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DEAR VICE - CRACKHEADS ARE WEARING MY CLOTHES

Dear Vice,
So I had a clean out and filled a couple of bin liners with old clothes that I never wear and will never wear again. I carried the bags to the local charity shop only to find it closed. There were numerous posters in the window screaming at me not to leave bags outside the shop because they would get ripped open by crackheads and flung across the pavement. Signs reading DONATE DON'T DUMP warned that anyone caught leaving bags would face a ¬£20,000 fine and a jail sentence for flytipping. However, having ferried these heavy sacks over 20 blocks to the shop, NO WAY was I about to carry them home again. So, sheepishly, I dropped them by the side entrance and skulked away. Doing a good deed had ended up making me a criminal. I made the civic-minded effort to take the bags to Oxfam, but now I'm breaking the law on CCTV, I'm bankrupt and I'm going to jail.  I didn't sleep that night. Racked by shame, paranoia and guilt, I went back to the scene of the crime early the next morning. It looked like this…

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It's only after I got home and looked at the photo that I saw how, next to the messy detritus, someone had written in chalk: I HATE MY CLOTHES. No joke.

Now, I don't know if the global economic downturn has anything to do with it - even the crackheads are feeling the credit crunch - but this sight is a saddeningly familiar for many Londoners, with rubbish bags across the city being regularly ransacked.

The bins outside my own apartment block are ripped open and rifled through at least twice a week by my own neighbourhood addicts. The raggy debris of their raids is left strewn across the street. Below's a photo of the two leading offenders. I told them to fuck off but they don't give a shit. The police didn't give a shit either when I called them. What am I supposed to do? Go American Psycho on them?

Who is throwing away all these clothes? Are the crackheads selling them? And who buys apparel from a crackhead? All I know is that is that the guy begging by the ATM is wearing my old shoes and it's weirding me out.

TOM ANON
London