Nob Hill is one of the most prestigious addresses in San Francisco. Their little local magazine is called "The Nob Hill Gazette" and has the byline "Nob Hill - an attitude, not an address". Unfortunately, they have been distributing it free to a few dozen people each month, and one of them is Wiley Hoag. He finally got fed up and sent them this email:
For years and years I have had the Nob Hill Gazette
unceremoniously dumped on my front doorstep without my asking. I have
called, begged, cajoled, and pleaded to be taken off your circulation list to
no avail. Like clockwork, NHG keeps appearing, in spite of the assurances
of whomever I get on the phone that they will surely discontinue my unpaid
subscription. It goes way for a month or two, but then comes back, like
an old girlfriend or an unwanted social disease.
I cannot say that I have never found a good use for your rag
– one day when I was planning to go to the fish market, I brought it along, and
its large page size was perfect for wrapping small fish. However, most of
the time I make the best of a bad situation, simply recycling it and hoping
that it will not make the workers at the pulping plant sick.
I was going to say that I have never once read one of your
articles in the decades that the NHG has cursed me, but that’s not true.
I did scan the pictures in this month’s issue on the Opera Gala, and I will
tell you frankly that I would hit Barbara Brookins-Schneider in a heartbeat
(those hyphenated last names drive me mad with desire). I also thought
briefly about Vanessa Getty, but she’s a bit young for me and I can’t stand the
trash that her father composes and calls music.
Anyway, I have a solution that will work best for all of us:
make me a paid subscriber. Then I won’t pay my bill, and you can
discontinue my subscription. Voila!
Now I know that, according to your front page, Nob Hill “is
an attitude, not an address.” That’s probably true, but for many of us,
it’s an attitude that we can do without. As you will see at the end of
this email, I live in Piedmont, which – while not Nob Hill – is not exactly
chopped liver. The main difference is that in Piedmont, we tend to earn
our money, rather than inheriting it. Put another way, we’re not born
with silver spoons in our mouths growing up believing that we’ve struck
paydirt.
I also know that you folks have standards. When I
suggested to one of your grande dames (I don’t name names, but Willie Brown
knows who I’m talking about) that we strip down and go to it in the mud
wrestling pit, she sniffed at me and said “Young man, like chilling a good
cabernet or beating one’s wife, that is seldom done in the best of circles.”
But the point remains – if you have standards, why are you distributing your
fishwrap to people like me? Gotcha! Game, set, match.
In conclusion, I’m not going to leave Piedmont, and you
folks have already proven to be incompetent, so I don’t suppose there’s much
chance that I will go another month without finding the Nob Hill Gazette in my
driveway. Worse things have happened. (Actually, not much
worse.) If there’s any chance you could actually cancel my subscription,
I would be able to stop writing emails like this and posting them on the
Internet where I hope they will go viral (trust me, I have a lot of friends
who have a lot of friends). If not, the weather in Piedmont is mild all
year round. I do a lot of outdoor grilling, and the NHG makes great kindling.
As I watch its ashes ascend skyward, I thank my lucky stars that I was not
born with money and that I did not end up living on Nob Hill.
Respectfully,
Wiley Hoag
Piedmont, CA
