“People are always peeing on my street, so I bought a Q-Beam.” With that informative epigram, blogger Jay Rascoe takes his focus off his usual guns and tacos beat for a wee bit in his new Tumblelog, OneBlockOffWashington. There he catalogs his growing collection of caught-peeing, caught-puking, and caught-in-a-ditch videos shot from his home perch, which is, apparently, a block off Washington Ave. Rascoe’s frequent late-night interactions with would-be sidewalk urinators wandering back from club visits are frequently aided by the million candles’ worth of halogen in a pistol grip he points at perpetrators. But some of his most entertaining street-scene captures use only available light:
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- OneBlockOffWashington [GunsandTacos]
- Previously on Swamplot: Ditched off Washington Ave.: Nighttime Off-Roading Adventures
Photos: Jay Rascoe
Gee, doesn’t this fellow have better things to do with his time? I must admit that it is a bit funny, but kinda dangerous to do in Texas where many folks are packing heat. Flash that spotlight on mister PO’d drunk who is taking a wee-wee, and you may see a muzzle flash in return..
I’m a couple blocks off Washington, and I get the loud drunks walking down the street at all hours of the night. Thankfully, there’s too many driveways here for anybody to park. I’ll be glad when all these bars go belly up.
I doubt this will embarrass any one caught on washington ave… have you seen these guys? This just gives them another reason to fist bump. “Dude I was sooooo wasted”
His name is “gunsandtacos” not “carebearsandtacos” somehow I doubt the prospect of a drunken tapout douche groping for a gun while trying to stuff his daterape stick back in his pants is all that frightening.
And as far as “better things to do”. At 2:30 am, this is the BEST thing to do.*
*in before a 5th grader says “uh uh..sex!”
Having spent my youth in the country, peeing outside is perfectly acceptable.
The red light district in Amsterdam has urinals on the street. Maybe Houston should do the same?
@Larry- key word here is “in the country.” Houston does not need urinals on the street.
I wouldn’t mess with Jay. He is a really big guy who is a very good shot.
You know, in Paris there are self-cleaning pay toilets all over the place, and they get used a lot. They are highly convenient and they don’t keep Paris from being a breathtakingly beautiful city.
People do have to pee. If they have nowhere else to do it, it’ll be on your lawn.
I like the photo of the “gentleman” who chose to spray all the way on the other side of the vehicle from his female companion. Classy.
Of course, maybe he feared she’d see something smaller in diameter than the urine stream.
I’d suggest running cheap perforated garden hose along the ditch, with a well-timed turn of the faucet…
I hate those selfish SOBs, drunk or not.
@SuperD I’d love to see anyone drunk enough to piss on the side of the road successfully aim anywhere in the vicinity of this guy
I have a friend who owns a house near Rich’s in midtown–he sits in his lawn with the garden house and nails the pee-ers with water. Of course, he’s also 7 feet tall…
Make sure to click through to the site. The videos of the guys calling him gay are classic middle school behavior.
I really like the idea of setting up a sprinkler. That’d be damn funny.
Is it just me, or is that the dude’s wang showing in the second pic?
Yeah Jason, I wondered that too. But, as an after thought, I decided that it was his underwear showing in the unzipped fly.
I seriously doubt that his junk would be in such a state as to exhibit itself from that distance. After some hours of fun and drink anyway.
There was a HPD officer, living in Montrose that pulled his gun on homeless man peeing in his yard.
I think he scared the shit out of him.
Wang, haha. We live off Washington but pretty far down from the bars and I listened to these people yapping until 2:30 am last night. On a frickin Wednesday, like every night when the bars close. If I thought there were was a way to get back at them by recording their retarded conversations and posting them on the internet, I’d be down. I’d also be down for shooting them with paintballs everytime I hear a whoo girl, but alas people do pack heat.
THIS is why we need a better parking ordinance.
The bars are NOT the problem, and neither is the parking ordinance. No bar owner is forcing people to pee in the street. These are adults, and the sooner our society starts holding people responsible for their own actions, the better off we’ll be. If the police spent more time dealing with these “crimes” instead of enriching the wallets of tow truck drivers, this might be less of a problem. And yes, I live a few blocks off Washington too, and I couldn’t care less about people parking on public streets. I’m not much inconvenienced from 10pm -2am when bar patrons use the “public” streets the most. I’m more inconvenienced from 8am – 6PM every M-F when the parents and employees of the nearby daycare school take up nearly the entire neighborhood with their cars. Where is the outrage? Frankly, as long as they aren’t breaking laws, I don’t care where people park. I don’t want more ridiculous restrictions on using public streets (I don’t live in The Woodlands for a reason). Privatizing public streets is absurd. The taxpayers don’t owe anyone, including residents, on-street parking spaces. Use your own garage or driveway.
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People in the Washington area should be outraged that despite the quintupling of property values on these tiny streets, the City has spent next to nothing to improve them. Many of right of ways are double the size of most of the pavement, but instead of parking lanes, sidewalks, and curbs we have mud and ditches. Super Neighborhood 22 is a joke; being obsessed with shutting down tax-paying legal businesses and expanding parking permits, instead of demanding infrastructure improvements.
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I can add that when a guy parked next to my house recently threw his empty beer can over my fence the other night around 2AM, I happened to be in the yard letting my dog out; when I threw it back and hit his car, he wasn’t too pleased. Whatever.
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Whew! Rant over.
How about calling the Police to instead, to let them know about the drunk people getting into cars?
What you need is one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Contech-CRO101-Scarecrow-Activated-Sprinkler/dp/B000071NUS/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1325867632&sr=1-1
Legal, safe, and totally effective at controlling all late night pests. Got rid of our stray cat problem pronto…
This guy is awesome.
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I just bought some new security camera + DVR setups for my properties (I have some now, but they’re older and not internet streaming friendly). I plan to put them on my website and make them public.
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I figure people that may be interested in watching some security cameras have a better chance of catching something that my being the only one.
If these for-profit *busineses* were forced to provide parking to their customers, the idiots could be vomiting, peeing and making “luv” on that for-profit private property, instead of your yard and our streets.
The solution to this problem is NOT higher minimum parking requirements. Parking minimums have significant negative consequences, like encouraging sprawl, discouraging walkable development, etc. Not to mention subsidizing drunk driving.
Since the perpetrators of the majority of such loutish behavior are clearly intoxicated, how about we start with some more aggressive DWI enforcement in the area to encourage people to use other forms of transportation?
I don’t live in the WADB District, but I feel for its residents, big time. The benefit to increasing the *mininum* parking requirement is it keeps businesses like this out of residential areas because there isn’t room for parking. We do not live in San Fran, Paris or Boston. Houstonians are not going to give up their cars, even when they live in “walkable” neighborhoods and by not forcing businesses, operating to make a profit, to give their customers a place to put the cars they refuse to part with, we instead are putting the burden on the people who get no benefit from the activities of the for profit business. Cry me a river, Houston businesses.
This sounds like the exact conversations we had in our neighborhood about 15 years ago, re The Pig Live and 8.0. And I suppose Midtown residents had the same conversations awhile back before WashAve became The Place To Be Seen, and “EaDo” folks will get it next.
What is this obsession with walkable development? The folks who live 5 miles away still need a place to park their car, they aren’t walking to get there. Houston is not, and never will be, a pedestrian friendly place. Want walkable cities? Move somewhere that developed density early. it’s not going to happen here.
Jon’s comment about infrastructure improvement is spot on. Can’t tell you how many out of town visitors I’ve driven around here that just can’t believe the 4th largest city in the country never curbed , storm sewered or sidewalked streets in places that have been in the city limits for 40+ years. But the city loves all that higher tax revenue filling up their coffers on properties they routinely assess at 10% increases year in and year out.
Well, there is a club near where my boyfriend and I live. The patrons are disgusting. Same issues as washington Ave. So we got permit parking. I am not an idiot and think this will solve all issues but at least it will keep these drunks off our street. For anyone that has these issues or foresee the problem. Start the process for permit parking now, because it takes almost a year. SLOW process!!!!
Bernard R.
Midtown@Elgin