AAN Association of Alternative Newsmedia

Serial Vandal Targeting Alt-Weekly Newsracks in Seattle

march 15, 2011 01:29 pm

THE NEXT VICTIM??

A Seattle man who claims that alt-weeklies are "pushing perversion on a public street" is taking it upon himself to personally "inconvenience" the circulation managers of Seattle Weekly and The Stranger.

Seattle Weekly claims that Marty McDermott has been flipping over their newspaper boxes, hiding all of the issues, and carrying out other acts of mayhem:

"It's been going on for about six months now," [circulation manager Jay] Kraus says."I'll go out there and every single one of our boxes from 8th and Madison to 11th East and Madison--about 15 boxes--are trashed. There's garbage in there, he takes our papers out and hides them or puts The Stranger's papers in ours, or vice-versa. I'd say it costs me about an hour a day cleaning it up each time it happens."

Kraus says he just wants the guy to quit making his job suck.

The Weekly's Curtis Cartier speculates that McDermott might have taken issue with being described as "a self-identified hobo with a straggly length of beard and just a couple surviving teeth," in an August feature story.

McDermott was twice caught in the act by The Stranger's circulation manager Kevin Shurtluff, who videotaped one of those encounters and reported the matter to the police.

McDermott claims that he "doesn't take the newspapers or destroy them, he just inconveniences them."

View full article at Seattle Weekly