Oscar the Grouch would be quite happy in Boston these days. Boston police ordered the city to remove trash barrels from 30 downtown streets, including places like Beacon Hill, Back Bay, and the Theatre District. The result?

''That's kind of weird," Donald Contois said, as he crumpled up a 7-Eleven taquito wrapper and went to discard it in an overflowing frame near the corner of Mount Vernon and Charles streets yesterday afternoon. He was working a construction job around the corner and had been busy taking down scaffolding, he said, ''so it would look pretty for the convention."

Pretty it wasn't on Beacon Hill yesterday. Under blooming window boxes and faux gaslights on the hill's quaint, tony main streets, Starbucks Coffee cups and cigarette butts toppled out of the trash can frames onto narrow brick sidewalks. Over the weekend, city workers began removing public trash cans on much of Charles and Cambridge streets. By yesterday afternoon, complaints flooded the local neighborhood association, and many business owners fumed as they watched the trash pile up outside their stores.

''Now, it's a mess," lamented Alex Marder, owner of Simmons Liquors on Cambridge Street, where an overflowing trash can frame stood a few feet from a planter he had recently filled with purple and pink flowers. ''People throw out here, they throw out there, they don't care!" [Boston Globe]

It is starting to look like every security measure is just stuff they happen to think of off the top of their head. Next up will be backpacks (unless they're made of clear plastic), soda cans (plastic bottles okay), and iPods.