berkeley, california 1981

During the summer of 1980, after my 2nd year at Hampshire I jumped on a plane to Berkeley to visit my lifelong friend Tom Flynn who had gone to Northwestern in Chicago for like one week and continued on to Berkeley, where Jan Staubus was going to UC Berkeley and living with her parents in El Cerrito. Jan's initial college career hadn't lasted much longer (she later returned to UC Berkeley and was valedictorian) and she was working at Rasputin Records on Telegraph Avenue. I had never really gone anywhere on my own. Tom had his own apartment which was pretty impressive to me. While I was there I ran into Warren Hays walking down the street. Warren was a very smart and somewhat twisted guy I knew from Hampshire who had disappeared from Hampshire that spring after threatening to kill himself with cyanide if his ex Mary Ellis wouldn't marry him. He had just graduated from Hampshire and I think he was supposed to go to grad school at UC Berkeley that fall. I had alot of fun during that visit. Jan, Tom and I met up with my friend Beth Bellman from Hampshire (I had a wicked crush on her- she was a lesbian) and we went to Jello Biafra's birthday at the old Mabuhay Gardens. That little trip must have made quite an impression on me because next thing I knew I was on the phone with my Mom and Dad trying to get permission from them to take spring semester off to go to Berkeley. I was really floundering at Hampshire. It's free-floating lack of structure was very challenging to a lazy suburban boy like me and my supposed graduation date seemed to be hurtling closer and closer and I had no focus or direction. Things were not progressing well. So I hopped into my friend Winslow Hoffman's 1963 VW Bug named Henry and we drove through the winter weather across the country to Boulder, Colorado where I then caught a plane to California. By now the whole gang was living in a house in Emeryville, which is a town along the Bay bordering on Berkeley and Oakland (I believe San Pablo Avenue is the border). From what I understand it is now quite gentrified but back then it was pretty much a slum. Brian and his girlfriend Kathy had one room, Tom had another and Jamie and Scott Fletcher slept in the living room. I don't think any doors besides the front door and bathroom door were actually functional and there was one chair and other than that it was amps and musical instruments. I slept on Tom's floor. It was awesome. I called up Warren Hays who was now living in the real slums in West Oakland in an old Victorian house with a bunch of self-proclaimed witches. Rather than going to grad school he was washing dishes a block from campus and trying on his own to come up with a quantum mechanic theory (as opposed to Newtonian particle theory) for gravity or as he called it a Unified Field theory. This was basically where Einstien had left off. This is where writing about my life experiences becomes somewhat complicated. I have after all given this website address to my whole family and my boss at Starbucks. The fact of the matter is, throughout much of my adult life I engaged in criminal activity. I didn't steal or hurt anyone. I never even so much as smoked a joint or drank a beer while still at home with my parents. But my first weekend at Hampshire College I smoked pot with Warren and Mary. None of the crew from Stamford did anything but drink so I was hoping Warren might have some pot or be able to get some. Warren started saying that he no longer smoked pot and that pot was for lazy people. He did however, have something else, something even more illegal, something that Berkeley and San Francisco were famous for. I had done acid at Hampshire but it had been mostly unsettling and confusing. Not the right time or place, or not the right dose or both. So we headed off to the Berkeley Keystone to see some ridiculous band called the Psychotic Pineapple which was basically a bunch of guys dressed up like the Fruit of the Loom fruits playing acid rock. Suddenly I realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore. I asked Warren if we could go for a walk. The campus (which I became very connected to while I was in Berkeley) was nearby and we walked to an amazing Eucaliptis grove (remember I'm from New England) where Warren proceeded to guide me through a tremendous psychological and spiritual experience that changed me dramatically. To try to describe it wouldn't do it justice. After returning to Emeryville Warren went to sleep somehow and I walked the streets finding a mural on a warehouse wall of people enjoying nature and they were all moving and I just relaxed and watched the whole world melt. When I first arrived in Emeryville I worked with Tom for a while at McDonalds. We were the only white people there. I was working there the day Hinkley shot Reagan. I got a better job (I'm white after all) working at the Marrakesh Express on Euclid Avenue, a half a block from campus. It was a nice Falafel and Kabob place which also had an espresso bar. Things were pretty cool. We were going out nights to the punk shows that were going on at the time seeing Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and our favorite band Flipper. Tom and Brian took off on a tour of the country and the house broke up. Scott and I wound up getting a room at a transient hotel on Telegraph Avenue overlooking the People's Park and the People's Park Mural. It was really cool. So here I was, for better or worse, taking care of myself for the the first time in my life. I wound up moving to a very nice 3 bedroom apartment I found in El Cerrito with these 2 guys. I loved El Cerrito. I could quickly hike to the top of the hills and stare at the incredible view of the whole Bay Area. My window looked right out on the BART tracks and the "futuristic" BART trains would go wooshing by. Right across San Pablo was Richmond which was also very slummy but I never went there. Warren's friend Steve Parker and I tried to hitchhike to LA one weekend but we never made it. We turned around and went to Palo Alto and hooked up with a female friend of his who was in a band called the Frigidettes and brought her back to El Cerrito. That night I had my first bad trip. Steve was confusing me with his theory about "random prickly motivational factors" and his friend insisted on turning back halfway up the hills because she wanted a Tab. By the time we returned to my apartment I was having trouble communicating. I came out of it a few hours later. It was a learning experience. I really liked Steve. He was every bit as twistedly smart as Warren but much more relaxed. So I started to lose weight like there was no tomorrow. I was living in California and the fruits and vegetables were cheap and incredibly high quality. I had never drank coffee and now I was drinking straight espresso. I was also getting alot of support from Jan, who was somewhat obsessed with being thin at the time. I should mention that I was crazy about Jan and loved the brief period of time before Tom returned when it was only her and I out there. What's the real significance of this story? Wasn't I just another fool "finding himself" in California?  Was I going to return to Hampshire any more focused or ready for graduation? I remember my Mom crying when she picked me up from the limo from the airport minus 60 pounds. I certainly was excited that girls found me attractive when I returned to Hampshire. When Warren returned to Hampshire to visit he called me the ultimate Hampshire success story. The fact of the matter was that before this trip my life lacked passion. I was almost even sleepwalkng through life. But now life was an adventure. I had learned to love reading and immersed myself in it. I blossomed as an artist, drawing intense psychedelic primitive tribal faces. I changed my major for better or worse from film to painting (many of my cohorts in film went on to be tremendously successful, not to say I would have). I had also developed an intense love for for true nature and the outdoors. I loved to discuss philosophy, society and religion with people and looked at people who I used to think knew more than me as peers. So, yes, as much of a cliche as it sounds, I had gone to California and found myself. Of course I've lost myself many times since, but those are other stories...