Huntington Beach Losers Proud They Trash OC Weekly Copies, Even Though it’s a Crime

I’ve said time and time again to people who hate OC Weekly that the worst way to hurt us to not bother with us. Don’t click on our links, don’t pick up a dead-tree edition, do confuse us with the Orange County Register—all of those are shots to our commie hearts, and not reading our dribbles hurt our circulation numbers. Why, just the other day, some student from Saddleback College called me for an interview about journalism, and I hung up in anger after it became apparent she thought we were a part of the Reg—I got triggered, bruhs!

But rage on our Facebook page, or write nasty letters to us, or talk trash? You’re just pushing our gospel (and reader engagement, and hits), which translates into pesos in our pocket. More, please!

Someone should share the above to the losers who troll the Huntington Beach Community Forum (HBCF). They’ve been upset ever since we ran a story about a Huntington Beach resident who was arrested at a Berkeley protest last month, specifically a line where I wrote “HB breeds Trumpbros the way SanTana spawns cholos,” a line to which the rest of Orange County nodded in agreement. “The OC Weekly seems to have declared war on our city,” harrumphed HBCF head harpy Chris Epting, a 2016 Scariest People winner who conveniently ignored the raves we wrote about Riip Beer Company just a day before or the cute video and slideshow about corgis at Dog Beach just a week earlier. “Let’s Rise Up, HB- let’s let them know they have picked the wrong fight against our city.”

Various losers then emerged to talk trash on the Weekly, to urge that I get fired, and to even propose a protest at our offices (hey, kids: while our headquarters are technically in Fountain Valley, us writers works out of a secret SanTana lair—look for the office in downtown with the OC Weekly toy truck sitting on a window sill, visible from Fourth Street. No, seriously—it’s there). That’s all cool—just keeps pushing up our readers reach, you know? But then their fun went from the merely blabbermouth to the criminal, when people began urging HBers to take multiple copies of our rag and toss them in the trash, and some folks boasted they already did. Kinda like this guy, who’s name we’ve blocked out ’cause a letter is going his way:

On HBCF, moderator Michael Daly wrote, “If you see a stack of OC WEAKly, take them all and dump them in the nearest trash can where they belong.” He later shared a video of a woman throwing away a bundle of our latest issue while calling it a “fucking waste of paper,” a video liked by Epting, followed up by a “BOOM!” “Take them all,” Daly wrote with glee, “they are FREE! Put them where they belong!

Here’s the problem, kids: throwing away newspapers so people can’t read them is not just Fahrenheit 451-style fascism, it’s also considered larceny under California Penal Code 490.7. It ain’t a secret—we publish the above reminder in every issue in our Table of Contents. A first conviction gets you an infraction a fine of at least $250; more offenses get bumped up to a misdemeanor punishable by up to 10 days in jail (the law was sponsored, by the way, by Republicans who wanted to protect college journalists from leftists who’d steal whole runs of an issue they didn’t agree with, proving haters of the free press is a bipartisan thing).

This isn’t the first time HB bros have committed violence against the Weekly, of course: let us never forget that Racky, our beloved newsstand just two days from retirement, was destroyed during the 2013 US Open of Surfing riot. This post is in honor of Racky’s memory, and we will not let his martyrdom pass in vain.

Surf City has many great residents and businesses who love the Weekly (our readership stats prove it). So help us, our little birds: if you see any of your loser neighbors steal copies of our paper, send us a picture or video (all done legally, of course). If you catch anyone in the act, a taco at El Chavito is on us—and we’ll even spring for the free pineapple juice!