Back in July.
  • Back in July.
Back in July, I came home to find this ugly, unwanted stack of phone books in my building foyer, and after waiting a few days to make sure they were exactly as ugly and unwanted as I presumed, I dragged them down to city hall, where I dumped them inside Council Member Mike O'Brien's office. (At his request!)

I have to admit that after that very satisfying day, I lost track of exactly what was going on with O'Brien's moves to keep unwanted phone books out of Seattle buildings and homes. I have an e-mail in to his office for an update. But this weekend both myself and Paul Constant (who lives in a different building than me) came home to another unwelcome phone book delivery ploy.

Over the weekend.
  • Over the weekend.

This time, instead of dropping a stack of unwanted books in the building foyer, some company delivered individual bags of unwanted books to every single door in the building. "I feel like I'm being stalked," Constant says. "What I want to know is who the fuck let them in the building? Did they break in?"

And what I want to know is: In addition to pursuing opt-out policies, can O'Brien strengthen the city's laws against entering a building without permission of its owner in order to deliver a bunch of straight-to-the-recycling-bin junk? It should be a prosecutable offense. A few convictions and hefty fines would stop this kind of unwanted delivery pretty quickly.