A Little Heart-To-Heart Talk With Mayor Rybak About The "Yellow Demons"

Photo by John Hoff

During the tree farm ceremony, I had a golden opportunity to speak to Mayor Rybak alone for a few moments, right after he went to admire the Polish woman's garden...

I had already mentioned the crime issues in the neighborhood, of course, but I said to him that I wanted to talk about another matter...a smaller matter, but quite annoying and persistent: PHONE BOOKS!!!!!!

I started to outline the issues; how the phone books are basically litter which arrives, unwelcome, on door steps. How the phone books signal which houses are vacant, even if neighbors have taken it upon themselves to pick up litter and mow the lawn every week or so. I even mentioned something I'd only begun to notice lately: the plastic bags in which the yellow demons arrive are not sealed, so the phone books still turn into sodden masses of wood pulp and the bags just become an additional source of litter. FURTHERMORE, if anybody actually WANTED a phone book, they could easily--

The mayor made a reassuring motion with his hand. It was just me and him, alone, behind my 1984 Vandura conversion van in the Polish woman's double parking space.

"You don't have to convince me," he said. "My wife has already spoken to me about this issue quite a few times." Rybak said his wife had the same issue with the constant arrival of the unwelcome phone books.

"You're the Mayor!" she said, according to Mayor Rybak. "Can't you do something?"

"Sir," I said, "I want you to know I also spoke to Council Member Hofstede about this, during National Night out. She seemed kind of open to doing something, as well."

I looked at him and sort of cocked my head.

"But CAN you do something?" I asked. His response was slow in coming as he thought for a moment, so I pressed further. "Here's how I view it, sir. If a house has obvious indications of vacancy such as condemnation notices, boarded windows and doors, seven OTHER soggy phone books piled up on the doorstep, well, then tossing another phone book on the doorstep is littering. AUTOMATICALLY, it's just littering. Leaving a phone book at a plainly vacant house is LITTERING, especially when it's so OBVIOUS the house is vacant."

Right about then, Gabe of 612 Authentic came wandering around the corner, with his video camera in hand, but not turned on.

"Gabe!" I said. "I was just talking to the Mayor about PHONE BOOKS, and he was saying--well, sir, now that my friend is here maybe you would say on camera what you said about your spouse, and how she feels about the phone books?"

He was obliging. I wasn't, after all, trying to trap him into taking a position or promising action. I was only hoping he would relate the charming little anecdote about his spouse and how she felt about the phone books. While Gabe's camera rolled, the Mayor did so, obligingly. I thanked him, profusely. I shook his hand. The Mayor was saying something about how a lot of people felt the same way about the omnipresent phone books, and perhaps something could, after all, get done about the issue.

As the Mayor left, and walked to the other side of my van back toward the tree farm, I silently pumped my arm in a motion of victory. No, not a victory over our beloved mayor who is so green he drives an electric car. Mayor Rybak was open to the issue, already looking into the issue. No, my conversation with the mayor was a small victory over the Yellow Demons, who haunt the steps of our doors, who deforest the planet even as we try to get a tree farm going in the eco-village.

Above, the photo shows 3019 6th St. N. on the day of National Night Out. The phone book companies helped us celebrate by littering every doorstep in North Minneapolis about a day or two before.