Sproul Plaza 2014 — Sproul Plaza 1994

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The town of Berkeley is full of ghosts for me.  I’ll give an example.

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Last night I was passing through Sproul Plaza on the Berkeley campus around midnight.  The place was dark and deserted.  And I was alone and friendless, like I usually am these days. And this memory suddenly flashed across my mind.  A somewhat painful memory.  What do they call it?  Poignant (“painful touching” — I still remember the definition from 8th grade English class). I remembered sitting on the steps of this very Plaza back in 1994.  Twenty years ago.

It was a lazy summer evening and we were all lazing around the steps.  Me. English Tracey. Sunshine and Luna — the teenage hippie sisters (17 and 19) from Orange County.  Some others.  It was one of those in-between moments where nothing much is happening.   I was sort of noodling around on my guitar. And we were bantering back and forth, making jokes and small talk.  English Tracey and Sunshine were sort of the Golden Couple of Telegraph Avenue during that period.  And they had sort of an off-again, on-again relationship.  At one point they went off into the bushes to see if their relationship was still on.  Luna danced around for awhile down by the fountain.  Just one of those warm and pointless summer evenings.

 

 

None of us really gave much thought to the future, aside from what we were going to do that night or that week or maybe that month.   Tracey and Sunshine were planning to head out to the Rainbow Gathering on the 4th of July.  I was in the middle of completing the recording of the Telegraph Avenue Street Music CD.  And Sunshine was casually inviting people to a party at the Chateau later that night — this sort of notoriously hip campus boarding house that she was crashing at (the campus and the street scene were more entwined back then). We were young and it felt like we had all the time in the world.  This endless expanse of time.  Death was far, far away back then.  We thought it would last forever.  It’s only when you blink your eyes and you’re suddenly old that you realize that life is a helluva’ lot shorter than you thought it was when you were young.

I was 37.  But a fairly youthful 37.  I still hung out effortlessly with the young crowd and was accepted as one of them.  I was still on that side of the line.  It wasn’t quite yet to the point of:  “Who’s that creepy old guy hitting on the young chicks.”  Ha ha. I was always embarking on these grand artistic projects back then.  I was sort of like Don Quixote embarking on these mad, imaginary crusades.   And I always had a big bunch of fellow-travelers hanging with me.  Paul the Pillar used to say — and probably with a bit of jealousy — “Hey Ace, you ever notice how whenever you sit down somewhere a big group of people immediately congregates around you.”  And it was true.  I was kind of in the center of this very dynamic scene of people back then.  And people like Tracey, Sunshine, Luna and me could even be considered part of the cool crowd (believe it or not, the street scene has it’s cool crowd, too, just like high school and Hollywood and all the other scenes).

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But there’s something particularly depressing about growing old on the street scene.  When I was a young man, there were plenty of people like me on the street scene.  We were sort of young adventurers.  We weren’t on the streets out of desperation or loserdom.  But because we got off on the excitement, the endless party of the streets, and the endless expanse of free time to devote to our art and our experiments with “alternate lifestyles” (as they say).

There were plenty of brilliant writers and painters and poets and musicians back then.  The Berkeley street scene of the ’90s reminded me a lot of Andy Warhol’s “Factory” scene back in the ’60s.  The same mixture of genius artists, bohemians, people interested-in-the-arts, street people, druggies, and outright lunatics.  And our scene was mostly outdoors, right on the streets.  Which made it even wilder.

But as you get older, the cool people get weeded out of the street scene.  The ones that have something together usually move on to jobs, careers and families.  And only the dregs are left behind.

Of course there were also a lot of young ne-er-do-wells on the scene back then, too.  But you don’t notice them so much when you’re young.  Because when you’re young, most of us hadn’t accomplished much with our lives yet.  We mostly just had our grand plans for the future. And the young ne-er-do-wells had plenty of grand plans, too. It was only when they started pushing into their 30s that you realized none of their plans would ever pan out.  That they were mostly spent forces.  But when you’re in your 20s, the young ne-er-do-wells still have sort of a grace period.  Because you never know.  Maybe their lives will amount to something.   But eventually it becomes like what Lenny Bruce said; “Nothing sadder than an aging hipster.”

And the same thing holds true for all the young druggies and drinkers.  When you’re young, it’s still just a “party” because you’re young and strong and invulnerable.  But eventually, most of them, as they aged, would burn out and fade away.  And that’s sad to witness. But all that grim shit was far, far away back in the summer of 1994. . .

I still vividly remember that lazy night.  In part because I recorded a couple of hours of it on my tape recorder.  I was into that kind of thing back then.  I was always recording things.  Every now and then I’ll come across that cassette tape and listen to 10 or 15 minutes of it.  And it’s weird, like a time capsule, that transports me back to that particular moment in time and space . . . and to relive it as each moment unfolds.   But maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m so haunted by my past.  Because, as an artist, I spent so much time recording and preserving my past.

But anyways, as I walked past the steps of Sproul Plaza last night, it was like I could almost see the ghosts of Tracey, Sunshine, Luna and me.  Lazing on the steps.  Back in 1994.   Just a moment in time. Gone gone gone.

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Blondie and Moo Cat: mother and daughter

 

Moo Cat was from Blondie’s first litter in 2009.  After the first year, any kind of mother-daughter relationship kind of dissipated.  They treat each other just like any two cats.  I wonder if they even remember they’re related to each other . . .   Brother and sister cats will also have sex together with no concern over legal ramifications.  I’ve seen it.  I guess blood isn’t thicker than water when it comes to cats.

 

 

Blondie

Moo Cat.

Blondie

Moo Cat with her “My-stomach-is-crammed-with-food-and-I-don’t-have-a-care-in-the-world” look.

King of the beasts.

 

 

“Purrrrrrrr!!”

“Ya know, dude, if I could talk, the stories I could tell.”

 

Moo Cat

Moo Cat

 

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Typical hyper-cautious veering-on-the-paranoid Blondie the feral cat. Step 1. Look this way.

 

 

 

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Step 2. Looks that way.

Blondie, annoyed and alarmed that I’m pointing this strange object, this camera, in her face.

Step 3. Chows down.

 

The ever-stealthy Blondie the feral cat. . . .I usually don’t feed my cats milk. I’ve heard conflicting reports over whether cow’s milk is good for cats. But mostly because, as a homeless guy, it’s hard for me to store milk without a refrigerator. But when I do feed my cats milk, they act like they’re stoned after they lap up a big plate of it. They laze around in slow motions, purring like crazy, like their grooving to a really cool drug nod.. . .. I guess milk is pretty basic, considering it’s what they started out life eating.

Magical mystical Moo Cat. She’s such a goon. Ha ha.

King of the beasts.

Moo Cat. That’s her “Its Moo Cat’s world we just live in it” look.

Feral human.

What me worry?

You’d think after 6 years of seeing Moo Cat hanging with me, and me not eating Moo Cat, that Blondie would finally realize once and for all that I’m not a threat. But NOOO! Blondie keeps her distance.

Blondie the feral cat. Blondie decides to back away and keep her distance until she can ascertain with 100% certainty that my cellphone camera doesn’t pose a threat to her existence. .. . Or maybe she’s thinking: “Damn paparrazi!”

Breakfast. Life is good.

Junior joins the action.

This might sound weird. But what always strikes me is how similar we are to the other animals. Two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, a stomach, an asshole. . . It’s obvious we’re all variations of the same basic theme.

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A bad dream

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I keep having these disturbing dreams.  Last night I dreamed that my life was a series of unhappy and unsatisfying scenes.  An endless series of them.  Like my life, and this world that I live in, was just no damn good.  Near the end of the dream I’m walking through this strange town.  In the middle of yet another unhappy, pointless scene.  Like a Myth of Sisyphus deal.  And I’m finally just worn down by the pointless toil of my life.  I feel myself running out of gas.  Like I’m on my last legs.   Like I don’t have enough energy or motivation to keep trudging onwards in these pointless circles.  I just want to lay down right there on the sidewalk and give up.  But knowing that I can’t stop here.   In this strange place, in this strange town.  Knowing I have to keep moving forward.  Even as there isn’t anything to move forward to.  I’m a zombie trapped in a zombie world. . . .  And then I woke up.   And it wasn’t just a dream.  It was my real life, too.

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Blondie the feral cat at midnight.

I wouldn’t say that any of my feral cats are my “favorite” cat.  Because I like them all, for different reasons.  But Blondie is really special.

For one thing, she was among the first litter of feral cats I connected with.  So I’ve known her the longest   It was Blondie, King Cat and Panther Joe back in 2007.  And only Blondie is still around, seven years later.  They popped up out of nowhere in the woods.  They were about 6 months old.  Right in between being kittens and adults.  Their mother, who looked like Blondie, had been hit by a car.  I remember spotting her body on the side of the road one morning.  She had probably been rooting around in the garbage cans near the road to bring back food for her kittens.  So there was something noble about her sacrifice.   But now her kittens were on there own.

It was fascinating watching them over a period of months.  As they gradually inched closer and closer to the cat food dish that I put out at the bottom of the hill by the creek.  First they started out about 100 yards up the hill, watching me cautiously and fearfully.  But pretty soon they were practically right in my lap.

Blondie never lost her feral reserve.  Even after 7 years I’ve never petted her.  She constantly approaches me.  Will come within a couple inches of me.  But if I so much as make the slightest move towards her, she’ll immediately jump back five or ten feet. Like I’ve violated her personal space or something.  Ha ha.

She reminds me of the ever-reserved, ever-prim and proper matriarch.  She probably thinks of herself as the Queen of England or something.  Ha ha.  But over the years, there’s developed this strange sense of “unrequited love” between us, almost.  Like sometimes, when Moo Cat is lying on my chest, purring away as I pet her, Blondie will be sitting there ten feet away.  Watching us.  And I always wonder if she’s thinking:  “Ya know, I wish that was me sitting there on that guy’s chest getting petted.  For one thing, it would put me one step closer to the food supply (me).”

Anyways, last night, around midnight, Blondie was waiting for me at the foot of the trail to my campsite. Like she often does.  She had probably been waiting for me for several hours.  As soon as she saw me she sprinted up in the direction of my campsite.  With me following right behind her.  And her blur of white fur was like a beacon that helped lead me up to my campsite.  It’s one of the many practical ways that the feral cats are quite helpful to me, aside from the obvious companionship angle.  For one thing, Blondie’s presence always clues me in that there are no other humans lurking around in the deep, dark woods.  Which is a great relief to know, needless to say.  In that sense, my feral cats are like watch-dogs, that constantly alert me whenever another human is approaching (though I’m sure they hate being referred to as “watch dogs” — ha ha).

Like I said, I never pet Blondie.  But last night she did an odd thing.  As I’m taking the cat food out of my backpack, Blondie is sitting in the darkness about 5 feet away from me, watching me like a hawk, anxious to be fed.  And I don’t know if it was because she sensed she had a great score that night  (I had ground-scored six of these barbecued chicken legs — meat-on-the-bone, the feral cats favorite!).  But Blondie started doing this weird thing.  She started rolling around on the ground.  Rubbing her head on the ground.  Rubbing that spot on the side of the ear that cats love to be petted on.  It was like she was petting herself.  She’s rolling around on the ground, rolling over on her back.  You could tell she was just over-joyed.  Just ecstatic about the whole situation.  That she’s about to be fed this delicious food in the middle of the deep, dark woods.  Something she never takes for granted, that’s for sure. It was like little Miss Prim-and-Proper had finally broken down from her steely reserve.  And to me, it kind of felt like:  “Well, I’m not petting her physically.  But I’m petting her psychically.”  What do they call that?  It was like I was petting her by telekinesis.

Blondie ate away at that chicken for about 25 minutes.  Periodically I’d look up at her blur of white fur in the darkness.  Listening to her crunching up those chicken bones.  At one point, Feral Tom, the dastardly one, showed up and tried to get at the food..  But Blondie hissed at him and held her ground.  Finally when she was done eating, she ran over to where I was lying in my sleeping bag, ran right passed my head, and disappeared off into the woods.

The Ace Backwords 14-Day Sobriety Plan

I’ve been drunk every night for the last two months.   So I decided to see if I could go two weeks without drinking.   Just to see if I could do it.  Starting two days from now on Monday.   I can’t stop drinking tonight because it’s Saturday night and are you kdding?   And I can’t stop drinking tomorrow because the Niners are playing the Chicago Bears at 5 PM and I’m already salivating about that first pitcher of beer.  But Monday is my target date.   Wish me luck.

Day One:  It’s Monday evening and I’ve managed to go several hours without a drink.  Even as every street sign from every store or bar window advertising alcohol, calls to me, beckons to me, from some deep part within myself.  Same old “Sirens of Titan” shit.  . .  It occurs to me, I don’t have the slightest idea of what to do with myself.  Maybe I need a hobby or something?  Or possibly a life.

Day Two:  It’s weird to be sitting here in this bar drinking Coca Cola while everyone else is getting drunk.  It reminds me of this friend of mine who used to be a great drinking buddy of mine.  Me and her would get drunk together and have these incredibly soulful discussion.   We’d talk for hours and share the most intimate details of our souls, and etc. . . .  Then one night, she was drunk and I was sober.  And I’m sitting there listening to her drunken babble.  And I’m thinking:  “HOLY SHIT!  IS THIS WHAT WE SOUNDED LIKE??”  Ha ha.

A delicious — if frankly undynamic — Agua Fresca

Day Three:   It’s 8:30 PM and I’m drinking  . . . a delicious strawberry agua fresca. . . .  I’ve never felt more ridiculous.   These things don’t have much of a kick to them.  I must admit, this sobriety thing leaves a lot to be desired.  For one thing, it’s BORING.  Nothing is happening!  Nothing is usually happening when I’m drinking, either.  But at least the artificial, chemically-induced stimulation speeds things up and gets things swirling so there’s at least a simulation of something happening.   Sheesh. . . . What do you sober people do for fun, anyways?

Dave Four:  It’s extremely weird to be walking up to my campsite late at night, sober.  I’m almost always drunk at this point.  And I’d usually sort of float and dance my way up the mile-long hike to the Berkeley hills.  Often I’d do weird drunken things like suddenly stop and execute perfect spin-moves and pirouettes for no particular reason.  And then burst out laughing at some inside joke that was so inside usually I didn’t even get it.  Then I might climb up on some narrow ledge 10 feet off the ground and prance across it like a tight-rope walker just for kicks, just to see if I could do it without breaking my ass . . .  But now, sober, I’m trudging up-hill.  Like working some grim nine-to-five job.  And even stranger. Usually, when I’m drunk, I easily navigate the 100-yard stretch up the trail in the pitch-dark woods.  But sober, it seems completely different.  I actually got lost several times.  It’s like I’m a completely different person sober and I have to learn how to do things all over again.  And this, too.  I feel these certain pangs of fear as I tip-toe through the dark woods. When I’m drunk I’m oblivious and in a state of absolute fearlessness (and/or stupidity).  But sober, I’m acutely aware of every little sound and strange things that go bump in the night. . . .  I guess alcoholism really is a state of self-induced schitzophrenia.  Where you actually become a different person.

Note the big, empty space on my table. That’s usually occupied with a big, ice cold, frothy pitcher of beer . . . Sad, isn’t it? Football without beer is kind of like, well, football with out beer. . . . It’s like performing an unnatural sex act or something.

Day Six:  Now comes the big test.  Saturday night.  The big Cal vs. Arizona football game.

Day Seven:  Well.  Guess what?  The Cal-Arizona game, by the way, turned out to be one of the most spectacular games of the year.  Arizona came back from being behind by 3 scores to win the game with an unbelievable 47-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass on the very last play of the game as time expired!!! . . . .  A play I missed, by the way.  I got bored with nursing my Coca Cola and left around the third quarter.  But I guarantee you this:  I would have caught that play if I had been pounding the pitchers of beer and was in my usual, football-watching comfort zone. . . .  I’m just pointing this out to show you:  For all the problems drinking can cause, there’s an upside to alcoholism.  For one thing, the alcoholic football fan rarely misses the big play.  We usually have it timed so that we’re not puking and passing out in the parking lot until after the game.

Day Eight:  I admit.  I find this lack of alcohol to be somewhat disheartening. . . .

Day Eleven:  Spent all last night in a sports bar eating fish and chips and drinking Coca Colas.  The funniest part was when they brought out the karaoke — all these drunken, white co-eds screaming along to “Super Freak” by Rick James.   Ha ha. . . Several people suggested it was a bad idea for me to hang out in bars if I’m trying to quit drinking.  But I’m not like that.  With me it’s not a matter of “will power” or fighting to “resist temptation.”  I decide I’m going 14 days without alcohol and that’s it . .  I’ve always been mystified and confused about the concepts of “addictions” and “compulsive behaviors.”  With me it’s simple:  If I want to do something, I do it . . .  It gets more complicated when I’m conflicted.  I want to do THIS.  But I also want to do THAT.  But I can’t do both . . .  So generally, like with politics, I just end up moving in whatever direction I’m 51% or more in favor of .. . I guess it gets trickier when you feel compelled to move in a direction that is obviously self-destructive.  Sure, a part of me fights to resist.  But if 51% of me still wants to move in that direction, then I concede I’m a stupid fuck and pay the price of self-destructing for awhile until I usually (but not always) wise up . .  I have a hard time doing S&M on myself.  Forcing myself to submit.  Even if it’s for my own good.  I’m too strong-willed and stubborn to control my impulses past a certain point. . .  They say:  “The fool who persists in his folly will one day be wise.”  And if he doesn’t wise up, then he usually just ends up a dead fool.   I guess that’s just how it works.

Cheers!

I’m so proud of myself!! I did it!! I went 14 days without any alcohol. So now I’m celebrating. With beer and football, naturally. NINERS!!!

 

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Be Here Meow

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This struck me as odd last night.  I have an incredibly happy cat.  She slept with me all night long last night, as she often does.  And she laid there purring away all night long.

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Periodically during the course of the night, like four or five times, I woke up in the middle of these really weird dreams.   These sad, painful, traumatic, intense, tragic, melancholy kind of dreams.  The kind of dreams where you lay there thinking:  “Why is there this deeply disturbed process going on in my soul?”

Then I’d look up and there’s my cat lying on my chest.  Just purring away.  Without a care in the world.  (She even does this thing when I turn over on my side while I’m sleeping.  She doesn’t fall off of me.  She manages to scramble to keep her balance and sleep on top of my side.  She reminds me of those loggers who keep their balance as they’re standing on the logs that are floating down the river even though the logs are spinning round and round.)

So I’m thinking:  The cat is this simple, basic animal with a very small brain.  And she has no idea where her next meal is coming from.  Or what she’s supposed to be doing with her cat life.  Let alone any kind of grand retirement plan for how she’s going to deal with her old age.  And yet, she’s perfectly happy.

While I’m a human being with this relatively big brain, and this incredibly complex life with this myriad of possibilities.  And yet, I’m the one that’s miserable.

I thought, maybe I should give some thought to see if I could figure out this quandary. . . .   But then I thought, maybe that’s the problem.

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Remember how Lucy was always able to talk Charlie Brown into taking a kick at the football?

 

Moo Cat, refusing to take no for an answer.  As usual.

I go through this just about every night.

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I get to my campsite around midnight.  Crawl into my sleeping bag.  And I’m just about to go to sleep.  When Moo Cat, the feral cat, shows up.  She immediately starts meowing at me.  It’s her “FEED ME!   FEED ME!” meow.  I tell her:  “You know what’s going to happen if I take out the cat food now.”   But she persists with her meowing.   To hear her crying you’d think she was starving to death.  Her stomach is bulging out on both sides from all the food I feed her.  But to hear her, you’d think there was no way she could make it all way through the night until her breakfast feeding in the morning. . . .   I crawl all the way into my sleeping bag and cover my head under the covers because I know what’s coming next.  Moo Cat starts taking these “playful” little jabs with her claws in the general direction of my head, along with even more persistent pleadings. . .   Finally, I get up and say:  “All right already!”  Open up a big can of cat food and dump it into the cat food dish.   Moo Cat eagerly takes 4 or  5 big gulps of the cat food.  Then she suddenly bolts off into the woods in a panic.  This big mob of hairy raccoons immediately pops up out of nowhere and descends on the cat food and spends the next 15 minutes devouring all the cat food in a feeding frenzy of grunts and howls and shrieks. . .

I go through this same bullshit virtually every night.   What can I say.  I have a hard time turning down a cat.

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On turning 58

Alan Watts, possibly considering publishing a new book, “The Drunken Cosmology.”

This might sound stupid (I thought I’d give that stupidity thing a whirl and see if it works for me).  But one of my last remaining goals in life was to make it to 58.   Two of the acid heroes of my youth — Alan Watts and George Harrison —  both kicked the bucket at 58.  Both of whom I would later come to have decidedly mixed feelings about.  So it was important to me (for some stupid reason) to out-live both of them.

Alan Watts was pretty much a wasted-away, old man alcoholic by age 58.  In between writing all those books about how we could attain the higher states of consciousness, ole’ Al failed to mention that one of his favorite techniques, personally, was to pound endless fifths of straight vodka.

The famous Indian philosopher Krishnamurti used to go on tirades about Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley back in the ’60s.  He blamed them, rightly or wrongly, for helping to lead an entire generation astray with their books that linked psychedelic drugs to spiritual wisdom.  And he held them partially accountable for the Drug Epidemic that swept across America in the wake of the ’60s.

The Beatles, grooving at one of those famous ’60s LSD parties.

George Harrison, along with them other Beatles, was another one who greatly popularized the notion of LSD to a generation of youth.  People forget, in 1965 and 1966, the Beatles had an audience primarily of millions of prepubescent little kids.  Then, just a year later, they’re singing songs exstoling  the magical (as well as mystical and mysterious) virtues of LSD.  I remember as a 10 year old boy watching the Beatles Saturday Morning Cartoon Show,  and there were the cartoon Lads, singing “Tomorrow Never Knows.”  The lyrics taken practically word-for-word from Dr. Timothy Leary’s “The Psychedelic Experience”  — which he wrote as a How-To-Take-An-LSD-Trip guide.  Which is exactly how John Lennon intended the song . . . .   Nowadays, we’ve banned the Joe Camel cartoon character out of concern that it might influence children to smoke Camel cigarettes.  And yet, very little consideration was given to the potentially tragic aspects of the Beatles singing their LSD hymns to an audience of millions of kiddies.

After John Lennon’s murder in 1980 (by a guy my age who went nuts partially from gobbling down LSD by the handful back when he was a budding 14-year–old Beatlemaniac grooving to the Magical Mystery trip) George Harrison famously opined:  “This would have never happened if John had stayed in England.”  Shortly after, another Beatles-obsessed nut came within inches of murdering George in his English mansion.  Which no doubt contributed to George’s premature demise at age 58.

And me?  Somehow I’ve bucked the odds just to still be walking on two legs on God’s green earth at age 58.  Considering some of the demographics I’ve been in over the years — smoker, drinker, druggie, starving artist, long-time homeless — my life expectancy probably should have been around 40.

And if anybody just wants to write this rant off as, Sour Turd Blames Famous Celebrities For His Own Degenerate Drug Use, there’s probably more than an element of truth in that, too.

 

The Eucalyptus Grove

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Whenever I come to the Eucalyptus Grove on the Berkeley campus I always have a weird acid flashback to 1993.  At the time, I used to like to take LSD and come out here with my guitar and sing my weird songs to the cosmos.

I had this stupid idea back then of recording an album of original music.  It was going to be my psychedelic masterpiece.  I planned on calling it “Private Pepper.”   As sort of a pun.  Because I was aspiring towards that psychedelic Beatles sound.  And because my music had been a private little thing with me that I rarely shared with the public.  This friend of mine had built a home-recording studio with an 8-track reel-to-reel tape recorder and DATs and all kinds of amazing toys.  So we recorded 12 of my hit songs.  And he added all sorts of amazing psychedelic effects.   And I swear to God, if you took enough drugs it actually sounded like music.

But anyways, I was remembering one haunting song I used to sing here in the Grove back in the olden days of 1993.  It was called “We’re Never Coming Down.”  Because that was one of the stupid things I aspired to back then.  I believed that the psychedelic state was this expanded level of consciousness.  So I wanted to permanently attain that state.  “To get high and never come down,” as Richard “Ram Dass” Alpert used to put it.

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Course it didn’t occur to me at the time.  The other side of the bargain.  That you could get high and never come back down to earth.

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The first rain of the year

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The first rain of the year last night.  Just a little sprinkle really.  But enough to inspire panic and dread in the hearts of the street people. . .  Its like spotting the first few enemy invaders way off in the distance.  But knowing the hordes are right behind them.  And they’ll be descending on you all too soon.  Wave after wave of them.  And it’s going to be a battle to the death.

I remember a couple of winters ago we got like  35 inches of rain.  And I was outdoors for every inch of it.  It seemed to go on forever that year.  This 8-month ordeal . . .  The worst thing is:  You make one mistake and you can end up spending the next several weeks staggering around in wet socks and sleeping in a wet sleeping bag.

Seems like every year there will be one old-timer that doesn’t make it through the winter.  I remember a couple years ago, 2009, it was New York, this little black guy who died of exposure in a doorway.  Right around Christmas, which added a poignant touch.  New York had been around the Telegraph Avenue scene forever.  About 50.  For a little guy he had this amazingly booming voice.  Like he had a megaphone in his diaphragm.  You could hear him from a block away.  And this explosive, braying laughter.  Usually smiling.  Started every sentence with “HEY!”  Often worked odd jobs for the street vendors and Tele businesses.  Sweeping sidewalks, etc.  Usually carrying his conga drum slung over his shoulder.  In the evening he’d find a quiet place to smoke his weed and drink his Olde English.  During the day he’d often hang out in the campus cafeteria with the black guy who was the head janitor at the Student Union building. . . .  I was out of town that winter so I asked the guy what happened to New York.  And he filled me in on the details.  “New York was my best friend,” he said.

Another winter is coming fast.

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