Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Thomas Chung delivering my NY Times

Unfortunately some of my filed negatives and slides do not have dates. My guess is that I photographed Thomas Chung about 16 years ago when I first signed up for a daily delivered New York Times. My friend Mark Budgen had informed me, after I had complained of my frustration in not getting my international news from the Vancouver Sun that I could indeed pay to get the NY Times delivered to my home. The man who had this business was an enterprising Korean gentleman who sacrificed his life for several years. He would drive to Bellingham sometime around 2 in the morning to pick up the NY Times that had come all the way from Tacoma, hours before. He would then deliver the papers all the way to the British Properties and West Vancouver. Chung told me, “I had to get a break job almost every month as I wore my breaks stopping and starting on the hills of British Properties.

By the time I photographed him delivering my paper one very early morning, Chung had made and saved enough money to purchase a beautiful house on Marguerite Street in Shaughnessy. He also sent his two daughters through private school. Some 8 or nine years ago he sold his franchise to the Globe & Mail who know deliver my paper 365 days of the year.

It has taken me upwards of one week to finally talk to someone in New York so that I can now get my free access to the NY Times on the web as I do have a paid subscription to the hard copy paper. It has taken the NY Times that long to figure out that with their pay wall system, they had a few (stupid?) subscribers in Canada who are still prepared to pay for their content but believe, rightly, that they should have free access to the web version.