Am I the baddest mo-fo, low-down, around this town?
This gave me a good chuckle on the way to the metro this morning. But to the dude handing out the DC Examiner free daily at Columbia Heights… ease up! I know you’re dressed better than the guy handing out Express. I see your warm and friendly smile and I see you detach from whatever conversation you’re having to prepare to stand in my way and offer me one. I even see your lips moving in what I can only assume is a greeting and perhaps a pitch, problem is… I can’t hear you. (Thank you Shure headphones!)
Express has pretty much always “owned” that corner in the morning. The Examiner had a guy out for a little while, but maybe they lost interest or our area wasn’t considered part of their demographic before it got all gentri-frilly-fied up. When I worked at L’Enfant Plaza, I would get accosted coming off the escalator by people handing out the free dailies (which I already had one of by then) and lovely Asian women handing out menus, the occasional federal worker trying to rally for a free event, and even the odd caring & concerned student trying to sign me up for a cause.
The direction of both publications has changed a bit in recent times, and while I know that Examiner definitely feels more DC focused where Express feels more fun, I’m mainly reading Express for the inside front cover, the Blog Log–way to go Liz and lachochran!–maybe the Entertainment section, and the Comics/Sudoku page at the back. If I finish the puzzle during the day, then I’ll pick up my own Examiner on the way home, though more often than not, I’ll grab The Onion instead.
Perhaps it’s the complete lack of external sound that the new headphones provide, but when I smile and say/mouth “no thank you” to the guy, that should be the sign to leave me alone. Instead I see a pleading face and lips moving in what appears to be a beseeching treatise expounding the benefits of his publication. Probably nothing like what’s actually going on, but within my world of sound-isolation… that’s what I like to think. 🙂
The dailies vying for your attention remind me of those malls where the food court installations give out free samples, and they compete by shouting louder and getting more in your way. BARBECUE CHICKEN?! JERK CHICKEN?! It’s always chicken.
Oh, and thanks! I wouldn’t have known otherwise! Ironically this morning the Express guy totally missed me.
I loved Mitch Hedberg’s line about people handing out stuff on the street:
“It’s like they’re saying, ‘Here, YOU throw this away.'”
The thing that cracks me up is when the Express person still tries to give me a copy, even though they can see that I’m holding a full copy of the Post in my hands.
Thanks for the shout out. 🙂 I’ve no idea why they picked that particular quote from my blog–I sometimes wonder if they have a bot that scans for snippets that fit a certain length– but at least I can say I’ve been published by The Washington Post! 😆
And, hey, it’s your world, you think anything you want!