Rubble, Rubble, Toil, and Trouble

The city's patience ran out last September, when the commissioner of environment declared Giglio's yard a health emergency, citing its "noxious" weeds and potential for rodents. This triggered a visit to the yard by city workers, who arrived with a police escort, chain saws, and a large front-end loader. When they finished, Giglio was in jail. All that remained of his yard was dirt, broken glass, and tree stumps.

The decimation of Giglio's yard has become a rallying point for pagans locally and nationally, who are convinced that the city acted unfairly by ignoring his religious beliefs. As a result, they are organizing, threatening to file a civil lawsuit against the city, charging it with the destruction of property. And they vow that the yard, like the cycle of life, will be reborn.

A look behind Giglio's once-impenetrable wall of weeds reveals a thriving subculture, part of a larger alternative religious network with its own set of values and beliefs. That value system lies so far outside the mainstream, in a close urban setting it seems destined to clash with established political and social constructs. In this case, the collision has inspired extreme behavior on both sides, creating an absurdist drama playing out on what has become one of the most desirable pieces of real estate in Tremont.

Ground Zero
On the morning of September 1, 1998, Frank Giglio awoke to the violent barking of Merlin, his large white German shepherd chained to a pole in the side yard.

Giglio rarely reacted to Merlin's barking, which was usually nothing more than the animal's territorial taunts directed at travelers on busy West 14th Street. But this time, Merlin's cries sounded different, more agitated and constant. Giglio rolled off his mattress and hurried to the front door. Before stepping outside, he removed the single-bladed ax wedged between the door and the floor for security.

Standing on his porch with the ax at his side, Giglio could hardly believe the scene unfolding before his eyes.

A caravan of city vehicles, including large trucks and a police car, lined the street in front of his property. City officials and workers, one holding a chain saw, stood by as a large front-end loader, similar to the ones used to scrape virgin land before new highways are laid, moved slowly toward the flimsy wire fence demarcating his property line.

A less formidable crew had made a similar advance two weeks earlier, retreating when Giglio chased them off his property. This time, however, police officers were on hand to see that city workers finished their assignment. Giglio headed for the fence to stop them, first embedding his ax in the ground.

He was met by two police officers, who presented him with the work order issued by the city's commissioner of environment declaring his yard a health emergency and giving legal notice to clear the property. City inspectors had been trying for five years to get Giglio to cut the grass and weeds, some in excess of six feet tall, in his front and side yards.

The city had also come to remove what it characterized as junk strewn about Giglio's yard. An incomplete city inventory of the debris included roofing materials, glass bottles, fencing material, plastic planters, dead plants, boxes, cleaned and soiled kitty litter boxes, rusted metal and tools, a broken dresser and table, tangled Christmas lights, screen frames, a non-working refrigerator, baskets, glass block, bricks, car parts, an old radio, bikes and bike parts, and a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle.

Junkyard or sacred garden, the yard represented a decade of work to Giglio, who was not about to let the city destroy it. Standing toe-to-toe with the officers, he refused to budge. To help make his point, he unchained Merlin and stood in front of the city workers and the front-end loader.

"You are not coming on my property," Giglio declared, moving toward the police officers with an angry dog straining at the leash.

The policemen reacted quickly, spraying Merlin and Giglio with a pepper-based chemical. Both man and dog turned and ran. Giglio was stopped, placed in handcuffs, and taken to the Second District Police Station. Merlin was captured and taken to the kennel.

Free to work, city crews plowed under the high weeds, clearing the yard of topsoil in the process. They also attacked the trees, cutting down the ones standing on the tree lawn as well as those in the front and side yards--an unusually severe move, considering it was the weeds they were after. The few trees left standing had their lower branches sheared off.

In the course of the military-style assault, the front-end loader crushed Giglio's Beetle, smashing it against a tree. It knocked over the trash can of blue Arizona Iced Tea bottles that Giglio was saving to build a pyramid honoring an Egyptian goddess. What bottles weren't scooped up by the front-end loader were crushed into the ground.

As the chain saws snarled and roared, area residents gathered on the sidewalk and applauded.