Pleasant View Disrupts Lowell Bum Ecosystem

Much like forest critters flee the grip of the treeclearing chainsaw, the bums and stoners of Lowell have been losing their natural habitat too.


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Hidden behind those trees is a sharp drop and a land of mystery which may never come again. It's been months since the trees went missing at the north side bridge at University Ave., but it hasn't been long enough for us to forget its former treasures. I generally go by the rule that if it's still in Google Maps, it still exists...

But for the stoners and hobos who called these trees home, wishing won't bring this forest of dreams back.

Courtesy of Gerry Nutter

Ahh... you can smell the grass now as you walk along the river in the new jeans you just stole from the Salvation Army dumpster; because they forgot to lock it.

Maybe your pink, training wheels bicycle is a hundred yards behind you at the side of the road. You borrowed it from that little girl who screamed as you rode away. I mean, it was sitting on the front lawn. You're a Lowell bum and this is the way things are.

Don't worry about that, you have fishing to do. The fishing rod is broken and duct-taped in 3 places and the hook would give you instant tetanus, but you need to eat, and the mercury filled fish of the Merrimack are looking pretty acceptable right now.

The University is in full swing above you, and every once in awhile a few longhaired cannabis smokers mosey down and squat in the trees next to you.

Anyone who has been at the University for more than a year and who has walked across this bridge at night knows the thick smell of pot that would waft up from the trees below on the North campus side of the bridge. If you ventured to see where it was coming from, you would see modest little dirt paths leading from the street corner and sharply downward into the brush.

Beer bottles, used condoms, the homeless and other Lowell horrors made their home in that little 200'x50' section of woods.

But they were our horrors.