. Condoms.
“A lot of condoms,” Alonzo Pleze says.
“Yeah, mainly condoms,” says his co-worker, Marcitta Thompson.
As part of the nine-member Green Team formed in October, the duo cleans the main business corridors of Shaw five days a week. On some days, they might also shovel snow, plant flowers or paint over graffiti. Their salaries and tools are funded through a one-year $350,000 municipal grant administered by the Columbia Heights/Shaw Family Support Collaborative.
And after one block, one can is full.
Panasonic batteries. Duck sauce packets. Metrobus tickets. Needles.
“No one wanted to work here because it’s drug-infested,” Thompson says. “They’ll do it downtown because it’s quiet. We see a lot of dealers here. They see us and move. Sometimes they help.”
Both Pleze and Thompson grew up in the area – watched its ups, its downs. Residents have suffered from unemployment, but in the Green Team, Thompson and Pleze found steady jobs – ones that give back to the community and give them decent wages, paid vacations and health insurance.
Passing rows of shops, they speak of economic recovery, but drugs, crime and dinginess linger.
“It’s been like this since I was a child,” Thompson says. “I used to play on this street. I went to that park. I had an aunt that lived right here, and I cried when my mom dropped me off. I didn’t want to be here.”
Business owners stand in their doorways as the two pass. Outside her liquor store, Beletsch Ogbe sweeps cigarette butts into a pile and deplores the people who dropped them.
“They can’t smoke inside, so they come out here,” she says. “It looks ugly.”
Most owners don’t clean. Lettering on sidewalk garbage cans reads: “A Clean City: It’s Everyone’s Job!”
“You couldn’t tell,” Thompson says.
One shop owner tells Thompson she looks pretty. She’s wearing red lipstick, gold earrings and sparkly green eyeliner to match her Green Team sweatshirt.
“People tell me I shouldn’t be picking up trash because I’m too pretty,” she says. “I make myself beautiful, but I make the city beautiful, too.”
She points out a rotting tree stump that doesn’t fit into the can. If she was young again, she’d “sand it, shellac it and make it into a beautiful end table.”
But most rubbish isn’t salvageable.
Wendy’s soda cups. Big Mac boxes. Extension cords. About 50 lottery tickets.
“This all happened last night,” Thompson says, rolling the trashcan. “It’ll happen again tonight, and we’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
Painting a new face on an old problem
Two blocks away on Seventh Street, Green Team members Allen Davis and Michael Pye drive to their job site in a white minivan. En route, Davis points out landmarks he remembers in their glory days. The fenced-off Howard Theatre is tagged liberally with graffiti. “And there’s the Dunbar Hotel,” he says, pointing to another vacant building. “They’re going to put a bank there.”
The Seventh Street corridor is targeted for re-development, much like Ninth Street. But some residents don’t like the growth, so they spray-paint curse words, genitalia and gang symbols onto buildings, Davis says. It’s up to him and Pye to paint over them.
Graffiti over graffiti make some buildings look kaleidoscopic. Davis and Pye try their best to match paint colors to the collages.
The duo attacks two storefronts on the 1800 block of Seventh Street. “Magic-2,” a gang symbol pronounced “Magic Deuce,” is scrawled beneath a broken window of the now-defunct Sam “K” Records. The symbol appears throughout Shaw.
Pye rolls white paint over it, then walks 15 feet to Ballard’s Barber Service to cover another. Owner Gennaro Ballard steps outside.
“Do you have a permit to do that?” Ballard says. “Let me talk to your boss.”
Pye hands Ballard a business card. Green Team members often act as liaisons between business owners, residents and city officials.
“We don’t usually have people come out and complain,” Pye says. “They want it done because it makes their establishment look better.”
While aged places like Ballard’s serve as prime targets for graffiti artists, newer buildings aren’t immune. “Magic-2” hit CVS/pharmacy, too.
“All this happened recently,” Davis says, hopping into the van. “It’ll be back here this weekend, and we’ll be back, too.”
Why this job? To help the children
Thompson, 44, has stayed clean since she started cleaning the city. Before last year, she was into crack cocaine, something she began as a teenager. But her unsteady employment didn’t pay the rent or feed her six children.
“My son’s in the drug game,” she says of her 20-year-old. “I worry about him because I was in it. But he’s young. He has a chance. I just try to guide him.”
Eight months ago, she told her caseworker a steady job would keep her out of trouble. The Green Team employs mostly people who can’t find employment because of criminal records or drug histories.
Thompson still struggles with her children but not with cocaine.
To buy a house
Pye, 48, never did hard time, just a few months in jail. He first was arrested at 17 when he burglarized an apartment. A past of selling heroin, he says, ended with his most recent arrest last Easter for which he’s serving two years of probation.
“My friends ask me if I like my job,” he says. “I say, ‘No, I love my job.’”
Pye plans to buy a house for his wife and six children.
To ‘do something positive’
Davis, 47, first was arrested at 14 for stealing a car. Of the 33 years since then, he has spent 25 in prison for using and selling drugs. This is his first “real” job.
“It’s time to settle down and do something positive,” he says, “because I’ve already done everything negative.”
In six months, Davis hasn’t missed a day of work.
To make Washington ‘a great place’
Breaking for lunch, crew members return to their Seventh Street office. They check in with their supervisors – crew chief Ed Hammer, 41, and project coordinator Charlie Whitaker, 34.
The break room is too cramped, so they sit in the lobby area with fluorescent-yellow Green Team jackets, a red snow blower and a maroon bicycle.
They all grew up in the District. They’ve been in trouble in the past, but they speak candidly about how their new jobs have kept them out of it since.
“I’d like to say we’re in the construction business,” Hammer says. “We build lives.”
Hammer went to Mount Aloysius College in Pennsylvania from 1996 to 2000 but, after a failed wedding engagement, dropped out – 15 credits shy of a degree in management. He wants to finish, then earn his law degree. That’s his lifelong goal.
But a conviction for dealing powder cocaine in 1986 continues to shut doors. He served six months in prison, and ever since, he has checked “yes” to that last question on job applications: “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”
“I always wanted to do corporate America,” he says. “Corporate America never wanted to do me.”
Everyone laughs, but they take it seriously: They’ve been through the same ordeal.
“This man was selling drugs 20 years ago, and he hasn’t done anything wrong since, but it’s still popping up on him,” Whitaker says. “I don’t think that’s fair.”
Whitaker, the Green Team captain, has been arrested four times for offenses like assaulting a police officer, but he was never convicted. He holds a degree in criminal justice.
“The Green Team allows people who have the money and influence to meet with the long-time residents of the community like us who don’t have those things,” Whitaker says. “We all want the same for Washington, D.C. We want it to be a great place.”
To protect the future
Pleze, 24, is the only Green Team member without an arrest record. He’s working to feed his 5-year-old daughter, Maiya, but also to avoid jail.
“I’m here to stay out of there,” he says. “The Green Team caught me before it was too late. That police piece doesn’t really apply to me.”
“And we’re going to make sure it stays that way,” Hammer says.
In six months, Pleze hasn’t missed a day of work.
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They’re selling (on the side)
A rarely enforced ordinance in Bangor prohibits roadside peddling on city property, but the practice endures
Source: Bangor Daily News
Published: Saturday, June 24, 2006
Photos: 1
Edition: All
Section and Page: B1 (State Front)
Headline: They’re selling (on the side): A rarely enforced ordinance in Bangor prohibits roadside peddling on city property, but the practice endures
BY ANDREW KNAPP
OF THE NEWS STAFF
BANGOR, Maine — His rusty blue wagon, covered with golf balls, sat in a parking lot facing the busy roadway. On its fenders, hot-pink poster board featured the words “GOLF BALLS” scrawled in black marker.
From the driver’s seat, Lou Tardiff scouted potential customers, his eyes peering through cracked spectacles. He was trying to sell golf balls collected from the woods at local courses.
“I cleaned them up beautiful,” he said recently. “I wouldn’t sell them with stains.”
Tardiff, 57, is one of many vendors in Bangor who set up shop in their vehicles throughout the summer. Offerings range from strawberries and clams to fiddleheads and corn.
He thought the city-owned parking lot on Maine Avenue near University College of Bangor was one of the few areas he could market his wares without paying a fee.
But he was wrong. Instead, he was unknowingly breaking a municipal code that forbids peddling on city property. Since its inception in 1992, however, the ordinance rarely has been enforced, allowing vendors to sell unabatedly.
About 100 yards down the crumbling pavement, Colleen Butera, 32, of Brewer operated from her Jeep, selling fresh rhubarb that grows in her yard.
Neither vendor is an aspiring entrepreneur.
Tardiff has hit up the location eight times this season. It’s just a way to get some exercise — to “keep the weight off,” he said — and put gasoline in his Ford.
“It’s not enough to pad my retirement, though,” he acknowledged.
Tardiff tried selling his merchandise in Brewer, where he lives. And business was good, until police asked him to leave. At the time, Brewer charged $100 to peddle in the city, he said. He respected the ordinance and abandoned his temporary enterprise.
“Ever since I’ve been in Bangor, I haven’t had any problems with anyone,” Tardiff said.
For Butera, a substitute teacher in Brewer, it was her first time. If she didn’t sell the rhubarb, it would go to waste. The tart stalks go for $2.99 per pound at Shaw’s Supermarkets. Her price of $1 per bundle, which she figured to be equivalent to a pound, was a steal. Without sales tax and other fees, she said, vendors can keep prices low, so patrons will buy.
That’s precisely one of the city’s gripes, however. It motivated the City Council to adopt a policy in 1992 to forbid peddling on city property except during Bangor’s 20 special events, such as the American Folk Festival.
Because they don’t pay taxes, energy bills or rental fees, vendors pose unfair competition to established businesses, according to Dan Wellington, the city’s code enforcement officer.
“People were even coming from out of state thinking they could sell things,” he said recently. “That forced us to look at who was doing business on city property.”
The council also addressed myriad public-safety issues while pondering the policy 14 years ago. People were peddling shellfish, a strictly regulated commodity. In one case, the tailgate of a vendor’s pickup was jutting into Maine Avenue, threatening traffic. Others were selling “inappropriate” materials, namely adult movies.
Maine Avenue, which serves as one gateway to Bangor International Airport, was of particular concern. Wellington, who has worked in the code enforcement office since 1983, said he and councilors were motivated by aesthetics when they drafted the ordinance. They didn’t want the airport entrance lined with peddlers or littered with leftover produce.
Butera didn’t know who owned the land, nor was she aware of signs near the three entrances reading: “No selling vehicles or vending this area.”
“There’s a sign? I didn’t see it,” she said.
The property has been posted since the ordinance was enacted, Wellington said.
There is a legal way to peddle in Bangor. Vendors must first acquire written permission from business owners to sell on their property, then pay an $11 fee at Wellington’s office.
City land is off-limits, however.
Wellington urged the coordination of a farmer’s market. The Bangor-Brewer Farmer’s Market in Bass Park closed seven years ago, prompting unlawful peddling, he said. A new one may alleviate the problem.
Tardiff was taken aback when he heard his actions were illegal. Paying money to peddle isn’t worth it, he said.
“Police were asked to stop and tell them to move,” Wellington said.
But the ball scavenger remains.
“I could see it if I was trying to sell a truckload of potatoes,” Tardiff said of the ordinance, “but I’m just trying to sell a few golf balls.”
Disrupting the monotony of a slow sales day, a man in a red SUV pulled into the lot and parked beside Tardiff’s Ford.
“What can I do for ya?” Tardiff asked the potential buyer.
“I just need something that won’t mind being hit into the woods,” the man answered.
The salesman found a package of Nike golf balls with “Super Far” embossed on their dimpled surfaces.
“Are those legal?” the customer asked.
Tardiff guaranteed compliance with golf standards, sealing the deal and collecting the man’s $8.
Sitting in his makeshift roadside store, the ball hawker knew one thing very well: If the customer hits the golf balls back into the woods, Tardiff could find himself selling the same golf balls all over again.
“It’s a cutthroat business,” he said, snickering.
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Motley crew storms cinema for ‘Pirates’
Sequel-hungry fans treasure experience of midnight show
Source: Bangor Daily News
Published: Saturday, July 8, 2006
Photos: 1
Edition: All
Section and Page: C1 (State Front)
Headline: Motley crew storms cinema for ‘Pirates:’ Sequel-hungry fans treasure experience of midnight show
BY ANDREW KNAPP
OF THE NEWS STAFF
BANGOR, Maine — A crew of unruly miscreants leapt aboard a makeshift vessel adorned with two Jolly Rogers. Capt. Mark Gonyar, 20, of Bangor took the helm alongside his first mate. Three sailors clung to the ship’s stern, wielding bowed swords that gleamed in dim, artificial light. With all hands on deck, they heaved away from the craft’s curbside moorings.
They were pirates — for Thursday night and early Friday morning, at least.
The savvy fellows encircled the parking lot in their boat — a white Ford Ranger. Plastic swords cut through the air above their heads. The five hollered “Arrr!” to every innocent man, woman and child inquisitively witnessing the spectacle.
Dropping anchor in a parking space, the men abandoned their dinghy and boarded the mother ship — Bangor Mall Cinemas 10.
The prized loot each carried was a paper ticket, the key unlocking a long-awaited treasure — a midnight showing of “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
Gonyar and his able-bodied crew were five of about 660 people who attended the cinemas’ showing at 12:01 a.m. Friday. It was the only early-bird viewing offered in the Bangor area for a movie that opened Friday nationwide. Cinemas manager Don Pete said tickets went on sale last week, and by 11:30 p.m. Thursday, fans had claimed all seats aboard three 220-seat theaters featuring the highly anticipated sequel.
The movie was only secondary to the journey to the theater, Gonyar said. Earlier that day, his crew impulsively bought tickets and searched stores high and low for get-ups resembling the movie’s main character, Capt. Jack Sparrow, played by actor Johnny Depp. Clad in purple pants, leather boots and a red vest, Gonyar sacrificed a fine spot in line to patrol the parking lot in his pickup.
“It’s much better when you dress up,” says he. “Even if the movie is terrible, this is fun.”
The piratical people were joined by hundreds of hearty souls — mostly teenagers and college students. They looted buckets of golden popcorn and boxes of Junior Mints from the concession stand and then weighed anchor for their seats.
Outside, Michelle Foose, 23, of Bangor separated herself from the madness. Foose attended the midnight showing after she saw Gonyar’s shipmates eating at a local restaurant earlier Thursday night.
“There were five people dressed like pirates,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘There must be a showing of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’’ so I decided to go.”
Waiting in line, Gonyar’s crew continued yelling “Arrr!” Their spirit was contagious.
“Arrr?” Foose asked, timidly trying to induce a response.
“Arrr!” they responded.
“This reminds me of midnight showings when I was a kid,” she said.
Inside the lobby, young pirates scurried around energetically. A girl sitting on a wooden bench adjusted an eye patch. Two boys dueled with plastic swords in the middle of a carpeted sea. One teenage girl, head wrapped tightly in a red handkerchief, hobbled on crutches amid the motley crowd.
Mary Hughes, 16, settled in Windham about seven months ago. She journeyed back by bus to her original stomping grounds just to see the movie. Dressed in a frilly white smock, maroon vest and black hat with skull and crossbones, Hughes said she wanted to be with friends.
“I couldn’t miss this,” she said, giggling with her mates.
By midnight, a battle had concluded in the lobby. Moviegoers left the concessions plundered of Twizzlers and Raisinettes and the floor littered with plastic bags and candy wrappers. All tickets had been claimed, and the mad rush was over.
But it was a polite melee. The pirates drew no blood.
Clutching their edible spoils, stragglers handed tickets to a young woman who permitted their entrance into the theater.
“Enjoy the movie,” she said.
“Arrr!” the pirates replied enthusiastically.
Their cinematic voyage was under way.
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Remembering Charlie Howard
Dozens gather at bridge to pay tribute to slain Bangor man
Source: Bangor Daily News
Published: Saturday, July 8, 2006
Photos: 1
Edition: All
Section and Page: C1 (State Front)
Headline: Remembering Charlie Howard: Dozens gather at bridge to pay tribute to slain Bangor man
BY ANDREW KNAPP
OF THE NEWS STAFF
BANGOR, Maine — Grasping the railing of the State Street bridge in Bangor on Friday night, about 35 people gazed over a placid Kenduskeag Stream, remembering the life and reflecting upon the aftermath of the death of Charlie Howard.
Howard died on July 7, 1984, when he was attacked by three local teenagers and thrown from the bridge into the water where he suffered a severe asthma attack. Each year since the nationally infamous incident, people who knew Howard and others who have never met him walk to the bridge to pay tribute to the openly gay man who was killed by arrogance and ignorance, according to Anne Clark, 49, of Bangor.
Clark stared 20 feet downward into the waters where Howard died 22 years ago. She cried and softly ran her fingers through the hair of her two daughters standing next to her. To Clark’s right, her partner, Marie Harrington, 34, looked supportively at Clark’s tear-burdened cheeks.
Clark was a friend to Howard for a year before his death. In the time since, she has attended the memorial service sporadically — sometimes afraid to participate and afraid to feel the pain of loss all over again.
“It was hard to hear them talk about how broken he was,” Clark said from the sidewalk, referring to speakers at a service 15 minutes earlier at Hammond Street Congregational Church.
“It was hard to hear that [the teenagers] thought it was OK,” she continued, pausing to dab her tears with a tissue, “that it was just a joke. It just wasn’t OK.”
Clark said the community slowly has started to accept homosexuality. Education of the issue starts with children, she said, but schools have fallen short of that task.
Dan Williams, executive director of the Howard Foundation, organized the event for the third year. He still views discrimination as inherent in society, no matter the size of the community. While posting flyers last week for Friday’s event, he was told by many local business owners to “get lost.”
“I came out and faced my demons and survived,” Williams said, waving at a car that passed over the span and honked in support of the group. “I can’t understand why people can’t face their fears of homosexuality.”
Lois Reed, 72, of Carmel was the president of a now-closed Bangor church that Howard attended at the time of his death. Over the past 22 years, Reed has journeyed to the bridge for 20 of the annual events.
“This never gets any easier,” Reed said. “I hate being on this bridge.”
In the last three years, no passersby have yelled epithets at the group, indicating an improving societal attitude, she said.
To commemorate a man she described as proud and memorialize all gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people who have been murdered, she dropped a white rose into the stream and asked others to cast away the flowers they also held.
Clark, her two daughters and her partner each released tiny orange carnations that floated downstream, leaving behind 35 people somberly thinking about days past and a family longing for equality in the years to come.
“Just live and let live,” Clark said. “Just live and let live.”
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Brooks resident to open for Regan
Source: Bangor Daily News
Published: Friday, April 21, 2006
Photos: 1
Edition: All
Section and Page: C6 (Style Front)
Headline: Brooks resident to open for Regan
BY ANDREW KNAPP
OF THE NEWS STAFF
BANGOR, Maine — A few months ago, Chris Quimby heard one of his favorite comedians was coming to town. Seizing the opportunity to see Brian Regan live, Quimby purchased tickets for the April 27 performance at the Maine Center for the Arts.
Regan has appeared on Comedy Central, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.”
And at 32, Quimby is an aspiring comedian himself. He has dabbled in the local humor scene in the past — performing stand-up routines and song parodies at the annual Maine State Bar Association meeting and at his aunt’s birthday party. The full-time computer technician at the Bangor Daily News even won back-to-back “Funniest Person in Bangor” honors in 2004 and 2005.
Then he got an idea — even if it was a little far-fetched.
“What if I could open for Brian Regan?” Quimby recalled asking himself. “Now, that would be a big break.”
Quimby e-mailed Regan’s manager, Rory Rosegarten, former executive producer of the CBS sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond” and manager for its star, Ray Romano. He made an honest pitch: He’s a 1995 University of Maine graduate and his humor would cater to the local demographic.
“But these guys are from New York,” Quimby said of the cultural disconnect. “I live in a trailer in Brooks.”
He never expected to hear back. But he did.
Rosegarten requested a seven-minute DVD containing his best humor. Having never professionally recorded a routine, Quimby turned to the one resource he knew would come through — his church, Calvary Chapel in Orrington.
In the building’s cafe, equipped with digital sound equipment, Quimby compiled an audience of 35 — a mix of churchgoers and friends. Their job was to laugh. His job was to make their job easy.
Considering the setting, that could’ve posed a problem. He had to keep it clean. But like Regan, he adheres to a set of scruples, only occasionally straying with a sexual joke.
“It’s not a churchy church with stained-glass windows,” he said. “But I had to do this my way, and if I can’t do it in a church, I can’t do it.”
Quimby rattled off the seven minutes he thought were most representative of his talents.
“They laughed,” he said, “and it was sincere — I think.”
The DVD “No More Tears,” a blend of humor about his mobile home and shampoo, elicited a response. Rosegarten asked Quimby to condense his routine into five minutes and open Regan’s performance.
Those recent events have put Quimby in an enjoyable position, he said, especially considering he almost dropped the hobby altogether last summer. At a Brewer Days act, a crowd of elderly and infants didn’t respond to his performance.
That event revealed a void in his life. He had never been much of a drinker, but as a last resort, he gave it a try.
“In December, I drank coffee for the first time, and I felt great,” he said. “That’s what I was missing — caffeine.”
Quimby isn’t nervous about his upcoming act. Caffeine helps him cope, he said, but he knows that whatever happens, happens. His last gig marked the first time he could consume food before performing.
“That’s good, because it shows I’m not nervous,” he said, thrice thwacking his stomach with the palm of his hand, “and I like to eat.”
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