Just Plain Weird (But In a Nice Way) Dept.: Mr. Trash Wheel Conquers Baltimore

The first thing she decided was that the 15-foot long, garbage-eating steampunk river cleaner would have a cheesily well-developed sense of humor.

“As soon as I started making snake puns, you had 20 other followers that were making hilarious other snake jokes,” she explains.  “So it became really great that way.”

Stegman continues to infuse Mr. Trash Wheel with her own “nerdom and geekdom,” which has endeared him to fans around the city.  He loves “Star Wars.”  He makes “Lord of the Rings” fan art.  He writes “Choose Your Own [image error] Adventure” novels and has spent hours answering questions on Reddit.  Occasionally, he participates in local events.

The “she” is Robyn Stegman, the official voice of Baltimore’s “Mr Trash Wheel,” a fifteen-foot long solar-powered device built to help clean trash out of Baltimore’s Jones Falls River.  And snake puns refer to an incident involving an escaped ball python found, having climbed up its conveyor belt, wrapped around a control box on Mr. Trash Wheel.  Baltimoreans loved it (well, most of them anyway).

It is what it is.  The article’s full title, by Eric March, is “2 Googly Eyes and a Dream:  How Mr. Trash Wheel Went Viral and Conquered Baltimore” and can be found on UPWORTHY.COM.  But what a neat idea!  And a happy story for environmental protection mavens as November ebbs and we enter the season of coming Christmas.

To read it for yourself press here.