So I’ve become a believer.

This social media thing is for real.

I know, it took me a while to come around. I’m a skeptic.

But some things are just undeniable. Facebook and Twitter and the rest can no longer be ignored. At least by me.

I recognized the value of blogging early on.

But it took me a while to fully embrace social media opportunities like Facebook and Twitter.

Consider me a convert.

Frankly, it’s hard to ignore the facts.

I found this video pretty compelling and convincing as to the power and future of social media:

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SOCIAL MEDIA CAN HELP NEIGHBORS is a post from: Side Streets

Here’s how Helen Hunt Falls normally looks . . . 

Helen Hunt Falls

But lately, its received a paint job it didn’t need. 

Others call it graffiti. 

In this case, it appears to be the work of gangbangers. 

Spray paint mars the signs, rocks along the trail, timbers and around the falls itself. 

It’s an ugly stain on North Cheyenne Canon Park and the falls. 

And it is disturbing to folks who live nearby and those who travel from all over Colorado Springs and  the Pikes Peak Region to hike the canyon. 

It bothers them to think they are at risk of encountering Surenos or Chihuahuas or Maderas or Prospect Lake Barrio or Blythe Street X3 gang members when they walk, run or bike the canyon and its popular trails. 

But the signs are unmistakable. 

x 

x 

But gang graffiti, or just random forms of graffiti, are not confined to Helen Hunt Falls.

After a couple quiet years of relatively little graffiti, city parks maintenance supervisor Tim Pluemer reports an ugly bloom of the vandalism is underway.

He says it is a chronic problem at the three city skate parks.

And it is spreading to neighborhood parks from Briargate to the Broadmoor area.

No park, it seems is immune.

And it’s a shame that when budgets are so tight, the one member of the parks maintenance staff has devote two days a week simply to scrubbing away the often profane rants and taggings by graffiti vandals.

Graffiti tags of the Surenos gang, based in Southern California, mar a skate park in Colorado Springs.

Graffiti on a playground in a Colorado Springs neighborhood park.

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EVEN OUR WATERFALLS AREN’T SAFE! is a post from: Side Streets

These chickens, Moto, Nugget and Snowball, were pets raised by 11-year-old Dalton Holm and his mother, Stacey Stallwood, behind their Cheyenne Canon home.

Dalton raised them from chicks. We’re talking heat lamps, medicated chick feed and constant care until they grew feathers and could survive outdoors.

To protect them outdoors, Stacey paid her brother to build a sweet coop, fully insulated, shingled and painted, for the trio of chicks.

On Monday, they believe someone entered their fenced chicken coop and killed the hens, breaking their necks, stomping on them and even decapitating one.

The coop was fenced on all sides and even above to protect the hends.

And because the hens were not taken or eaten — only abused — the family and neighbors believe their deaths were an act of criminal mischief.

Neighbors like Leona Breaker said the children in the neighborhood are horrified by the killing.

Dalton said the hens were pets who taught him to love animals, take responsibility for their care and even how to start a business . . . he sold their eggs around the neighborhood.

Besisdes his hens, Dalton likes horses. And he likes riding motorcycles and garden tractors.

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Here’s a video of Dalton talking about the hens taken Tuesday by KRDO News Channel 13.

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CHICKENS SLAUGHTERED IN COOP A SAD LESSON TO KIDS is a post from: Side Streets

This concrete trash bin at the Colorado Department of Transportation maintenance yard on Commercial Boulevard near I-25 and South Circle Drive holds dozens of campaign signs found illegally planted along state highways.

Campaign signs, large and small, along with assorted business signs fill a concrete bin at the Colorado Department of Transportation maintenance yard.

Ever wonder where political campaign signs go to die?  

If they get placed illegally along state highways in the Colorado Springs region, the concrete trash bin in the maintenance yard of the Colorado Department of Transportation is their final resting place.  

Lots of signs — large and small – find their way in to the bin.  

Actually, it’s kind of a relief to know it is not political dirty tricksters taking hundreds of signs reported lost by various candidates for mayor and City Council.  

The folks at CDOT say they hold the signs for 30 days to give the owners a chance to reclaim them. The signs could be stored at any of six maintenance facilities scattered around El Paso and Teller counties.  

The process of reclaiming signs starts by calling CDOT at 227-3246 and leaving a message. CDOT will track down your signs and tell you where to find them.  

I found a big pile at the maintenance yard near I-25 and South Circle Drive at 2025 Commercial Boulevard.  

This maintenance yard on Commercial Boulevard is one of six the Colorado Department of Transportation maintains in El Paso and Teller counties.

Buddy Gilmore, candidate for mayor of Colorado Springs, caught a Brickman Group landscaper taking down campaign signs of his rivals in the race.

But CDOT isn’t the only group taking signs. Some are taken illegally, as mayoral candidate Buddy Gilmore discovered. 

He kept noticing signs of his opponents and City Council candidates disappearing along Briargate Parkway and surrounding streets.

So he was keeping an eye out the window of his office near the corner of Briargate and Explorer Drive. On Wednesday, a sign for Sean Paige vanished.

Mayoral candidate Buddy Gilmore snapped this photo of a Brickman Group landscaper carrying away a Sean Paige city council campaign sign.

Buddy jumped in his car and started hunting for the thief.

Soon, he came upon a landscaper from the Brickman Group carrying freshly plucked Paige signs.

Gilmore confronted the man, who said he was ordered to remove the signs, which were legally placed on city right-of-way.

Turns out the landscaper was carrying out orders of the Briargate Business Campus Owners Association, Gilmore said.

Somebody, perhaps the management company, doesn’t like signs and ordered them removed. Or stolen, in other words.

It’s not a petty crime. Gilmore said he’s lost 800 signs this campaign, at $1.50 apiece!. There were nine mayoral candidates and about 1,000 candidates for City Council. They’ve all complained of lost signs and that adds up to some real money.  

I also discovered there are sign vigilantes out there. Some folks don’t like signs of any kind cluttering the roadways. They go around and steal them, said Ken Lewis, the city code enforcement administrator. At least one vigilante has been charged with theft.

I had no idea.

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WHERE CAMPAIGN SIGNS GO TO DIE is a post from: Side Streets

Miller, 64, owns Mountain High Landscaping and Lighting. He was setting up a display at the Colorado Springs Home and Landscaping Show when a Gazette photographer snapped his picture.

Home shows are a place for homeowners to get ideas for landscaping their yards or to find someone to build a deck, patio or retaining wall. Typically, they are held in the spring and attract several thousand people in a weekend.

Gazette reader Bert Stewart attended the 2010 home show and that’s where he met Miller. He was so impressed with Miller’s display that he hired him to build a $7,000 patio at his Chipita Park home.

He paid Miller about half in advance, or $3,758, on April 17, 2010, and expected Stewart to start promptly.

Stewart said Miller showed up to design the new patio and even moved a few shovels of dirt and cut some sod for a walkway.

Then he disappeared. Stewart logged the phone call after phone call and has copies of emails he and his wife sent trying to get Miller to start work on the patio.

He told them he was sick and had excuses why he was a no-show. Then all communication stopped, Stewart said. So, on June 22, 2010, Stewart sued Miller for $3,853 — the amount of his downpayment and court costs.

Miller didn’t shown up for court and  on Aug. 31, 2010, Magistrate Judge Daniel Winograd ruled in Stewart’s favor, ordering Miller to pay.

Of course, Miller never paid.

So you can imagine the shock Stewart felt when he saw the photo of Miller in Saturday’s Gazette.

But he wasn’t the only shocked Gazette reader that day. Peggy Bohn of Colorado Springs was equally shocked. That’s because Miller did the same thing to her in 2009. For a lot more money.

Bohn said she paid Miller half in advance for a $15,000 retaining wall project in her yard. But the wall never got built. Like Stewart, Bohn sued and won a judgment.

When Miller failed to pay, she went back to court and got a default judgment. Miller promised to repay Bohn over 18 months. He gave her $100 in January 2010 and $100 in February 2010. Then the payments stopped.

Bohn and Stewart had the same reaction when they saw Miller’s photo. Bohn wanted to go down to the home show and stand there warning people to avoid hiring the landscaper. But she decided to stay home.

Stewart, however, hopped in his car, drove down and confronted Miller, demanding he pay the $3,800 he was owed. Miller said he didn’t have the cash.

Bohn and Stewart want to protect anyone else from falling victim to Miller, and suggest anyone considering hiring him or another contractor follow the advice of Carol Odell of the Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado.

Odell strongly urges everyone to check the BBB’s website and see a company’s rating. Miller’s Mountain High had an “F” rating for three complaints.

Go to the BBB’s consumer page to check the rating for a business, to search for a BBB-accredited business or file a complaint. 

She also said consumers should vigorously check references, make sure a contractor is licensed, insured and bonded and never pay 50 percent up front.

At most, give a contractor one-third. Or go to their supplier to open an account and pay directly for materials. Or pay on delivery.

A reader suggests contacting the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado, 303-757-5611, for advice when researching potential landscape contractors.

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PHOTO OF LANDSCAPER SHOCKS READERS is a post from: Side Streets

What kind of dope thinks any medical marijuana operation would throw away valuable product?

Apparently dopes with bolt cutters.

Someone has been cutting off the padlock and breaking the security bars on a Dumpster for a medical marijuana grow operation in a building near the Middle Shooks Run neighborhood.

The problem for neighbors is that the knucklehead Dumpster divers keep taking the trash bags to the nearby Shooks Run Trail to rifle the bags and dump the contents.

Neighbor Nancy Strong stumbled onto the trend a couple weeks ago as she biked the trail. As she picked up the trash, she found the name of a business, called it and learned it was a medical marijuana growing operation a few blocks away.

It seems that thieves were targeting their huge trash bin in hopes of scoring marijuana residue, buds, stems and seeds.

Nancy figured it was a one-time problem. Until a few days later when she found another big bag of trash dumped in the same spot.

This time, she called the building landlord, attorney Anthony Cross. She learned the trash bin was busted open by thieves using bolt cutters.

Nancy went home and sent out an email to the neighborhood to alert others to watch for Dumpster diving thieves.

She knew how to reach her neighbors because she’s on the board of the Middle Shooks Run Neighborhood Association.

The thieves are dopes because there’s little chance of anything usable being tossed out in the trash, said Julie Postlethwait of the medical marijuana enforcement agency with the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Postlethwait said it’s very unlikely anything of value would be found in the trash. She said growers harvest their product from the buds of marijuana plants and extract everything before tossing stems, seeds and stalks.

And rules drafted for the operation of medical marijuana facilities will require all plant waste to be put in a grinder and combined with non-usable waste, such as oil, to prevent Dumpster divers from finding anything usable.

Shooks Run Trail looking north from Pikes Peak Avenue

The rules are under review and expected to be formally adopted in a few months.

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DOPES STEALING MEDICAL MARIJUANA TRASH is a post from: Side Streets

You don’t have to burn up gallons of $3 gas to save a few nickels on each fill-up.

Let the Internet do the searching for you. It’s not hard to find the neighborhood gas station with the cheapest gas.

I did a casual search and was surprised at the results I got.

There are a number of sites, from spotter-based surveys that rely on average citizens to report prices, to more sophisticated sites that get their data from credit card transactions.

The survey at Gazette.com is a spotter-based survey.

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Perhaps the most user-friendly was MSN.com’s gas price survey site.

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Another site with valuable information was Mapquest’s gas survey site.

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Then I tried GasBuddy.com and it eventually took me to ColoradoSpringsGasPrices.com and this page:

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An impressive site was AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report: 

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Finally I tried GasPriceWatch.com but it’s prices seemed old and not as accurate.

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STOP BURNING UP DOLLARS TO SAVE DIMES is a post from: Side Streets