Kicker: Weaponized tomatoes

NICK EICHER, HOST: Toronto neighbors found a healthy way to get the city’s attention—after authorities there left a sinkhole in a neighborhood street unfilled for months.

Frustrated homeowners kept calling the city again and again to no avail. All the while, what started as a relatively small pothole kept growing wider and deeper—eventually to the point where it swallowed up a third of the street.

Here’s a neighbor talking to City News Toronto.

AUDIO: It’s a nuisance and I’m afraid that somebody will get hurt.

Finally, a few neighbors decided to make the best of the situation—by planting tomatoes in the sinkhole.

When the plants began bearing fruit, that made a nice visual for a local TV news crew. They shot it and put it on the air, and guess what happened next:

REICHARD: I’ll bet somebody noticed!

EICHER: Right, city workers dug up the tomatoes, politely replanted them in a community garden, and patched the road.

REICHARD: You can fight city hall.

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

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