Nails in the Streets and Bike Lanes

Daily nail pickup

Lets start this blog with an explanation. Three maybe four years ago while walking my dog DeDe I noticed several nails in the street.

These nails were at a turn around on Miner Street South of 22nd Street next to the new marina, Cabrillo Way. Miner Street runs north and south while 22nd Street runs West to East.

Flat tire in Marina Parking Lot
Most of the nails I pickup are around that intersection of Miner and 22nd. I may have failed to mention that I live on a sailboat in San Pedro with my two dogs. San Pedro is about as far south you can get in Los Angeles.

Daily nails on top of jar lid

 At first I threw the nails in the trash but I kept finding them in the same spots. With DeDe we would walk to the beach one day and the next toward the Main Channel so our path were in opposite direction every other day.

Street Corner here

After collecting about a thousand nails in a Von's paper bag I took them to the District 15 Supervisor office in San Pedro's old city hall. Two young staff members listed to short story of the nails and then told me unless they could prove intent on the part of the person tossing the nails nothing could be done. I left them with the nails with the feeling that nothing would be done which is now the case.

I have shown the nails to the Los Angeles Fire Department, The LA County Sheriffs, several LA Port Police officers, Harbor Department Security, various Harbor Department employees, several business owners where the nails show up on a regular basis, two local news papers, Channel 5 and then 11 while a reporter was filming after a fire .



In the calendar year 2016 I posted several nail pictures on Instagram then decided to count the number of nails picked up that year, it was just a little over 2,000 nails.After that I stopped counting but didn't stop saving. When my dog got to old for longer walks we stopped. Then one day she stopped completely. So I started running in the mornings and discovered nails around Ports of Call and various other streets like Crescent Street.

Then nails started to appear at our Marina parking entrance which is Watchorn Walk. Usually they appear next to the mail box beside the office building past the Double Tree Inn on Via  Cabrillo  Marina and contine north along the street. The count can be five or six and as high as twenty.

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another sample below of a daily find

For a while this year there was a drought of nails where I would find four or five but recently the tosser changed his pattern from Miner to mostly 22nd Street. There were 52 this morning between the drive way entrance to Cabrillo Way Marina and Miner mostly on the North side of 22nd. That is where the filming production companies park their trucks and crews here. I have spoken to their security, their vans drivers (after I saw one run over several nails) and the LAPD motorcycle officers that moonlight for the studios.

We (my neighbors) have several theories about the nails and recently we have been trying to establish a time frame to see when the nails get tossed. 

My lovely daughter got me a German Shepherd puppy two days before Christmas and the pup was too young to chase nails which gave me a break. Well Happy is just a year old now and we walk between 7 to ten miles each day. Then Happy ate some people food three weeks ago and had to make a midnight visit to the bushes. Happy loves to chase feral cats and in the middle of the street he spotted one but it was not a cat but a scared little pocket dog. Happy followed it to the bushes below the Fort (we are docked east of Ft. MacArthur)

We now have a Yorkshire mix we have named Lucky. With the GSD I was able to pickup nails in the street without many problems but with Baby Dog and two leads and morning traffic you might hear a lot of cussing.

A work in Progress (To be continued)

Discursive Rambling: Nails in the Bikelanes

A short bio on picking up nails. When I started living on my sailboat my dog DeDe moved back and forth between myself and my son Dylan. My morning with the dog usually started out with a walk. Someday's we would head south to the beach about a mile away. She liked that route because of all the squirrels we would encounter. On alternate days we would go east toward the wholesale fish market and stop at the overfull parking lot where she could run on the grass. On the way back at 22nd Street and Miner Street I found several roofing nails in the intersection, picked them up and threw them in the trash containers.

DeDe taking a break

A few day later at the same intersection I saw some more nails and thought they must be falling off a truck but their wasn't any construction around . Several days later we proceeded up Miner towards the grassy area below the baseball field. To my surprise that path found me picking up more nails. This time I put the nails in my pocket and when we got back to the marina I put the nails in a plastic container. As time progressed and our dog walks continued my nail collection expanded.

DeDe riding in a dock cart

The marina manager at that time was riding his motorcycle to his office and was passing through the nail infested area each day so I showed him the nail collection and since he was concerned (most people don't give a fuck) he reported it to the Port Police. He also informed the marina east of us that borders Miner Street about the roofing nails in the street.

I continued to find nails and would take a handful to show the manager. Occasionally I would find nails on the walk to the beach and the driveway into the marina parking lot. The manager called the Port Police for a third time and then stopped calling them because they told him to stop calling.

daily pickup

When my nail collection exceeded one thousand I took a bag of nails to Joe Buscaino's (Councilmember, 15th District City of Los Angeles) office on Beacon Street where I showed the nails to Nicole Wells, Manager of City Services, after discussing the problem I left the nails with her.

After leaving the nails at the Councilmember's office I stopped saving the recovered nails but didn't stop picking them up. Why bother?

Then my dog started having problems walking any long distance. Then she stopped walking and I had to haul her around in a cart. Since I didn't have to walk the dog and thought it too strange to walk alone I started jogging, some call it running, where over time I increased the morning run to six miles. One of my paths was by the USS Iowa over to the Cruise Ship Terminal and back through Ports of Call over to the Lane Victory and then back to my boat. On that route I started finding the nails again and started putting them in my pocket.

My Vintage Bob Jackson

The nails were kept in the back of my car and if I ever saw uniforms in the parking lot I would show them my nail collection. The usual response was they were really not concerned about it.

I started marking on my monthly wall calendar the daily amounts. Some days the count was zero and someday's as high as 35. People are always leaving things they take off their boats on the bench by one marina building and one day I picked up a discarded plastic jar. Today my jar contains 1,768 nails for this year.

1768 nails this year

Picking up nails is good exercise with the bending over but can be a a royal pain in the ass if I am riding my vintage road bike with old school cleats and toe clips. My mission when riding is not to stop and pickup nails if I had not planned too. Yesterday I was going up Stephen White Drive from Cabrillo Beach headed towards Whites Point and kept seeing nails in the street. What a pain in the ass to get back in the toe clips on a hill.

Nails found when I wasn't looking for them

One of my neighbors started riding in the mornings and I rode with him for several weeks and we would ride through the parking lot of 22nd Street Landing where I noticed more nails. Now if i ride in the morning I find the restaurant parking lot with three or four nails several times a week. Who ever is doing this crap has to get off the street to toss these nails.

If I ride by Ports of Call I always find nails by the driveway of the Acapulco restaurant. These nails I pickup are shiny and been placed there recently. These nails in certain parts of my route have been placed there within the last 24 hours because I had ridden there the previous day and picked up whatever I
could find.

always find nails there

Update on nail count.

My daughter got me a German Shepherd #GSD puppy a few days before Christmas. This promptly stopped my search for nails trying to reach 2,000 before the end of the year. Also the weather has brought much needed rain which keeps me off my bike too.


My son Dylan took the dog for four days and with that extra time I went over the 2,000 mark and as of today (February 3 the new number is 2036.


A few days ago while riding through the adjacent marina parking lot I spotted nail there.

Jose our maintenance key worker asked me to get rid of my new pero. He said that I wasn't picking up nails as I was always walking the dog. Jose had two flat tires on his truck within a week recently.

This Wednesday on my return from the local grocer store I found two roofing nails in the left turn lance that is the entrance to our parking lot. Thursday, two more same  location the left turn lane for Watchorn Walk.