Eva's beloved garden needs to be moved for new sidewalk, neighborhood plans parade of wheelbarrows

Eva moves a rock in her garden on NE 130th Street.

Eva Sismaet is proud of her hard work. And she should be.

Like so many streets in Lake City, the road on both sides of her corner lot lacked basic infrastructure. There is no curb. Runoff from the street on the west side of her property would pool on her blacktop driveway, turning the area into a dangerous ice rink during the winter.

On the north side, along NE 130th Street, the ditch cut into the shoulder of the road would become a mucky, overgrown and litter-filled mess when it rained.

The retiree on a fixed income decided to act and beautify her little slice of our community.

Eva, who has lived in her home with her husband Romeo for 33 years, turned the mucky ditch into a rock-lined garden. She planted elephant ear plants, kept down the overgrowth with tree bark and added colorful plants into the visually appealing mix that lines her property.

Eva

Most days she can be seen out there, with a wide brimmed hat, meticulously keeping her garden manicured for her —and our— enjoyment. (If you ever stop to chat she will engage you in friendly conversation)

Eva gardens to keep her mind from the troubles she has faced in recent years. Her husband, a veteran of the Vietnam War that served in Saigon, battled lung cancer and now suffers from coronary obstructive pulmonary disease. Things got worse when her home was recently burglarized, robbing her of a sense of security that we should all be able to enjoy in our homes, our havens.

Change comes to Eva's garden

The stakes with pink surveyors flags were the first indication of what was going to happen to Eva's garden.

You see, members of our community have been advocating for needed sidewalks for decades. Recently, funding for a new sidewalk on NE 130th, right in front of Eva's home, was secured.

The new sidewalk is part of efforts to have a safe path for students to walk from Olympic Hills Elementary to the Lake City Library. The sidewalk and curb will bring drainage and a safe path to an area that Eva created drainage and beauty in her own makeshift way.

The City of Seattle has told Eva that she needs to remove the years of work she put into her garden before sidewalk construction begins this summer. Once construction starts, anything left behind from her beloved garden would be swallowed up by tractors and dump trucks.

Eva then started to move her massive garden and drainage. Rock by single rock.

Offers of help

Recently a neighbor approached Eva as she was in front of her home lifting rocks. The neighbor suggested she ask the community for help.

At first she was unsure and said she didn't know what community the neighbor was talking about. When approached later by another neighbor, offering the same help, she became emotional.

You see, neighbors are for so much more than politely waving to occasionally or visiting with once a year at a block party —or telling that their dog barks too loudly. (This is where you enter this story)

"I am really fortunate to find out that the community we're living in has people with helping hands. I am proud of you guys," Eva said of the neighbors that have offered help. She also offered her elephant ear plants to anyone that wants to give them a good home.

Parade of wheelbarrows

So here is what WE can do.

Grease up the wheel of your wheelbarrows, get your shovels and work gloves ready. Douglas Park Cooperative is planning a parade of wheelbarrows to move the massive amount of river rock in Eva's street-side garden into her yard.

This is not an easy task as there is quite a bit of large river rock in her garden. But with enough man-woman-kid power we should be able to knock this out in a few hours.

We are still working on a date to accomplish this in the next couple of weeks, before construction of the sidewalk starts. It will likely be a weekend day in the middle of June. So check back here and we will post all the info when we have a date firmed up with Mrs. Sismaet. We will post the info on our Facebook Page, on our email list-serve and here, on our blog.

So who is ready to rock Eva's rocks and move them into her yard?

Residents discuss Lake City Greenway proposal at meeting

Janine Blaeloch gives a presentation during the meeting.

 Lake City residents gathered for a meeting on February 21st to discuss a proposal for a pedestrian- and bike-friendly "greenway" along 27th Avenue Northeast.

The route, which would run from NE 145th Street to NE 125th Street, has been proposed by the Lake City Greenways project with the help of community members searching for safer ways for pedestrians and bicyclists to negotiate our neighborhood and its lack of pedestrian infrastructure—sidewalks.

Most of the people that attended the meeting were residents that live on 27th Avenue NE and wanted to understand how the proposed greenway would affect them and to voice concerns about altering the quiet neighborhood street.

People were vocal at the meeting, both in support of the project and with concerns—mostly about speed humps, emergency response times and the expense of altering the road.

Residents worried that the addition of speed humps, elongated and gentle traffic slowing devices, would encourage drivers to drive over gravel parking easements in an attempt to avoid the humps.

Residents discussed adding stop signs and speed-detecting cameras along the street—the benefits and issues with both were discussed. People at the meeting said they wanted safer access to the Lake City Hub Urban Village for elderly and disabled people. And proposals for street murals in Lake City were met with support during the meeting.

"People want to understand better what it might mean for their street," said Janine Blaeloch, a neighborhood resident working with other community members to bring safe routes via greenways to our neighborhood. "Most people just want information," she said.

A presentation on the Lake City Greenways proposal is posted below. You can read a previous story we wrote about Lake City Greenways and how it can help transform some of our streets here.

School Levies and their impact on Lake City

Our friends at Families for Lake City have put together a post that explains the significant improvements Proposition 1 and Proposition 2 will have on Seattle Public Schools in Lake City and Northeast Seattle.

The Building Excellence (BEX) Capital Levy (Prop 2) and the Operations Levy (Prop 1) will bring much-needed improvements to our neighborhood schools. Families for Lake City and Douglas Park Cooperative both ask you to vote YES for Proposition 1 and YES for Proposition 2 to help improve and invest in our community schools.

If approved, these two levies will be a continuation of expiring levies. If approved, these levies would cost the owner of a $400,000 home $13 a month over what the homeowner pays on the expiring levies. A simple summary of the two levies is available here.

Below Families for Lake City explains how these levies will impact individual schools in Lake City.

What do these levies mean for Lake City area schools?

The Capital Levy (Prop 2) will help fund new construction and safety improvements at multiple Lake City area schools. The Seattle School District is facing severe capacity shortages, particularly in our NE corner of Seattle, just based on current enrollment. With projected enrollment included, the capacity issues worsen.  Without Prop 2 passing, we’ll see Lake City schools overcrowded and thriving programs dislocated or disbanded altogether.
The Operations Levy (Prop 1) provides crucial support for everything from textbooks and transportation to student activities and support for bilingual and special education students.
With schools bursting at the seams, whether or not the levies pass, the following Lake City area schools will be impacted:

Olympic Hills Elementary
If the Capital Improvement Levy passes, Olympic Hills Elementary will receive a rebuilt and expanded school.  The Olympic Hills program would temporarily re-locate during construction – either to the currently closed Cedar Park site, or to another location. If the capital levy does not pass, Olympic Hills will not be rebuilt. Instead, neighbors would likely see a slew of portables added to house more students, putting additional strain on the school’s small infrastructure.

Cedar Park
The Cedar Park site formerly housed a neighborhood elementary school, but has been leased to an artist cooperative for the last 30 years. Regardless of whether the levy passes or not, the school district plans to re-open this site. At a recent community meeting, Pegi McEvoy, Assistant Superintendent of Operations, presented two scenarios: 1) if the levy passes, Cedar Park will be used as an interim site for Olympic Hills, then reopened as a permanent school, 2) if the levy fails, the district will need to reopen the school as soon as it can be made ready; a time crunch that will limit the district’s flexibility with how to redevelop the site.

Jane Addams
To relieve overcrowding at Eckstein Middle School, the district will begin a comprehensive middle school at the Jane Addams site in fall of 2014, called Jane Addams Middle School (JAMS).  Currently, the Jane Addams site houses the Jane Addams K-8 option program (JAK8). It’s expected that these two programs may be co-housed at the site for one or more years.
If the Capital Levy passes, the JAK8 program will be permanently relocated to a new facility at the existing Pinehurst site by 2017. If it doesn’t pass, it’s unclear what will happen to the JAK8 program.
With JAMS will come a new middle school feeder pattern, with Olympic Hills, John Rogers and Sacajawea feeding into JAMS instead of Eckstein. This has raised equity concerns, as these elementary schools have much higher concentrations of low-income students than the elementary schools which will remain in the Eckstein feeder pattern. In a meeting last week, the School Board voted 4-3 to wait until 2014 to open JAMS in order to allow adequate planning time to address these concerns and bring this new school online.

Pinehurst 
If the levy passes, the existing Pinehurst site will have a new facility built on it to house JAK8. District plans for the existing Pinehurst K-8 program aren’t specified, but the possibility of relocating it to the Cedar Park site was mentioned at the Cedar Park community meeting with Pegi McEvoy.
If the levy doesn’t pass, the Pinehurst program may experience even more radical changes. It’s unclear what the district would do to relieve capacity issues, but almost certainly the Pinehurst site would get more students than it currently does.

John Rogers, Sacajawea & Jane Addams
If the levy passes, these three schools will receive important seismic upgrades to improve earthquake safety.

In addition to benefiting Lake City area schools with new construction and seismic upgrades, these levies will also fund sorely needed projects in other areas of Seattle, such as replacement of the severely dilapidated Arbor Heights building.  If approved, these levies would equate to a $13/month increase for the owner of a $400,000 home. The following chart provides a comparison of how Seattle’s education levy tax rate stacks up against other cities:

*Levy rate chart available via www.seattleschools.org
**Note:  With any school construction, the school district will work with the City of Seattle to address neighborhood impacts following SEPA and best practice protocols for community involvement.

Neighborhood support needed Monday evening for skate spot

Click this image to view larger and to see ideas for the skate park

Correction: An earlier version of this post had an incorrect number date. The meeting is in fact Monday the 28th.

Members of our community will give a presentation to the Seattle Parks Department Levy Oversight Committee Monday evening, January 28th, to make a case for a skate spot at Virgil Flaim Park in our neighborhood.

A funding application was reviewed and scored and this presentation may be one of the last opportunities to make a case for funding for the neighborhood skate spot as it seems the funding may not be approved.

Here is how you can help:

Come to the Levy Oversight Committee meeting tonight, Monday, January 29th.

Visibly show your support for Lake City and a proposed skate spot.

Bring a skateboard, wear a LCW sticker from Elliott Bay, help make our community visible to the decision makers and let them know that a skate spot would bring much-needed life to a park that is often a hangout for chronic public inebriates.

The meeting details from organizers are below:

6:00 - 6:45: Open House: display table for committee members
7:00 - 9:00: Sometime in here, we have a slot for a 3 minute presentation.

Where: Northgate Community Center, 10510 5th Ave NE

Stand with us at our display table during the open house to demonstrate neighborhood support and/or stick around for the presentation and stand with us (with your LCW sticker) during the presentation.

To learn more about efforts to build a skate spot at Virgil Flaim park go here:  www.skatelakecity.org

Meeting Tuesday night about proposed sidewalk on NE 130th Street

View Larger Map

Seattle's Department of Transportation will be presenting plans for a new sidewalk in our neighborhood at a meeting tomorrow night (Tuesday, December 4th) at 6:30 PM in the Olympic Hills Elementary School lunch room. The meeting is open to the public.

The new sidewalk segments are proposed for the south side of NE 130th Street from 25th Avenue NE to 28th Avenue NE. The plan is for the sidewalks to include curbs, planter strips, street trees, and public art.

The development plans will be available for residents' comments and we can also provide SDOT with additional feedback regarding the safety of school routes.

There will be snacks at the meeting and it is expected to be approximately 1 hour long.

The sidewalk is expected to be completed next summer.

How to keep Trick-or-Treating safe, fun

A trick-or-treater on NE 128th Street

Trick-or-Treating is a great time to get out, walk around your community, say hi to neighbors, and gather handfuls of treats for the little ones. It is also a good time to teach your kids some basic safety and remember some yourself.

Remember, most of our neighborhood does not have sidewalks, so some of the suggestions below should be emphasized even more in our community than in other neighborhoods with better infrastructure.

We encourage neighbors to get out and have some fun, but please keep these safety tips from the Seattle Police Department in mind when venturing out with your princesses and ghosts.

Happy Halloween!


Keep your child safe

SPD encourages safety and supervision during the annual Trick-or-Treat season. It is especially important for parents to adhere to a few safety rules for their children when they are trick-or-treating.

• Know your treaters' route

• Take a flashlight

• Be sure costumes, shoes, and treat bags are safe.

• Remind kids not to enter strangers' homes or cars.

• Set rules about not eating treats until kids get home. Be sure to inspect all treats before allowing kids to eat them.

• Candy that has been opened should be thrown away. Any homemade treats or fruit should be inspected closely.

• Remember drivers have a hard time seeing people, especially at dusk.

• Never cross the street from between parked cars.

• Watch open flames from jack-o-lanterns as they can catch costumes and long wigs on fire.

• Make sure that fake knives, swords, and guns are made from cardboard or other flexible materials to avoid accidental injury or worse, have them mistaken for the real thing!

Make your home safe


It is also important to ensure that your home is safe and accessible to trick-or-treaters. As adults there are some very simple things we can do to make the evening safe everyone.

• Turn on your porch light.

• Move lit jack-o-lanterns off the porch where kids get bunched up if they are trick-or-treating in groups.

• Remove objects from your yard that might present a hazard.

• Drive slowly all evening-you never know what creature may suddenly cross your path.

• Report any suspicious or criminal activity to the police.

For regular updates please follow Douglas Park Cooperative on Facebook by going here. If you don't use Facebook you can subscribe to our posts by entering your email in the "Follow our blog via email" field on the right column and our posts will be delivered to your email inbox. The service will NEVER send you spam.

PHOTOS: Fright Night comes to Lake City

Fright Night came to Lake City on Friday night. And along with it came plenty of zombies, unicorns and princesses.

The 20th annual event, organized by the Lake City Lions, Children's Home Society and the North Seattle Family Center saw a significant turnout. The Lions reported that they served pizza to over 500 people

Below are photos from the fun annual event.

Snow White, Strawberry Shortcake

"Braiiiiiinnnnsss"

Lake City Lions serving up slices of pizza with a side of fun!

The haunted house. Terrifying.

Mini golf and games

A cute little pumpkin

Mario Brothers

Candy, yum.

Darth Maul shows off the Dark Side of the Force

Michael Jackson and a cheetah

The craft table

A king cobra

Entrance to the haunted house

A cute mouse

Don't cast a spell on us!

The Beetles live!

Daughter, dad

Cutie pie

Trying to escape the haunted house

Face painting

Toy Story

For regular updates please follow Douglas Park Cooperative on Facebook by going here. If you don't use Facebook you can subscribe to our posts by entering your email in the "Follow our blog via email" field on the right column and our posts will be delivered to your email inbox. The service will NEVER send you spam.

New tool to monitor police dispatch calls for neighborhood, via Twitter

A sample of the feed from Sept. 27

UPDATE: The Twitter data we used here via the Seattle Police Department is now featured on the front page of the New York Times. You can read their take on how this will benefit Seattle neighborhoods here.

The City of Seattle has won a number of awards for the open data set it offers to residents. Information is usually easily available via our tech savvy city government —assuming one is also tech savvy.

Now the Seattle Police Department has launched a tool that uses Twitter to disseminate information about Seattle Police dispatch calls.

There is a bit of a delay but most of the calls we have seen posted to Twitter are within one hour of the initial 911 call.

From the Tweets by Beat website:

In order to protect crime victims, officers, and the integrity of investigations, calls will display one hour after a dispatcher sends the call to an officer. The feeds also do not include information about domestic violence calls, sexual assaults, and other certain types of crimes. 

Douglas Park Cooperative has taken the information coming from the Seattle Police Department dispatch and created a custom feed for our own neighborhood that will be featured on the right column of our website.

The feed featured on DPC is for Lincoln 1 sector, the area north of 125th and east of Interstate 5.

So next time you see flashing police lights down the street all you have to do is come to our homepage to figure out what is going on. Also on our right column is a link to monitor Seattle Fire Department dispatch and yet another link to listen to a live police and fire scanner for Seattle.

Feeds for other neighborhoods can easily be monitored by going to the Tweets by Beat website and searching for a feed by address.

Fun Meet this Thursday

 

Join Lake City in a special “Fun Meet” expansion of the Lake City Farmers Market this Thursday, Sept. 13th from 3:00-6:00pm. Representatives from a wide variety of neighborhood groups will be there to answer questions, offer information, and provide fun activities too!

 

• Give input on the Pierre Visioning Project
• Learn about changes to the Lake City Community Center
• Talk with community leaders
• Free Popcorn
• Free Apple Tasting
• Bilingual Storytime
• Crafts & Games for all ages
• Win Market Bucks gift certificates to spend at the market
• Bring your bicycle helmet for a free fitting with Lake City Greenways
• There’s something for everyone!

 

It’s also apple season at the market and there’ll be apples galore. Come play a round of apple checkers. See and sample dehydrated apples from Lake City’s Emergency Hub group. Try your hand at apple printing, apple collage or sumi painting. Participate in this event and win “Market Buck” gift certificates to spend at the market!

This event funded by a Small Sparks grant from the Department of Neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Greenways effort taking shape in Lake City

Residents wrote popular routes and difficult areas for pedestrians and bicycles on a map of Lake City.

The Lake City Greenways project recently had its kickoff at local coffee shop and bakery Kaffeklatsch. About 20 neighbors gathered for a presentation and to brainstorm about how the innovative pedestrian and bicycle program could be applied to the Lake City neighborhood.

Residents listen to the presentation.

Greenways are essentially residential streets, generally running near main arterials, with low volumes of auto traffic and low speeds, where people who walk and ride bicycles are given priority over auto traffic. Streets are reconfigured with speed calming devices and pavement markings.

Greenways are a more affordable option to sidewalks, an important part of infrastructure lacking in Lake City and much of North Seattle.

According to the program, sidewalks cost from $1 million to $3 million per mile to build; Greenways typically cost $100,000 to $300,000 per mile.

More from the Seattle Greenways project:

• Greenways provide safer bicycling and pedestrian connections.  Pavement markings alert people driving to expect people walking and bicycling. Improved crossings and curb ramps make walking easier and safer.
• Greenways help people across busier streets. Improved crossings at main streets help people walking and bicycling get across streets.
• Greenways guide people along the route to get them where they are going.  Markings on the pavement and signage let you know where your Greenway goes and what’s nearby, such as parks, schools, and business districts.
• Greenways reduce auto cut-through. Speed bumps and traffic diverters can keep cars trying to avoid main streets from speeding through on neighborhood streets.
• Greenways reduce auto speeds. Speed bumps and other road treatments can help to slow automobile traffic on greenways.
• Greenways provide more "eyes on the street." More people out on the street walking and riding their bicycles makes for a safer and friendlier community.
• Where is the "green" in "Greenways?" Biking and walking can be a form of transportation that is relaxing, pleasant, and inclusive. Greenways provide easy access to open space and have many park-like functions that can be very climate-friendly. New trees, public art, rain gardens, and gardens are an integral part of evolving our streets to be pleasant places to bike and walk.

During the Lake City meeting residents mapped their walking routes, flagged difficult intersections, brainstormed possibilities, and shared information.

A street mural in Seattle

As a kickoff to the program in Lake City, planners hope to create a neighborhood street mural, a tool some Seattle neighborhoods have successfully used to calm neighborhood traffic and make drivers aware that they are driving through an active community.

Lake City Greenways organizer Janine Blaeloch said the best sign of success during the kickoff "was a lot of sentences starting with 'What if...?'"

Below is a video shown during the presentation about Portland's successful Neighborhood Greenways program.

You can learn more about Neighborhood Greenways in this publication:

Open publication - Free publishing - More bicycle

DPC Block Party, Tuesday, August 7th, all are invited!

You’re invited to the Douglass Park Block Party!

Tuesday, August 7th, from 6pm to dusk
25th Ave NE, between 127th and 130th
(see invitation below)

We will need some help this year putting our block party together. If you would like to be involved please review the list and comment below or email coordinator Lina — linarose@earthlink.net — to let us know what you can do.

Even if you can’t volunteer we hope to see you there. This is a great time to eat, laugh and get to know your neighbors. There will be plenty of kids activities and we always close it down with a campfire and s'mores!

Parade

• We need a parade leader. Preferably someone who plays a drum or other instrument to lead us along

Eating and drinking

• Chairs — the more the better
• Grills — it's good to have at least 2
• Tables — the more the better
• Drinks —juices, soda, water, tea, etc.
• Cups — preferably paper so we can dump in compost
• S'mores — Lina will take care of this
• Plates, plastic-ware - Lina will also get this

Entertainment

• Music — we would love to have a band this year - any ideas?
• Kids play stuff —Lina, Josh
• Skateboard ramp/rails - Kevin, George
• Firepit — Lina, Josh
• Name tags— meet your neighbors, remember their names
• Firewood —Josh

Set up and Clean up

• Help setting up road closed signs, tables, chairs etc (5:00 or 5:30)
•  Trash cans — the more the better
•  Labels for trash/recycle/ compost
• Someone in charger of clean up

Can you think of something else we need?


We look forward to seeing you all! Feel free to invite a neighbor to join us!

See our flyer below the jump:

Neighborhood BBQ held at Virgil Flaim Park

Neighbors gather for a BBQ at Virgil Flaim.

Community members took to Virgil Flaim Park on Friday evening for a good-ol' neighborhood BBQ. We gathered to celebrate our community and to help realize what great parks we have in our immediate vicinity.

There has been much discussion lately over behaviors regularly observed at our neighborhood parks. Some of what is observed has driven away some area residents from using the parks, prompting them to drive to other neighborhoods for recreation.

On Friday evening more than two dozen neighborhood residents gathered over the course of the evening to say hi, share some food, and utilize the park.

If you missed the first of our BBQs don't worry, we plan to do this again.

Some of the food on the grill.

People march toward Virgil Flaim from 25th Avenue NE.

Pilot program to assist neighborhood with Chronic Public Inebriates may be coming to Lake City

Deputy Seattle Mayor Darryl Smith speaks to neighborhood residents at a meeting.

Recently Deputy Seattle Mayor Darryl Smith met with members of Douglas Park Cooperative and other Lake City community members where he revealed that the City of Seattle is working on a pilot program to limit the supply of high-octane beer to chronic public inebriates. Chronic street drunks are known to be a fixture of our commercial and civic core and have long been an issue of concern for many neighbors.

Mayor Mike McGinn's Office is working with three distributors to create a voluntary plan that would prohibit sales of some alcohol products between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m. in Lake City. The products included would be fortified beers and wines, drinks known for their consumption by chronic alcoholics.

Douglas Park Cooperative has been pursuing an Alcohol Impact Area, or AIA, designation for Lake City, but the Mayor's office sees the pilot program as potentially being more successful that an AIA.

The pilot program would be enforced seven days a week but would not include bars and restaurants.

The program is still in the planning stages but could begin as early as May.

"We want these businesses to be successful in a number of ways, just not basing your whole business model on these products," Deputy Mayor Darryl Smith said of the establishments that sell these fortified products.

You can read more about the proposed program in this Seattle P-I story.

Nuisance behaviors in our neighborhood, visual proof

As Douglas Park Cooperative members do our twice-weekly walks we encounter many dangerous, disgusting and downright destructive things done by people in our community that either do not seem to have a stake in our community or do not have respect for our community —and often respect for themselves.

We have taken to documenting some of the things we encounter. These photos are a small sampling of some of the things we have seen in recent weeks. There are many, many more but we do not photo document everything. We also realize that taking pictures of chronic inebriates or drug users could lead to confrontation that we have deemed is wise to avoid.

Below is a sampling of what we regularly see. Keep in mind that we conduct two weekly litter patrols and folks at the UGM shelter also conduct one per week. Other neighborhood groups also conduct patrols and find similar things.

Likely one of the most disturbing was when we found at least four unsecured hypodermic needles in the parking lot of the Seattle Gymnastics Academy, a place that students are likely to run barefoot to their cars after class.

The focus of DPC from day one has been nuisance behaviors, not the often troubled people that are known to do them. That responsibility is more in line with what the Seattle Police Department contributes to our mission. That is why we are pursuing the Alcohol Impact Area as a small part of the complicated puzzle that will better our community.

We potentially have a great neighborhood and DPC wants to help everyone succeed in reaching their potential and overcome their struggles. However, these nuisance behaviors and their results bring down everyone.

 

Needles outside Cedar Park senior apartments

One of the dozens of hypodermic needles found in the neighborhood

A collection of empties on the street

Scene after a stabbing at the 99¢ Etc. store

Shoplifting suspects captured by camera at ACE Hardware

Elliott Bay Brewing Co. is welcomed to the neighborhood

Graffiti in front of Seattle Gymnastics Academy

Another needle in a neighbor's hedge

Shopping cart full of trash and beer cans

More vandalism at the dead end of 28th Ave NE near Seattle Gymnastics Academy

Four Loko cans in Elliot Bay Brewing doorway

Bag used for drugs

Truck vandalized with pink paint stolen from shed at Seattle Gymnastics Academy

Loitering, drinking with about 6 empties at the Chevron gas station

Warning: After this point the images become quite offensive and disgusting. Continue at your own discretion.