friday . may . twenty five . two thousand one no time. moving, working, panicking. get off my ass, dude. seriously. here, read this entry from the on-line journal of ben. (he's my dunk the mayor cohort and my new hero.) Saturday, May 19, 2001 We hit the University District street fair today -- the first street fair of the summer. I think we took in about 400 signatures, which isn't too shabby. We got harrassed by some Seattle PI worker earlier in the day. Our "base" was the batch of newspaper boxes just south of 45th and University. We had our bags of clipboards on the ground in front of the boxes, along with a coat or two. Along rolls a PI worker -- one of those people that gives the paper away free and tries to get you to sign up a subscription -- and he asks if we could do him a favor and move our stuff so he can put his table there. "No, we're using that space," I say to him. "You just got some bags there. I need to set up a table," he responds. "Well that's too bad," I say. "Come on! Move your shit. You're not supposed to put your coat on the ground." I'm a bit taken aback. Then I remember, oh ya, one person just has to give us shit every time. I go into shit-giving-person-response mode. "Excuse me. You're gonna have to go somewhere else. Do you even have a permit for that table?" "I got a business license. You need to move your shit." "Excuse me! Sir! Excuse me! You are reflecting very poorly upon the business you represent! Please stop!" "Move your god damn shit. You're not using that space." "Please stop harrassing us! The Seattle PI is harrassing us!" "Shut the fuck up. If you don't move your shit I'm gonna fucking step on it." This went on for about 30 seconds or so, which is a long time when being accosted by some psychotic, testosterone-laden dumbfuck. With his increasingly threatening presence, Melysa, Tim and I all got louder in our opposition to him. "THE SEATTLE PI IS HARRASSING US! DO NOT READ THE SEATTLE PI BECAUSE THEY ARE HARRASSING US! THE MAN FROM THE POST-INTELLIGENCER IS THREATENING US WITH PHYSICAL VIOLENCE! HELP! PLEASE STOP THE MAN FROM THE SEATTLE PI! HE IS HARRASSING US! PLEASE STOP THREATENING US, SIR!" Finally, the dumbshit's coworker convinced him that they'd better just go down the street. A bit later, when the guy walked by, Melysa says cheerfully, "Excuse me sir, are you a Seattle voter?" To which he spit a big phlegm-ball on the sidewalk. Then we all laughed at him. And with our shit-giving person out of the way, we enjoyed the rest of the day. <snip> Oh jeez, speaking of giant pictures of the front of local papers, the North Seattle Herald printed their interview with me, and they stuck a gimungous photo of me on the front page. To be axact, it's 5.5 by 7.5 inches vertical. Apparantly, it appeared in the Capital Hill Times as well, which is one benefit of having a community newspaper monopoly in town. Check out some selected quotes from the interview: "To get their attention while they're walking down the street, you have to say, 'Do you want to see the mayor in a dunk tank?' And they're like, 'Oh yes!' If you say, 'Would you like freedom of speech,' they'll walk right by you like you're some politcal kook." "We haven't gone over the legalities of it, because, frankly, we're not going to change it." "We're also encouraging people, if they're so inclined, to get stoned before they go out and get signatures." She asked if I was sure I wanted to say that on the record. "Oh, definately! Rather than bringing up pot-smoking Californians to gather signatures, we decided to keep it in-state and just encourage our signature gatherers to get stoned. Most ballot initiatives, you don't want people smoking pot because they'd say that's a bad image to promote. For us, that's kind of a good image because we want our people out there laughing, telling really dumb jokes. We think its really indicative of our campaign." -fin-