Tag: places

Are we there yet?

Hiding in Plain Sight

THE BEST YOUTHFUL HANGOUTS MAKE deep, lifelong memories — especially after they’re gone.

Among our local, accessible, destinations in the late 1970s/early 1980s were those we called “The Bin,” “The Corridors,” “The Nuclear Plant” and “The Structure.” (Another, “The Twilight Zone,” has been written of elsewhere.) Listen, o seeker after others’ nostalgia, and attend:

THE BIN: In the middle of a church parking lot near the Walnut Creek BART station sat a shipping container-sized recycling receptacle. Continue reading “Hiding in Plain Sight”

Disposathon!

SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE: IT IS easier to get rid of everything in one big purge than a few things in a bunch of smaller ones.

The time: June 1985. Hopped-up on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and The Dharma Bums, I aimed to do a bit of my own road scratching of experience-itchy soles. So I bought some necessaries, stuffed them into a backpack, and invited my friends to a giveaway-the-rest party. The reserves (my great-grandfather’s holy books, my birth certificate, a deck of Tarot cards, a loaded pipe, and such) went into two small boxes destined for a trusted friend’s garage. When I returned a year later, they were waiting to greet me like cardboard puppies. Continue reading “Disposathon!”

Boulevard of Broken Animals

FIRST, THERE WAS THE ONE-legged California towhee.

She didn’t actually start out as one-legged. But when we first noticed her in the backyard, one of her legs was badly withered. It eventually dropped off. We named her “Tikvah” — Hebrew for “hope” — and loved her for some years from afar.

After she died came the one we called “Noisy Evans.” California towhees (Melozone crissalis) are known by their one-note “pipping” calls as well as a rapid cascade that conjures up images of an ice-crystal fountain. Continue reading “Boulevard of Broken Animals”

The Mask by the Side of the Road

SONOMA IS A SMALL TOWN: small enough to be intimate, but also large enough to have its share of common human misbehaviors.

Take the occasional gutter-detritus. The first time I saw an empty bottle dumped near a Sonoma curb by an unseen hand, I was surprised (and a little delighted) to see that it once held a rare French wine rather than the malt liquor I had come to expect in more urban settings. Over the years I have witnessed a variety of dry-land jetsam: smoked-oyster tins; car keys; take-out containers from upscale restaurants; and once, a $20 bill. But in the past two weeks (at this writing, 8/4/20), I have been happening on objects more timely and topical — viz., abandoned COVID-19 masks. Continue reading “The Mask by the Side of the Road”

“Let’s Go See!”

TO THE SMALL CATALOGUE OF meaningful three-word human phrases (“I love you,” “let me help,” “take your time,” “hold my beer”) should be added one pertaining to perhaps that oldest of motivations: “Let’s go see!”

Mind you, this drive isn’t limited to spacetime exploration (planets, moons, continents, seas, cells, et al). It can also, with some judiciousness, be applied to the arts: “Let’s go see if we can … write a novel without using the letter ‘e'” “… paint without brushes” “… string together found sounds / texts / images” “… fly.” All of these and more result from a desire and need to experiment, tinker and otherwise satisfy our primate curiosity. Continue reading ““Let’s Go See!””

5 Thoughts: Comix with an X

1. CRUMB. GRIFFITH. SHELTON. THESE (AND other “sequential artists“) were the visual architects of my immediate post-adolescent universe; whose spare-but-dense works were strewn reverently on the couches and mattresses of my very late teens and very early 20s; whose fractured catchphrases (“Yow! Are we having fun yet?” “Hey kids, while you’re out smashing the state keep a smile on your lips and a song in your hearts!” “Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope!”) worked their way into the conversations of my fellow-freakly peers. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: Comix with an X”

On “Secret Fame”

IN ANY HUMAN AFFINITY GROUP, of whatever size, there are always one or two people whom “everybody knows” — be it for their work, skills or sheer ubiquity.

This is the concept of Secret Fame: celebrities of the specialty worlds lying hidden all around us.

Secret Fame isn’t something you can claim for yourself. Like the terms “rebbe” or “saint,” it can only be bestowed. For example, if you were into Star Trek fandom in the late 1960s through 1970s, you’ve likely come across the name of fan extraordinaire Bjo Trimble. Continue reading “On “Secret Fame””

How I Missed the Moonwalk

THE LAST THING I REMEMBER is Neil Armstrong opening the LEM’s front hatch to begin his televised and epic descent.

When I was seven years old, and crazy for space, I had memorized the names of all the astronauts from Apollo 7 through 11 and built models of the lunar module in Revell’s plastic and Gulf Oil’s cardboard kits. Continue reading “How I Missed the Moonwalk”

On Homo relator (w/ Special Guest Star John Wheeler)

IT TOOK A WEIRD BOUT of synchronistic weather to illustrate for me how our species loves to tell stories.

First, you need to know about Mugwort Manor. It was a Victorian apartment near the corner of San Francisco’s Fulton and McAllister streets where all the best 1980s’ “major ragers” took place, roughly according to the neo-Pagan calendar, for a specific group of Renaissance Pleasure and Dickens Christmas Fair(e) habitues, occasional bike messengers, poets, musicians, theater folk, and other outliers: social circles mostly (though not exclusively) centering on secretly famous Mugwort resident John Wheeler a”h [1]. Continue reading “On Homo relator (w/ Special Guest Star John Wheeler)”

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