WICKER PARK — Fans of the kids movie "The Sandlot" trashed a field in Wicker Park Thursday night during a Movies in the Park event, leaving beer cans, wine bottles and food scraps for squirrels and pigeons to pick over.
Regulars who came out at 6 a.m. Friday to use the park had to exercise on a basketball court instead of the garbage-strewn field. An 85-year-old man showed up and started collecting beer bottles and food wrappers from the mess. By 7 a.m., city workers arrived for the cleanup effort.
"I like to see the park clean. I lived here 60 years. The problem is, nobody helps," said Victor Alicea, 85, one of several regulars who frequents the park at 1425 N. Damen Ave.
On Thursday night, the park was packed with moviegoers to see "The Sandlot," the 1993 film about a band of kids and their sandlot baseball team.
Alicea, who lives across the street from the park, wakes up at 4 a.m. daily and walks around the park with a long pointy stick he uses to pick up trash.
Alicea was not alone in his volunteer efforts to clean the park Friday.
"This is a little downside, but everyone enjoyed the movie last night," said Willy Slater.
Slater hangs out in the park every day with a group of men that formerly held court at the chess tables, but they were removed last year and reinstalled in Humboldt Park.
Pointing to an empty wine bottle on the ground, Slater said it's unfair that police "don't bother the people who drink during the movies" but have issues with Slater's friends.
"I don't drink, but some of the guys I hang with do, but the police bother them [about drinking]," Slater said.
Drinking is not allowed in the park, including during the citywide Movies in the Park series.
Nicole Pavlovic was among a group of 20 people exercising with Five Star Fitness Bootcamp, which showed up at 6 a.m.
Pavlovic said the trash was "totally not expected."
"The birds are pretty gross," she said, adding that the boot camp group usually exercises in the field but they worked out on the basketball court instead since "the field is gross."
Presented by the Chicago Park District, "The Sandlot" was sponsored by The Wormhole Coffee Shop at 1462 N. Milwaukee Ave., which kicked in money to support the summer movie season.
Upon being informed of the trash by a reporter, Wormhole Coffee's owner Travis Schaffner said he is "slightly perturbed."
"Next one, we will pitch in and have at least a couple bodies there to make sure it isn't a nasty pit," Schaffner said.
Doug Wood, secretary of the Wicker Park Advisory Council, praised The Wormhole for being a sponsor of the movies for the last three summers and blamed the trash on a shortage of garbage cans.
"When people come to events they are incredibly respectful of the cans. The reason the park looks like that is a shortage of garbage cans. That [mess] is a direct result of there being no garbage cans," Wood said.
Wood said the problem is not unique to Wicker Park.
"This happens in every park after movies," Wood said.
Judging by the the takeout bags emblazoned with Big Star and Native Foods logos, Movies in the Park is a boon to the local economy.
Marvin Pierce, a night-shift worker at the 7-Eleven across from the park said, "The whole store was discombobulated" when he arrived to work at 11 p.m. Thursday.
"Nothing was done; the floor was not mopped, and lines were almost out the door. I was wondering what was going on," Pierce said.
By 6:30 a.m., Alicea and Slater had collected several bags of trash which they'd stacked next to an overflowing garbage can near the park's fountain.
Alicea decided to keep one treasure he found during the cleanup: a monkey hand puppet.
"I am going to wash this and give it to a little child at my church," Alicea said.
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