Alliance Metals is a recycling plant located a few blocks from my old loft in West Oakland. They recycle everything… plastic, glass, & aluminum of course. But also, steel, brass, copper, and more. They pay cash for these items.

The folks you see pushing shopping carts full of bottles and cans through West Oakland, or riding bicycles laden with huge black garbage bags full of recyclables, are undoubtedly making their way to Alliance. And when boarded up houses get raided for plumbing and copper wires, you can bet your crack pipe the goods were carted down to Alliance for a pocketful of change, which is exactly what happened to the house across the street from me.

So I have mixed feelings about this place… The clankety-clank of shopping carts up and down my street at all hours of day and night. Garbage strewn about the neighborhood as scavengers dig for bottles and cans. People aggressively trying to break into our parking lot to steal our recyclables.

On the other hand, the center does provide a means of income for those who seemingly have no other means. Unfortunately, many of those people take their hard-earned cash and promptly smoke it or shoot it, leaving a trail of associated unpleasantries throughout the adjacent residential blocks. sigh.

In any case, Alliance has some pretty awesome metal sculptures fabricated out of junk, stationed in front…