LA Metro has installed bearproof trash cans in at least one station
I was surprised to find this trash can in a metro station this week:
It reminded me of a bearproof trash can. I took a closer look... and it was!
I always find the, like, strategically-hardened aesthetic of a lot of US metro systems both sad and funny. Most LA Metro station trash cans are totally normal... but here, Metro decided to make the contents of the trash as inaccessible as possible. Apparently, Metro has stated that this is being done in several heavy rail stations to prevent people from picking through the trash (For recyclables? For fun?) and creating a mess in the process. I suppose they know better than I do how serious this problem is and whether a bear can is necessary to address it.
Seeing something like this makes me go on my usual despairing mental journey about the city. Many Angelenos are cursed by a fatal inability to recognize that a robust, generous, easy-to-access social safety net (which includes the houseless) would solve most of the minor discomforts they encounter on a daily basis. Everyone I am friends with is joking that we need "our own Mamdani," but it's hard to see how any one politician could champion major change when our local leadership is deliberately so fractured between multiple ruling bodies with different powers, appointed on different election cycles. We're currently apparently rewriting the city charter... but it's not a process I know much about. It's apparently not going very well, either. Still: we can hope, I guess.