It’s been there for as long as I can remember right on the corner of Brooklyn (Cesar Chavez) and Soto. I notice it every time I pass by it and shortly reflect on its decrepit conditions. However today being the Fourth of July I couldn’t help noticing some irony.

 

On a day when the families are celebrating by going to the beach or having a bbq, it’s easy to forget those who came before us. Passing by it so often, I’ve gotten use to it being the way it is, but one days like today I realize that I walked passed it with a blind eye for the last time. This post may be the first step into one day getting this memorial site up to the standards and condition it needs to be in. The more people that know about it the better. 

Located behind a pay less and a clothing store, this memorial has been used exclusively for housing stores dumpsters. Its conditions vary from time to time, but there’s always trash on the floor, fallen branches and other miscellaneous objects from the stores. 

While I was there taking pictures two men walked up to the entrance and walked inside. They noticed I was taking pictures and read the plaque on the wall. They own one of the clothing stores in the front and have been there for more than five years. In all that time, they never knew or realized that their backlot was a vietnam memorial site. They said that their landlord never told anything about it and up until that moment they didn’t even cared. 

During the short conversation we had, they asked me why I was taking pictures. I told them that I was going to post them on a website for others to see the horrible condition the site is in. They agreed with me that it needed to be cleaned up and that it should be stopped being used as a place to keep garbage. At that very moment one of the men realized and said laughing that if they fix up the site, the stores wont have any place for their garbage anymore.