I'll admit it: I hate people who litter!

In some neighborhoods in my home town of Philadelphia, I see streets littered with garbage - often food containers and single-use disposable packaging for fast food and sweets. While these same neighborhoods are not swept and maintained by center city's private cleanup firm, I'm unsure if the continued degradation of these neighborhoods is more a lack of ownership versus transient renters, who simply don't care about property value. There's also the theory that litter begets litter.

In my old place in South Philly, the little old lady next door made it her mission to sweep our block. While it seemed a waste, I could see her short investment of neighborhood improvement turned a mediocre 'hood into a desirable one! The city of Philadelphia is aware of this issue, and our very own Philadelphia Streets Department schedules an annual city-wide Spring Cleanup. Feel like stepping up and cleaning up your own Philadelphia neighborhood? Philly 311 offers a checklist to produce an effective Neighborhood Cleanup, but Philadelphia Magazine has a ton of local resources to get you cleaning the clock, including phone numbers of agency there to help you!

My own offering to this war is the Tabloid PDF download (12k) seen to the left. Inspired by this nature sign, but altered the wording to reduce the accusatory tone. Our local slang makes it clear which side of the jawn we think you are. Name dropping the city we're hoping it gets used only limits it's popularity...

This design is tabloid size, or 11 inches by 17 inches. You'll need a copy shop (my local Kinko's hooked it up for 26¢ a print!) and since it's black and white, you can get a bunch made. Round the corners of the pages with scissors for the full 'street sign' effect before tacking it in your front window. Our tiny type at the bottom directs future viewers to here.

Special Thanks to ShrinkPDF, who compressed my downloadable PDF file by more than 95% and to my friends at TinyJPG, who easily shaved more than half off those images, making this page load fast!