A gardener with the Recreation and Parks Department has some strong opinions following this past weekend's Pride celebrations at Dolores Park. Namely, how useless the "Love Dolores" campaign is, and how you should all stop treating the park like a "f**k dumpster."
The above video, shot by gardener Mark Lujan and picked up by SF Weekly, shows the trash-strewn aftermath of Pride celebrations (it should be noted that trash in the park — especially after Pride — is not a new problem). However, it is mostly interesting for a now-deleted comment he made on his own post. In it, Lujan rails against lazy park-goers and calls the city's attempt to get people to pickup after themselves, dubbed the "Love Dolores" campaign, "useless."
His post, in its entirety, is below. We bolded some of the more interesting parts and posted a screengrab of it at the bottom of this story.
[The trash cans are] bolted to the ground. And frankly people just should not be so fucking awful. You can literally see the trash cans from this field. Oh and there are signs that say where the cans are. Oh and we also waste a bunch of effort on the obviously useless love Dolores outreach campaign to inform people. The solution is for people to just maybe start giving a fuck or two. But instead they choose to use this park like a fuck dumpster. A LITERAL FUCK DUMPSTER. I have already picked up a statistically significant number of drug baggies and condoms. Usually also found near a pile of vomit. Do you know some folks actually urinated on one of our custodians while she was trying to clean the restroom? Yep. Pissed right on her, right through the gate on the bathroom door. People just come here to do whatever the fuck they want, because people are fucking awful. And this is the result. If I put a trash can every 20 paces on the entire 20 ACRES of this park I'd still be picking up fucking trash off the ground every weekend. And here's the thing. I AM NOT A FUCKING TRASH MAN. That shit ain't my job. I'm a gardener. But because people like to shit all over everything "gardener" basically means shit farmer. So tell me more about how trash cans will fix this.
We reached out to SF Recreation and Parks spokesperson Joey Kahn for an official comment, and it was shortly after this that Lujan's Facebook comment was deleted. Kahn did eventually get back to us, and he confirmed that Lujan is in fact a gardener with Rec and Parks in addition to noting that "It’s hard to believe we have to ask adults to clean up after themselves."
"Trash is a major problem at Dolores Park, and it’s a frustrating recurring problem to have, especially for those who deal with it on a daily basis," wrote Kahn. "Monday alone, it took 13 Rec & Park employees a collective 86.5 hours to clean up Dolores Park. These are taxpayer dollars being spent on cleanup and resources that are being diverted away from other parks."
Related: Day Around The Bay: Dolores Park 'Trashed' Over Pride Weekend