Oakland residents clean up neighborhood two weeks before G-20

Katherine Koudelka spent nearly three hours Saturday cleaning up Oakland streets for the… Katherine Koudelka spent nearly three hours Saturday cleaning up Oakland streets for the G-20.

But she doesn’t know why.

“The G-20 is in two weeks. People will keep throwing sh*t down,” Koudelka, a Pitt student, said.

Koudelka was one of more than 1,000 people who helped clean up the streets in 15 Pittsburgh neighborhoods, including Oakland, Shadyside, the North Shore and West Liberty Avenue this weekend. About 130 people volunteered to help in Oakland, a neighborhood known for hosting a few college parties on the weekends.

Last week, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato called on Pittsburgh residents to volunteer for a series of beautification projects in preparation for the G-20 Summit.

Kelly Wawrzeniak, of the Oakland Planning and Development Corp., where the volunteers met, said the cleanup was originally planned for next Saturday, closer to the summit, but the mayor’s office moved the date earlier so it wouldn’t conflict with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year.

“A lot of volunteers wouldn’t have been able to participate if we had kept it on the 19th,” Wawrzeniak said. “So we are just going along with the mayor’s request to have the cleanup today.

Pitt student Anne Johnson said she worries that the the neighborhood will get dirty again before the G-20, but she still thinks the cleanup was “a good thing to do.”

Pitt student and Habitat for Humanity member Jennifer Howells said she hoped the volunteers’ efforts would “send a message” to the community.

“Maybe people will think twice about where they toss their plastic cups. Part of me is afraid that people won’t notice it has been cleaned up, and it will go back to the way it was,” Howells said. “I don’t want to be skeptical — I hope this will make people get involved — but I lived in Oakland for two years, and it has always been about the same litter-wise.”

CMU students Ashley Jiang, Chrystina Chan and Sharon Choi said they thought Oakland definitely needed to be spruced up. They spent the morning cleaning Atwood Street.

“We’ve found pizza boxes, beer bottles, a bottle of mascara and pigeon feathers,” Choi said. “It’s like we need a vacuum. There are more cigarette butts than leaves out here.”

Boris Weinstein, who coordinated the day-long event, said, “South Oakland always takes an awful lot of cleaning up.

“It has a huge population,” he added. “There’s a lot of activity.”

Wawrzeniak said Oakland’s mess is comparable to other city neighborhoods.

“I don’t have much information on the other places,” Wawrzeniak said. “But I don’t think Oakland is that bad.”

Weinstein said that the Clean Pittsburgh Commission is already involved in more cleanups.

“We do this all the time, not just for the G-20,” Weinstein said. “We’re expecting 2,400 volunteers in about 50 neighborhoods on Pitt Make a Difference Day alone.”