This is a tree; this is a bicycle basket.

WHY DO PEOPLE THINK MY BIKE BASKET IS A GARBAGE CAN?

This 'disturbing trend', as they say in mediaspeak, began slowly. It happened occasionally and I thought it was the result of leaving it parked overnight or a day or two at a U-bahn station. Some dumb kid noticed my forlorn bike standing there one too many times and thought, “Oh that must be there especially for me so I don't have to look around for a Müllheimer, move my fat Burger King ass down the street any further!

But no! Soon, it appeared, or should I more accurately say, garbage appeared in my rectangle black wire, rusting-out, not-so-fest-attached-to-the-back basket at a predictable rate, like let's say, every time I left it somewhere in Kreuzberg, Mitte, or Neuköln, for more than thirty minutes! Empty bottles, cans, paper cups, paper bags, currywurst plates and plastic utensils were the Top of the Pops. “I'll just pop it in there.”

I'm thinking of hanging a sign that says: Kein Leer Gut!

Here's the 64 million dollar question: Are these people well meaning (they don't litter the street) but brain-damaged (the shape of a small bike basket is confused with the form of large garbage bin), or are they just plain aggressive? .

Or is this ascribing too much wattage to their brains at all? Could my personal outrage be ludicrous? On a planet that is choking itself to death on carbon waste faster than I can say, “I'd like it my way,”
what should I expect oder?

A business on my street planted a hopeful little garden around the base of a tree opposite their cute Kinderdesignladen. A low fence bordered the plot to discourage dog toiletten, but soon their garden looked just like my bike basket but worse. They posted a sign in German that began, “This is a tree...”