Update: Thanks for the comments. My apologies to anyone who perceived my intent was to condem or defend particular park communities. I’ve refined the post with your suggestions.

What is Moop?

Moop is a word I heard first on the Burning Man playa. It’s an acronym for “matter out of place” and  is used to signify all manner of misplaced things: trash, recyclables, compostables, bodily waste, leather pants  left on the playa or a burner who slept uninvited in someone else’s tent. Moop matters because it adversely affects others and often attracts more moop.

Picnic Piles on Tallboy Terrace

Dolores Park has unique, indigenous moop. If you wander about, play, eat, drink or smoke in Dolores Park as much and often as I do, you must have noticed it. The purpose of this post is to call it out and attempt to name it so that we may address it. For example, if Dolores Park had one dude always seen walking around in a tshirt but nude from the waist down, we might refer to him as a Donald Duck.

Let’s begin.

Picnic Piles

Picnic Piles are the piles of soiled napkins, paper and foil typically from Pancho Villa or Ike’s Place, beer bottles and caps that washed it down and cig butts smoked during sunset.

Occurrences of Picnic Piles are common on Hipster Hill Tallboy Terrace and Church Street bridge picnic tables.

Variations include pint flasks, beer cases, beer vomit, pizza boxes, busted bike parts and burnt Christmas trees.

An Overshare at the 18th + Dolores garden

Truth told, Tallboy Terrace revelers are super responsible measured by moop per capita, but the density of bodies is akin to a family of meercats thus meriting Picnic Pile notice.

Overshares

Often people who hate fun, art, life or themselves call it tagging or graffiti, but that lumps Overshares in with the rare and wonderful bounty of inspired street art seen on Mission District walls, alleys and sidewalks. In stark contrast, Overshares are personal expressions often in paint or marker, performed in haste and without inspiration…and self-evidently while wasted. Oversharers are that friend of yours who talks too much about nothing and everybody knows it except them.

Overshare at the storage box

Occurrences of Overshares are common on the clubhouse walls and bathrooms, the garbage/recycling bins, Church Street bridge and the storage container. Somebody overshared on the garden wall at 18th and Dolores recently.

Variations include names written in pee on the hillside weeds near the MUNI tracks.

Wrap It Up

This by no means itemizes all or even most of Dolores Park’s moop, but that’s all from me for now. More to come as revelations manifest or however that works.

What moop do you see in the park? What’s its name? Share with me + others in the comments. Cheers.

Props to Kevin Montgomery at Uptown Almanac for tips that spit-shined this post.