Category: default || By officerjim

Over the years I’ve come to be something of a newspaper junkie. I suppose my addiction began in college. I discovered a newsstand in downtown Pastureville that carried a host of out-of-town papers, including but not limited to: The (Baltimore) Sun, The Washington Post, the (Harrisburg) Patriot-News, the major New York papers, and a variety of local papers from around this great commonwealth. This was something of a shock to me, since Pastureville was quite literally smack in the middle of nowhere. But I had developed a routine of visiting one of the downtown diners at some point either before or after my morning classes (and admittedly during a class on occasion) and since I sometimes found myself dining alone, I decided that I would rather kill some time reading as opposed to staring at traffic on College Avenue.

I came to appreciate the different views on different national subjects, and even liked reading about stories that could only be of local interest. Even if I had never been to Baltimore (I’ve since visited Charm City; kind of like Pittsburgh with a seaport) I nevertheless read the local page and the police blotter like I was a native. Upon returning to Our Fair City, I found that I could still feed my craving, even if it required a trip into that other big city in Allegheny County (no, no, not Duquesne). Since I travel there to work anyway, it’s no big deal to grab a few papers.

The problem is that I find myself spending $3 or $4 a day on newspapers, and that’s in addition to The Daily News and Post-Gazette (it’s even more on Sundays). Not that I begrudge the newsstand marking up the price; I would assume that there are shipping or mailing charges associated with delivering a Washington Post two states away from it’s intended market. What makes me scratch my head (other than dandruff) is that very often the same three papers bought at the same newsstand on consecutive days will have a different total price. Sometimes it’s even the same clerk!

I attribute this to the fact that every time I plunk my papers down on the counter, the clerk usually has to call out to someone else behind the counter. “Uh, Charlie, how much is the Philadelphia Inquirer?” I want to shout “A buck and a quarter, just like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that!” I don’t, though, because sometimes the clerk simply looks at the “DAILY 50 CENTS” (75 cents in some locations outside the metropolitan area, according to the “Inky”) and rings up $0.50 on the register. (I make out even better on the Sunday editions, which can go for around $3 per paper, unless the clerk is lazy and only charges the $1.50 face value.)

My quandary, therefore, is this: am I being dishonest? After all, I know that the newsstand charges more for these papers. Is this not akin to “theft of services” or “theft by deception?” Should I drive myself down to Allegheny County Jail and book myself in? Or should the newsstands simply tape a notecard with the prices of the different papers next to the darn cash register?

I have one other question. Just who the heck buys all those porno mags?? I mean, geez, there’re racks and racks of ‘em! (Uh, no pun intended.)