Junqueros, that's not junk!

When you have a building project in the city everyone wants a piece.

There's the city---don't get me started on the hoops we had to go through and the silly costs of permits.

There's the contractors.

There's the subcontractors.

There's the neighbors---who want leftovers and dump all their crap in your dumpster.

And there's the junqueros. Those are the guys who cruise the alleys in search of salvage. Either stuff they can resell themselves, or stuff they can sell as recycled metals. Iron mongers back in the day... Anyway, the salvage people have been yanking stuff from our dumpster and the job site since day one. Not a problem at all---in fact, I appreciat the fact that they are preventing waste products from hitting our choked landfill.

But these guys have a trick to pick up an extra few bucks here and there. Their basic gig involves filling their trucks with scrap metals and hitting the recyclers where they park the truck on a scale before dumping their loads and then weighing the empty trucks to get the final weight of their haul. To tip the balance a bit more, they also make stops at construction sites to fill bags and bins with rocks, dirt, and sand. Shady. But, hey, if you are busting your but to fill your truck from 40 bucks (they only get a few dollars per pound, minus commission fees) you'd try a bit of hustle too. The problem for me is that I need the rocks, dirt, and sand they are carting away. Since the city won't let us build a deck (long and frustrating story) we are building out an elevated patio. The foundation walls are there for the patio---but the mountain of earth in my backyard needs to go back into that hole as compacted fill.

The mountain has been shrinking. These guys have been cruising by and taking hundreds of pounds of it at a time all week.

I got into a shouting match with one of the crews this weekend. I felt really stupid arguing about it. Afterall, it is seemingly a value-less commodity---so I was not really bothered by their surprise and indignation when I told the crew to move on. The first time, anyway. However, I was the one expressing surprise and indignation when the crew returned 40 minutes later. They feigned a language barrier and then said that I had them confused with some other guys when I reminded them of our conversation just a few minutes earlier. However, when I asked them how many bright yellow pickups they had seen in my alley loaded down with discarded refrigerators and downspouts that looked as though they had been wrenched off of houses, they relented...

It was kind of funny. And sort of silly. But with metal commodity prices soaring to record prices, this is actually a big deal. All over the city, there have been reports of air conditioning units being ripped open so that the copper coils could be removed. There is a couple sort of rehabbing the house on our corner who stupidly put copper gutters on their facade this summer even though there was nobody living in the house. The next night I heard the gutters being yanked off the front of the house. The thieves were long-gone before the cops came around. Heck, I even called 9-1-1 this year after witnessing two guys stealing a 25-foot section of pipe from the Dan Ryan reconstruction site at 47th Street. They litterally stopped traffic on the expressway---that takes some serious stones! The 911 call was funny;

Hi, traffic on the Dan Ryan is stopped at 47th Street because a couple of guys are stealing a giant pipe!

How are they stopping traffic?

There are two guys walking across the road with a 25-foot section of pipe!

Where are they going?

East on 47th Street---send a car quick.

Can you describe them?

Two young males in baggy white Tshirts.

That could be anyone, are there any identifying features?

Well, I'd guess they are the only people walking down 47th Street with a 25-foot long chunk of pipe...

True story. Anyway, all kidding aside, this is a huge problem. And not just on the South Side. It is happening all over the city and the suburbs. There was a good article in the Trib entitled No Gutter is Safe as Copper Prices Spur Crime Wave (check it out). It sucks to spend $1000 to get a new AC unit when someone demolishes the thing for a $25 hunk of copper...

Thankfully, this has not been an issue---given the choice, they can have my sand...