true crime blotter
Is City Beautification Even Worth the Bother?
Those of you who have been living in Budapest since the late 1990s (or regularly visited) probably remember what Erzsébet tér looked like at the turn of the millenium. Following groundbreaking for the new Nemzeti Színház (National Theater), the newly elected Fidesz government promptly decided to move the location of said theater before construction started to an area down by the Lágymányosi híd. Without plans as to what to do next, a gaping hole colloquially known as the "nemzeti gödör" (national ditch) existed in the heart of Budapest welcoming tourists. Those arriving at the bus station would be greeted by something resembling this. Then, a few years ago, they did a nice job of fixing it up and installed the Gödör Klub as well. As you can tell from the picture we snapped this morning, they've also done a fantastic job of maintaining it.
There are two things you can see that are obviously wrong in the picture above. The first, of course, is that overflowing rubbish bin, so that people have taken to just dumping their refuse in the general area around the bin. At least it shows some good intentions on the part of people who'd been there, as they meant to throw their garbage away.
But it's the second fault visible in the picture that gets me: how this square, built less than a decade ago, is already falling apart. What never ceases to amaze me is how across this city when something is renovated or newly built, they usually do a great job and the new structures frequently feature intricate details. Then, once these structures are built, they promptly let them go to ruin.
Anyone who takes the 56 tram out to Hűvösvölgy would know how the tram stops feature white and green shelters that were originally quite nice, but they've been since covered in graffiti and are falling apart. We here at Pestiside have already expressed our opinion that graffiti vandals should have their hands cut off. Some of our readers would be even less restrained. But the damage in the picture above is actually the result of skaters who hang out in the area.
Sure, skateboarding is not a crime, but a lot of those snot-nosed kids on their skateboards are criminals. And before you think I'm a crotchety old fart about to bark at you to get off my lawn, I'm someone who used to skateboard, but I never considered destruction of public property as an acceptable consequence of my hobby.
"But we don't have enough skate parks to go to!" the skaters might protest. How is that an excuse? When I was growing up, neither did I nor my friends on the street. Instead, we grabbed some hammers and nails, collected what spare wood we could find around the house, and built our own ramps that were little better than deathtraps.
"But it's public property, and they have a right to be there." Yes, and if they don't go around destroying things, I have no problem with them being there. It's when they start wrecking public spaces, which we know won't be fixed anytime soon, that I get upset.
So then of course the question is why does the government build such nice areas when they know they won't bother maintaining them? Maybe they're hoping for some economic miracle to take place. I don't know. But I like it when public spaces look nice, so I'm not for them making things simple maintenance, otherwise known as ugly. Instead, what should be done is the places should be kept from deteriorating to the condition many of them are now in.
How to do this? We all know the police have a tendency to get carried away with their jobs. The government should get them to focus their energies not on innocent bystanders of the wrong political persuasion, but on the vandalizing little shits instead. And if that fails, we know of other ways to resolve problems plaguing the city.
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COMMENT!am i remembering this incorrectly or is your memory hazed? wasn't it illustrious mayor Demsky who was adamantly against the national theater being at erzsebet ter thus the sacriligious move to the burbs.
MC Demszky is certainly not without his boneheaded ideas, but it was the Fidesz-led government that moved the location after digging had already started. http://www.sulinet.hu/tori/szakkor/nemzsz/nemzszh.htm
The unkept little shits that dominate the diagonal road across Erzsebet Ter really piss me off, especially because they are all really bad at it too. And it's not just about destroying the benches and the stone of the fountain. My mum was hit on the shin by an 'out of control' skateboard last week and it really swelled up. First time in her life she complained to the police and they put up a 'NO SKATEBOARDING' sign. Which got stolen by the next day.
I would like to say that this, like the graffiti, stems from the general Hungarian attitude of not giving a crap about anyone else but yourself, but you hear a fair amount of English and German chatter coming from them too.
In the first few years there were 'no skateboarding/ rollerskateing' signs around the square and guards too.
The main reason behind the amortization are the ice, the wrong material and the bmx bikes.
The bike is a fast and heavy thing, and with the pegs you can jump to the shoulders... so you can hit it really hard and flee from the guards.
Rollerskateing and skatebording is allowed only in the last year or so, after the destruction of the square.
Anyway the west side of the square is (badly) designed for skaters/bikers, this is the reason behind the ramp-like stuffs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI_434RrRVU
A short video about the ruins of National Ditch:)
Hmm....? =.= why bash one of the few GOOD venues in the city? :P Stop it, people will get the wrong message ;) For what it's worth, seen many cities in the world, and none of the hype central locations managed without damage when the young took over. However... the places get fixed up, and no one minds. Don't you like it when there's a place you can count on to have a festival all year long? ( This damage on the festival scale is zero point one hahaa... ew. Sziget :P ) It doesn't take much streetwise to know these venues, go there if you want to, evade if you don't like them, but it's good for the city, good for the liveliness of the community in general, right? And probably those who are responsible for keeping them tidy know this too. Benches ruined? Trash flowing out of the can? Take a deep breath and restore the scene every day/month/year! Sure thing, seen it in every metropolis I've been to, this is normal. And at Godor you really can't say any more either. Once the crowd goes home ( mid October ) let them renovate the place, they pick up trash daily anyway. Those people + tourists ( a lot of them ) + the nearby hotels pour a lot of money into the district's piggy bank. To those who don't like the place: why don't you go to Nyugati instead? You know... BANK, the biker meetup in front of Skala Metro ( or whatever it'll be called next week ), metal melting away because of the urine... Do those places. Not too far either :P Go there and tell them your opinion about city beautifixation :D, drag racing after 11pm, pickpocketing, the homeless, architecture of the 80s,... if you wanna keep all venues as sterile as Belgium... :D ( Nice place, but BORING. ) Cool. Don't start bashing the few sophisticated, cosmopolitan venues... start with Nyugati. I've taken a closer look at the architecture there just yesterday night. It's rotting away, falling to pieces on all ends -.-
Tripcity, not sure I get your point. Your solution is to go elsewhere? I agree Godor is cool and I love the atmosphere in the square generally, other than dodging the world's suckiest skateboarders. But for fuck's sake, is to to much to ask that:
A: People clean up after themselves, and
B: The city pick up trash MORE than once a day?
Trash all over the place does NOT equal cool. It does not equal character. All it shows is selfishness and disorganization. There is no reason a place cannot be cool and clean at the same time!
It might help the look of the park a bit if the city (or whoever hired the contractors) made sure they didn't use such shitty materials. Just like on Kiraly utca. I used to walk that street each day to Deak while under construction. They laid a nice cobblestone street from Nagy to Kis korut, but how fucking long before all the stones starting coming up off the road --- nice planning. Or the bastards who park on the sidewalks and destroy almost all the stone pillars. Now almost all the masonry there is shit. You really have to wonder what goes through all these district mayors minds when they sign off on this crap.
And before I forget, any skateboarders grinding on public benches which can be shown to be wearing down from this action should be "knee-capped", preferably by grundolf's mum
A: People clean up after themselves
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They won't. They're either children, or drunk, or are tired after a whole day's work. But I don't see the argument here, Godor isn't trashed that much. This was a trashcan. Overflowing with trash. Because it's too small :P
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B: The city pick up trash MORE than once a day?
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Yeah. Uh.... this amount is produced within hours. At night. SO again, either more trashcans, or FKV arriving in the morning hours. Before the cameramen :P
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My point was, that this is how it goes.
In parts of New York ( Soho and the Village ) and Tokyo ( like Shibuya, and Kabuki-cho in Shinjuku ), you can't really go *near* the trash until 2am because of the massive crowds. They've given up on it, and sweep the places from wall to wall at dawn before commuters arrive. It's how it is, and unless there's a trash can within an arm's reach for everyone ( like in Münich, i mean München ;) it won't really change. Besides, fact is that the trash is actually IN the trashcan... just overflowing... :D
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they need more.
or issue that daily cleanup of the place before the morning reality check. That's all.
