...without another stolen paper! i've spent nearly every sunday morning since january (minus the weekends we've been away) dealing with some part of this ongoing saga. last month, i went so far as to save the paper from the prior week, get up at 6 in the morning and put it out there as a decoy for the current week's paper. by 9 am, it was gone. i got my paper that week and for the following three weeks, but since then, the thief has come back out of his/her hole.
we contemplated repeating the old-paper routine, installing cameras, just getting up at 7 am to go down and get it...but decided instead to give the delivery person the key to the building so he could leave it inside. that should solve it, right? because surely it's some yuppie walking by on the way to dolores park who has no moral compunctions about throwing person X's paper into the stroller because where the hell does one get the sunday times in san francisco? certainly not on any corner near the park. and why pay $5 when i can just swipe someone else's and get it for free?!?
surely giving the key to the delivery person would throw a wrench in this person's sunday morning routine.
not so when the culprit lives in your building!!!
sean left a note above the mailboxes with more than a few of the sentences written in ALL CAPS. i wanted to post an addendum in the form of a stickie with 1-800-NYTIMES IF YOU LIKE IT SO MUCH GET YOUR OWN DAMN SUBSCRIPTION but sean thought that would detract from his original message.
so instead i brushed my teeth went a-knocking. i went upstairs (immediate neighbors are so nice and, hence, exempt for now), directly to number 4. it sounded like babies and smelled like breakfast. i knocked, then knocked again. "it's a robber!" a girl squealed. "don't let him in!" a man with a moppy head of curly hair answered. he was wearing an apron and carrying a spatula.
"yeah we don't get up early enough around here to steal your paper. i used to get the chronicle, too, but stopped getting it for that very reason."
the chronicle, i thought. time to knock elsewhere.
number 6 was quiet. i knocked a few times, no answer.
up another flght of stairs to number 7. their shoes are outside and a quilted number "7" hangs above the doorbell. healthy plants frame the doorway. these are the hippies who moved in last fall. a young couple who seem sweet and love-loving but who left the common area littered with junk (a tricycle and a lot of bubble wrap) upon moving in. their stealing my new york times could be yet another irreconcilable part of their personalities.
but it is difficult to accuse a bearded guy wearing hemp pants of stealing. i mulled it over until i heard some rustling. it was probably from number 8 down the hall, but still, i hurried back downstairs.
