Arturo Medina and his homeless comrades pulled up chairs on a stretch of 13th Avenue, where they could sit and watch the world go by. It wasn’t the best view in Oakland, where vistas are as diverse as the people: Up and down the street were garbage bins and bags, which have sat uncollected for nearly two weeks, ripening under the summer sun.

“Yesterday, there was old meat,” said Medina, an out-of-work truck driver with a Winnie-the-Pooh baseball cap. “It started smelling.”

San Jose residents dodged a distasteful summer when the city’s recycling hauler and the Teamsters averted a work stoppage Thursday. East Bay residents haven’t been so lucky.

They are enduring a garbage showdown between the area’s waste hauler and workers driving the garbage trucks and operating the equipment.

Amid contract talks, Waste Management of Alameda County locked out its Teamsters Local 70 on July 2, and the replacement crew has been slowly learning the routes that cover 200,000 homes and 9,000 businesses in 10 cities. On an average day, Waste Management picks up 4.48 million pounds of trash and weeds – the equivalent of five 747 planes.

Though garbage has been increasingly picked up as the weeks crept by, it’s unclear why collection has been so scattershot – one block being serviced and the next untouched. And in some neighborhoods, garbage was left behind while subcontractors picked up the gray recycling bins.

`Go back and catch up’

“We’re trying to go back and catch up what we’ve missed,” said Monica Devincenzi, the company’s municipal relations manager.

The company’s area has a population of about 800,000 people. A significant portion is Oakland: 85,000 of Waste Management’s 200,000 residential customers.

Judging by their garbage – which still lined some sidewalks Saturday despite the company’s boast earlier in the week that it had resumed normal service – they are people who sip Capri Suns and lunch on instant ramen; they toss trash into their pink Chinatown grocery bags and gnaw short ribs down to the bone. Or perhaps the feasting ants took care of any extraneous scraps.

In addition to the ants, there are flies, drawn to the ripped and leaking bags. And, to Yvette Gross’ dismay, there are maggots.

“It’s gross. Ahhhh,” said Gross, who lives on 11th Avenue and finally had her garbage picked up Saturday morning, instead of the normal Friday schedule. Though the bags were gone, the critters that bred over the past weeks forced her to spend her afternoon scrubbing out the brown bins with a hose, a broom and a big bottle of bleach, which added a harsh top note to the neighborhood’s already funky aroma.

“As soon as I’m finished, I’m taking a very hot, hot shower with tons of soap,” Gross said. “I feel horrible. I hope they never do this again.”

Gross has avoided the outdoors this month. The breezes typically floating from the bay now carry a light whiff of garbage, like a woman brushing past with strange perfume. It’s not oppressive, but the constant scent pinches her chest, making it hard to breathe.

People are using different coping strategies. At some homes, towers of trash bags sprout from the bins, testing gravity. Others prefer a horizontal approach, lining the curb with bins, cardboard boxes and oversize-shopping bags all brimming with the detritus of modern life.

Signs everywhere

The sidewalk is littered with items that have escaped their containers: Q-tips, yellow Foster Farms styrofoam, grape stems with one or two purple orbs still hanging on.

On East 15th Avenue, Richard Chen kept mashing the bags deep into his bin, so the lid stayed on snug. He has extra trash bags in his yard, by the pink hydrangeas. He won’t put naked trash bags on the curb, worried about offending his neighbors on this modest street with tidy lawns.

“It’s not beauty,” the chef said. Some have unloaded their garbage at the city parks, putting it into the municipal cans. Others haven’t even made that questionable effort, simply abandoning their bulging bags near vacant lots.

“They must hurry with the decision,” he said of the labor negotiations. “Let the street be clean.”

No further negotiations were scheduled for the weekend, though Oakland has sued Waste Management for breach of contract, calling the festering situation a public nuisance.

Reenie Brown simply rolled her eyes and blew a raspberry when asked about the growing garbage. She also lives on East 15th Avenue, where just one block over people have had their garbage removed.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, as she tried to start her sputtering car. “When we hear a truck, we get excited. But it’s always for someone else.”

Contact Kim Vo at kvo@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5719.