Late in the Season

My directions were simple to my appointment: Make a left off the single-lane freeway at the Big Oak tree next to Wild Frank’s Boulder (“there should be graffiti on it that says, ‘Class of 420’) after the gas station. Drive another eight-hundred feet and wait on the side of the road for a guy name Sod, who will escort me the rest of the way. Very standard guidelines for being shown a grow up in the Triangle.

Without phone service, killing time on the side of the road in Mendo County in a rental car could make one as nervous as a Koran maker in Florida, but after ten minutes of waiting, Sod, pulled up, asked me if I was me, and we were gone.

Sod is my friend, the grower’s neighbor.

After a few turns of the country road we were on, we turned right on a road that I swear wasn’t there a second ago. Like in Indiana Jones, where he has to take the ‘Leap of Faith,’ suddenly a ledge, a dirt-road appears.

I didn’t know why I felt slightly paranoid going to this grow. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. And besides, my friend who I will call, Mike, has a legal grow. But still, the drive up the mountain has me a little jittery. I wait while Sod unlocks the gates, then we both pull our cars forward then stop, while Sod gets out of his truck and relocks the gates behind us. I can’t tell how high we are on the mountain but my ears are popping. Sod’s small pick-up is lathered with road grime, pocked with indentations from the goat-climb it takes to go forward up the slope. I wonder if I’ll have some explaining to do as tiny pebbles are ricocheting off the rental vehicle.

Twenty minutes later, Sod points to an upper driveway where he leaves me with a wave of the hand. He stays to the left, going back to his cabin, after doing Mike a solid for him.

I pull into a graveled-circle that passes for driveways up here in mountain-country, right behind an ancient, burnt-orange railroad boxcar. There’s another small pick-up, almost identical to Sod’s and a smart little Prius. The main cabin sits perched higher some thirty feet away from the cars.

Walking the craggy, hard Earth trail between the boxcar and the cabin, some eight feet wide, making my way to the front entrance to the cabin, I turn the corner to see the greatest vista, the most beautiful view I’ve almost seen since coming to the Triangle.

I am not a church-going individual, but I dropped to my knees. The valley that must have been fifty miles deep, a seemingly bottomless gorge stretched across another fifty miles rising to a range of mountains that bordered the horizon. There had to be nine hundred shades of green on display. It was postcard perfect.

I could see why my friend, Mike didn’t want to leave his estate.

In my state of awe, my mind seemed to leave me, because in the next second I am hallucinating that there are Sirens or Fairies standing next to me speaking in a dialect that seems somewhat familiar.

“Daddy down in the grow, can I get you a cup of something? Or do you want to head right down there?” One of the hallucinations asks.

“Ummmm…”

“I’m sorry; you’re still getting over the view, right? I’m Wendy; this is my sister, Sophie.” Silence.

Okay, this is really happening. Not a dream. For me, it is always like walking into another world when I visit Mendocino and Humboldt counties. I’ve been to many, many plantations, grows, gardens, patches, greenhouses, hot-houses, and mountain-side grows, but I still get blown away from the remoteness and the savage beauty that this area offers. It is no mistake why growers fear the police; it could mean losing all this-your land. I have yet to meet a grower that wasn’t willing to give up his or hers crop, if it meant not having to give up their property.

Wendy and Sophie look at me like I’m a shock-victim.

“Maybe we should go to the grow?” Wendy offers.

Sophie concurs. “Yeah, let’s get him into the Mule.”

“Yeah…sure…that would be good,” I mumble.

The next thing I know, I’m in the middle of two young women in their twenties, in what they call, the “Mulely.” The Muley is a four-wheel, off terrain gas-powered cart that many growers use to navigate their mountains.

I am trying to be cool in front of the two, young sprites, but the mountain trails has other plans for me. When the Earth’s floor dropped, I reached out like someone’s grandpa grasping for a handle from the heavens. I grab the aluminum roof for something to steady myself so I didn’t come off like I’m a city-dude. After spring-boarding off a dried fallen redwood, the Muley slides to a stop on top of a bull-doze plain overlooking a tiered garden. Below us, twenty-five Marijuana plants are growing like fat, tall Mulberry bushes.

The smell is intoxicating.

To see the Pot plants with the verdant valley as a background makes this City Boy cry with envy. I want what they got, I think to myself. This is heaven.

Mike is reaching through the plastic netting, gently pulling an exquisite purple, thick punta through the mesh as gently as a doctor delivers a newborn.

“Hey man, you made it,” Mike says giving a powerful shake.

“Wow,” I say.

“Now, you know why I don’t like to leave my cabin.”

“When you said it had a pretty good view…I had no idea. Man, this is unreal.”

“Unreal…yeah…but it’s a lot of work…” Mike says taking off his straw hat, wiping the sweat off his head.

The Two sisters jumped out of the high-performance golf cart once we stopped. They were like something out of an olde English school book. They sailed off the cliffs and banks of the mountain like they had skates for feet. In their hippie dresses and boots, they bob and weaved while tending their garden. Removing yellowed leaves, sticking a finger in the soil for water-content and clumpiness. I swear that Wendy could tell the Ph balance by just using her pinkie.

They swooned, laughed, picked at the plants around the plants while Dad showed me his operation.

“Didja notice the rather large rain-gutters on the cabin? That how I water these babies. All with rain water,” Mike says proudly.

That’s when I notice all the PVC pipes below us and all around in an interlocking system of irrigation. Shut-off valves and digital meters gopher out of the ground with one by two’s for protection.

“Check this out.” Mike leads me over to a small tree up on the plane. “See that hornet’s nest right there. Look around.”

There are about three or four nests around the grow.

“See, these hornets are our friends. They go right into the plants and eat the aphids, beetles, mites and all those other little fellas that can hurt a crop,” Mike says in his worn southern accent.

One of the reasons I was there, is because Mike has been telling me for a while now about his totally organic, harmonic garden.

“It’s really the girls. I’ve been in the Dope Biz all my life. Y’know wheeling and dealing. I bought this land about thirty years ago, without a thought of growing. I mean, just look for yourself. I wanted to retire on a mountain. So I spent the next thirty years on my knees working construction. Either project-managing small crews or humping it myself…where every I could find work. New construction, remodels, refurbish, re-do anything. Here, the Midwest, out East, whatever.  All in the name of owning my own land up here. Man, I had the dream, and I had it bad. But about ten years ago I thought, everyone else is doing it [growing], why shouldn’t I? But it wasn’t until my daughters were through with high school, that’s when it all took off.”

“My daughters are healers. Really. They’re twenty-one and twenty-three and both of them have men and women in their thirties, forties, sixties and even some in their sixties who seek them out. No lie. Wendy knows her herbs and Sophie is right there, if she wants to be. Wendy is more active with healing, Sophie just wants to draw and write for now. They’re thinking of doing a book together. Wendy will write it and Sophie will illustrate, but it could easily go the other way. It just depends on what mood they are in.”

Then for the next hour or so, I was educated by two sisters who virtually would finish each other sentences unconscientiously and even more so when they became excited.

They almost cried in unison when depicting all the illegal grows that were happening right in front of us, in the valley and hillsides. Sophie pointed out that the illegal grows drain the water-supplies, killing the salmon and other water creatures. Sophie laughs, but it is a nervous laughter. Then Wendy furthered her sister’s argument, telling me about the destruction of the Earth’s mycelium layer.

In a basic hippie-way, mycelium is part of the fungus system and its vegetative parts that reach underground, basically, connecting everything. I’m simplifying, but mycelium is everywhere, or should be.

When growers drain the Eel River for water, or worse, dumped their chemicals and growth formulas into the river, killing the mycelium and in turn, causing the algae to get out of control. Once the river is pullulated, the animal life dies and the eco-system became fully out of whack. So there’s no more fish in the Eel River, and it don’t look like they coming back.

The beautiful vista isn’t so beautiful now, knowing that there were bad guys out there destroying the woods and the land in the name of Pot.

We headed back to the cabin with dad and his dog, Jagger, in the tiny bed of the Muley and me and the two sisters riding up front.

Back at the cabin, Wendy grinded some incredible coffee in an old-fashion grinder, like the kind my mother made chopped liver with, in the old country, where old guys like me come from. She asked me if I wanted honey with my coffee. Being a first time guest, she might have offered me some, ick, some white sugar, but I said, no honey, please, but if you have a little goat’s milk?

The two sisters darted off from the cabin after bringing Mike and I some joe-probably to either write some poetry or find the cure for cancer somewhere out in their woods…

“Mike, it really seems like you have the life here. Thanks for showing me your grow and inviting me to your cabin.”

“I wanted you to see a completely organic, sustainable operations. No chemicals, no illegal electricity, legal water. It can be done. But it’s a lot of work.”

“And it’s just the three of you?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you put in, fourteen hour days?” I recoil in asking.

“Sometimes. Sometimes longer. Some days are too hot to work, even getting up before sunrise. Because I’m growing the diggity-dank, there’s so much more work. Did you see my buds? They’re HUGE. Y’hear all that talk about how much more THC there is in buds these days. It’s true. That’s why we need the netting, to support the branches and buds. Sheet, in the old days of growing weed, like we did in the Midwest, the stuff grew like bamboo. Long, tall plants with stalks like hickory canes. Now with so much more THC, the weight brings down the plants, so you have to be right on top of these ladies, or Boom, a broken branch. Then I just lost an ounce or so.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” I lie. After seeing Mike’s buds grow deliciously in the golden sun, all I could think about was the tasting WEED he was going to harvest soon. I would do anything to be able to have a place like this with those twenty-five gorgeous plants.

“It’s not only the hard work. Sod had a bear in his cabin a week or so ago. His gun was in the bedroom. It was the middle of the night and he came out to his kitchen because he thought he heard a noise. There was a black bear rifling through his refrigerator.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing, his gun was in the bedroom. He sat in the corner on a countertop until the bear was done eating. Otherwise, Sod could have been the second or third course for Yogi.”

“Do the girls shoot?”

Mike just looked at me like I was wearing blue shorts and a white shirt with a smart, little blue bowtie.

“Yeah, of course. They’re both up for getting permitted for a concealed weapon. You have to know how to shoot up here. There’s bears, badgers, mountain lions, sheet, snakes as far as that goes. Not to mention, the Mexicans, the poachers, the fools that try home evasions. No, my girls shoot almost as good as they cook.”

“So, Mike…do you get paranoid living out here?”

“No, buddy, I’m not paranoid…I’m stressed,” Mike breathes out sounding more southern than usual. “I’m doing everything right. I’ve got my paperwork and permits to grow twenty-five plants. I’m growing some of the best WEED in the West. If you noticed on the last gate to mine and Sod’s area, we have our paperwork nailed to a board to the gate. Local law enforcement is cool with it, but what about the Feds. It is my civil rights to grow WEED as per the California constitution. I’ve got thousands and thousands and thousands tied up here. This is how the girls afford college. I’m paying for some others to get an education…”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is…everything is closing in. I want to grow more, but I don’t qualify right now for ninety-nine plants. But even so, I’m growing some righteous bud, organically, some of the best shit you’ll ever smoke, and the price is GOING down. People are still dying up here. We’ve had more people shot this year than I can remember from past years. Hell, there were thirty DEA agents in the hills last week busting one grower,” Mike says not so much as pissed, but feeling the pain. “Tell me, why do you need thirty DEA agents with machine guns searching the hills? We can’t be surprise or close our eyes when someone is shot. They say they are Mexican gang members. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Were you?”

We both take a few sips off of our coffee.

“Prop 19 is only going to screw things up. So, let’s say I can grow, but then it is illegal to drive the shit through Lake County. Where are my civil rights? I’ve been Okayed to grow? But I can’t put it into a truck and deliver it to the City?”

“How do you get around that?”

“You start a collective. Come out of the shadows; tell the cops and the DEA that you’re growing…”

“And…”

“And see what happens…” Mike says going back to his coffee. “I mean, I only have about sixty grand, and thirty years of humpin’ and my family’s future tied up into this place. Yeah, I’m a little stressed.” Another sip of coffee. “But that’s the way it is until harvest. You never know…”  



If you made it this far...Check out SF Weekly's Toke of the Town today by Steve Elliott and the website, www.RedheadedBlackbelt.com, Kym Kemp. Both of those guys are really right on with their blogs. Very informative.

More later.

Robert Schimmel

It is so easy to say when a comic dies; some of the laughter goes too. Civilians will never understand that phrase, only because they think they can. An audience believes by following a comic from the early days of open mikes to headlining status, they know the comic. But let me tell you this, you’ll never know what a comic is like, because comics don’t know what other comics are like. We have the shared experience of being in the trenches, whether you served in the Pacific, the East or the Punchlines. There is a comfort we feel being around other comics. But that is about it.

Being comic means never needing anything from anyone else to make you laugh. Being a comic means that you’re never enough by yourself. Without the echo of the audience, your life has very little meaning.

Those are true comics. Robert Schimmel was a true comic. I could never call Schimmel a comedian, he was a comic. That’s why his loss has affected me so much.

I met Schimmel once in his living room many years ago when I tried living in L.A. I was there with another comic, who was giving Schimmel a ride to the hospital where his son was receiving Chemo. Schimmel was looking for a form that the hospital needed for some kind of clerical closure.

Tearing up his one-bedroom, Schimmel wasn’t panicked nor pissed; he methodically turned over one pile of clothes in his newly-bachelor-flat, searching for the culprit paperwork, or gently lifts some books or videos, while talking about the Road or what Bud was saying to him about what he should do with his act. You couldn’t tell his kid was in a Life or Death circumstance. Schimmel was taking it all in stride.

The phrase I remember from that day Schimmel saying over and over was, “I know, I know.”

As in, “Bob, we should be going…”

“I know, I know…”

“You told your Ex, you’d be there in thirty…”

“I know, I know.”

“Bob, we should be going, you have a set tonight…”

“I know, I know…”

I didn’t know Robert Schimmel and only met him briefly that one day in his West Hollywood apartment, but I’d have to say like most great comics, he was complicated.

I wasn’t really privy to some of the conversation that my friend the comic and Schimmel were having right in front of me but I could tell a couple of things…

1)  He and his Ex-wife still seemed like they were together.

2)  He really cared about his family.

3)  Schimmel was his own man, with a lot of strings attached.

After that afternoon the closest I would get to Schimmel besides for sharing the stage with his a couple of times at the Improv on Melrose, was through the Howard Stern Show. Then went Howard left this planet, I lost contact with both.

A couple of years ago, I was riding with common-law-brother-in-law who has Sirius Radio and he was listening to Stern.

Schimmel was on the show. Both Robin and Howard were ragging on Schimmel, the way they did for many of his visits. This time they were questioning the legitimacy of whether Schimmel was really sick with a liver disease. Because Schimmel was so low-keyed about the disease, the two radio braintrusts didn’t believe him. How could a guy who was on a waiting list for a liver, when he knew his chances were slim that he’d get one, be so non-plus about the whole affair?

 Maybe because Robert Schimmel was a cancer survivor himself and waiting wasn’t anything new? Maybe because at this point his son had passed and learned that many of Life’s decisions aren’t left up to him. Maybe because Schimmel was living with Hep-C that he contracted through an innocent blood-transfusion during his time in the Air Force. (Just like Lenny’s bit; Army, Goyim, Air Force, Jewish.) Maybe because growing up with Holocaust survivor parents, you learn…

You learn it can worse than you think…

I didn’t know Robert Schimmel. But I loved his act. Schimmel is the only comic I know that did Dick Jokes as Observational Humor.

People say that Schimmel was dirty. I never saw it. I did see a guy use scatological and sexually transmitted anxieties as weapon to understand what we’re not supposed to. I imagine to Civilians he was dirty. He was using dirty words, why not? If that’s what you saw, then you didn’t get the joke.

I really don’t know his bits that well other than the ones I heard live. As a comic, I stopped listening to other comics act after Bill Cosby’s ‘Why is There Air?’ Also at that time as a working comic, I figure there would be all the time in the world to hear the other comic’s acts that I liked.

Drake Sather, Dan Bradley, Ken Tsumori, and Warren…and the others, I am sorry guys; I always thought there would be time…

There was a bit Schimmel did that personified his act to me. Maybe because I liked the guy, I might be error on the side of great comedy, but…

He did this bit about having a parrot. So you have the premise that you have a bird that you can train to talk. Many different comics could go in many different directions with that concept. You might say the path they took would be the one that describes their personality the best.

Anyhoo…

The way Schimmel did the bit was…

He would take some unsuspecting friend (Is there any other kind to a comic?) and leave him alone in his made-up apartment for the bit. In Schimmel World, there is a parrot in the said apartment, which the host, Schimmel, has left alone with the innocent mark.

The parrot starts talking…

“The guy fucks me! The guy fucks me!”

Schimmel does a take as the friend who is over hearing a trained bird that belongs to a comic scream that his owner is having sex with him, the bird.

After a few more times of the bird screaming about avian penetration and the friend feeling perplexed about being caught in a strange situation, the bird gets real…

“I’m not kidding, the minute you’re out the door, BLAM, he’s spreading feathers.” The bird continues…

“You gotta help me, man. He’s sick. He’s fucking birds. I’m lucky I can talk…”

You get the idea. Left in someone else’s hands, it might just be a dick joke, but with Schimmel, there was some insight into the comic and his world.

And here’s the deal with Schimmel. I didn’t know him, but if you read the newspapers, it seemed like he had a really hard life. If you read his bio, he was born into heart-ache and then nurtured it for the rest of his short life. But that’s not what I saw. I heard about his pain from other comics who really knew him, but for me, I remember that day in West Hollywood. I remember a guy who it seemed like his world should be collapsing but him handling it, the best way he could.

When I heard he died from the repercussions of a car accident, at first it didn’t seem right. It wasn’t from the liver disease? That I knew about. But from complications from a car accident? Oh, man, it just doesn’t seem fair.

I didn’t know Robert Schimmel but I knew his kind. I knew there was a breed of comic out there that will always do their act on their terms. They’ll have the security/insecurity to take those infantile thoughts in their head and mature them through the stage. They will walk where few want to tread. They will open places that everyone else said it was dirty in there and you’re not supposed to look, let alone hear and learn about what you were initially afraid of.

Look at it like this.

Imagine you lived a planet that dying. Your only hope was to explore other planets for a new home. Now imagine a world without Astronauts and explorers. Imagine that you are forced to live a failed life because there is no one around you brave enough to explore the unknown.

To me, that’s what it feels like when a great comic is taken from us. We have no idea what we are missing or the worlds that Bob Schimmel would have shown us.

Then I hear, “I know, I know.” And I remember what we had.

I don’t know which is sadder.



Dollars, Potheads and Beds

 

Follow the money. That could be the truest statement ever printed in terms of wanting to find the origins of any motive. Any. Motive.

Hardly anything is done in America for free, and more so, there is always a predatory Greedhead out there who will take the most unscrupulous path in order to line their pockets. We all know, when it gets down to it, what we’re always talking about is the bottom line. Whether it’s prayer, or loving or eating, there’s always a price tag included.

The War on Drugs isn’t any different. For me, it’s incredibly funny who is in the sights of the Generals and Czars spearheading the new attack. Some are trying to pick off the lonely Hispanic privates in Arizona, while others go for headlines bringing the big catch, today’s number one flaunter of our drug laws, the nearly inescapable, Sergeant Paris Hilton.

 While capitalizing on America’s latest fear of what ‘Brown could do to us today,’ Arizona Governor, Jan Brewer, made it law that anyone lighter skinned than herself would have to show papers proving that they were Americans and had the right to coexist with the regular people of the state. In a mad stampede to lock-up the new undesirables, very few are asking what is behind this hastily added law in Arizona? Do we have all the realistic intel in?

So, who is behind the law in Arizona?

 Why, the privatized prison industry, that’s who. Correction Corporation of America (CCA). The owners of half of the working, privatized prisons in AZ. Chuck Coughlin, one of Jan’s inside advisers also represents CCA. Conflict of Interest? Not in Arizona.

Also, one small fact that has Not been reported in the Lamestream Media, but has been cropping up in many border state official, government reports concerning the influx of immigrants from Mexico, it is down. Immigration coming in from south of the border, has dropped some sixty percent. Two thirds of what had constituted in the past of Mexican immigration is drastically reduced. There just aren’t as many Mexicans coming over as before.

But it’s funny (weird) that Whitey is now up in arms about all those people coming in to pick our fruit, or clean our houses and restaurants, work our meat-towns in Iowa, and do the jobs we’re just not sure if we want. But why such an anti-immigrant backlash now?

Butts in the beds. When you run a prison for profit, you don’t make any money with vacant beds. Hola Rueben e familia.

And no one cares. There’s too much money involved to bring up the utterly unconstitutional fuck-up that Govvy Janny has created. We are now busting people for the sake of making others money.

Now jump ahead to voting time this November in California. As we get closer and the more incendiary stories about dope-crazed murderers and Marijuana related crimes are being released, just like in the Twenties and Thirties, when propaganda against WEED worked, it’s all to bring attention to the Prison lobby’s needs.  The prison industry is throwing big pesos into the fear-machine, trying to scare voters. Why? Because they need the Heads in the Beds.

SF Weekly reported today that the staggering numbers of Marijuana busts in Cali are way up. The shit isn’t legal here, no matter what anyone says.

I do understand some of the fears that good people have if Marijuana became somewhat legal next year, but what I can’t understand is how the Prison Lobbyists can be so out front about their agenda of continuing busting little dope smokers in order to show a profit for their share holders.

Look who is against Proposition 19. It is very clear what the Prisons for Profit systems needs and wants; bodies to exploit. I mean, if there weren’t thousands and thousands of people incarcerated, some forty to fifty guards could lose their jobs. Is that really worth not destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of victims because of these stupid, archaic drug laws?  

 Speaking of the Stupid…

Some weeks back, I suggested that America plays a game in the vein of ‘Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?’ And call it, ‘What in the World? Where’s Paris going to be busted next?’

I did call it that she would be busted with Coke, but I said it would be in the Greek Isles. I was wrong on location. That happens a lot for me.

What I find really funny is that Steve Wynn, the guy that has changed Vegas in its last inception from the temporary ‘Let’s try to make Vegas family friendly,’ to the more realistic, ‘Let’s be adults again and get into trouble,’ has banned Paris from his casinos. I don’t know Paris, but I know the Palms would love to have her anytime. It won’t be a hardship for Ms. Hilton. Besides, I think there is a place called the Las Vegas Hilton, she might know someone there.

But here’s the bullshit part. I have some close friends in Vegas. Steve Wynn has a reputation as long as a Tony Montana line of Coke. I can’t say this is true, otherwise I could be sued, but I heard from some inside sources, that Mr. Wynn has been receiving government WEED, the same strain that was used in the movie, ‘American Beauty,’ G-14 for his glaucoma for decades. Yes, decades.

 Mr. Wynn who is so against the shipping heiress reckless use of drugs, Paris is banned from his properties. This is a guy who is no stranger to calling down to one of his people, “Send up a couple of dancers and an eight-ball.”

And from what I’ve heard, don’t get me started about Steve Wynn’s brother. That’s where it gets a little Joe Pesci-ish. A little creepy and too gross for these pages…

But I am here to talk about hypocrisy.

It is a felon to smoke Marijuana in Vegas. You can walk down Vegas Boulevard, The Strip, with a whore, exposed gun and a fifth of Jack, but if you have a roach in your pocket, you’re going to jail.

The powers that be in Vegas are scared of Marijuana. No lie. They think if gamblers are going to get high and not gamble. Stay in their rooms. Be distracted by all the neon and lights.

 And that’s all they care about. While whores abound in Vegas on the streets and in the casinos, prostitution is illegal in Clark and Reno Counties, where the bulk of casinos are located.  They found out when men didn’t bring their wives, they didn’t gamble as much. When prostitution was banned in the two cities; guys brought their wives and would spend more time gambling. No morality involved, just the bottom line.

One day when WEED is legal, the directors of Food and Beverage are going to wake-up to bar and restaurant tabs like they’ve never seen before. Vegas still hasn’t grasp the concept of Munchies.

But I digress…

I am for Legalization so that good people, who are being victimized by an exploitive government officials who only see the Governor’s office as a way to increase profits for their cronies and political contributors, don’t go to prison.

It is that easy.

What I don’t understand is how the rest of the World can’t see what is so obvious to me.

Why is it that the Prison system and all it stands for; correctional guards, the prison staff, the defending of ancient laws that were set up bogusly anyway, is getting away being the major contributor against the Legalization of Marijuana. What could be in it for them?

A profit, that’s all. Is that worth a son or daughter?

Murderers are set free because of over-crowding. The prison commerce is the third largest growing industry in California.

It is very easy to see on the personal level. If you had to go to work and either guard a father-rapin’ killer or a kid who got busted at a concert for passing a joint to a stranger that happened to be a Fed. Who would you rather go against?

It’s all about money and the path of least resistance. It would be weird if that path led to more lock-ups and not to Legalization.

Also, there’s very little money to be made from Freedom.



Paul, my neighbor who lives at the end of my block

For me, it is quite convenient to have Paul as a neighbor. Paul lives at the end of my block to the west, at Stanyan Street. The Seventy-year old lady above me in my building collects pianos and refinishes them. Lucky for her and me, Paul’s been there for us when I needed an extra pair of hands to help navigate two flights of stairs getting the Steinways or Masons up the towering staircase. She slides Paul some money for the work.  

It’s has been helpful to tell our guests at night when leaving, that if you experience any trouble, our friend Paul is at the corner if you need help. Just tell him you’re a friend of mine.

That’s the way it’s been for the past couple of years.

Because I’ve brought Paul blankets, empty plastic bags, food that I didn’t feel like eating or would go bad if I didn’t, shirts and pants that I’ve grown out of or will never wear, water, more food, and because I would actually sit down and talk with Paul, I thought I had the right to make light of his situation. I felt that because I was close to him and spoke to him respectfully, that I thought it was fair game to refer to Paul, “as my friend who lives at the end of my block and when I say at the end of my block, I MEAN the END of MY BLOCK.”

Now, I am not sure what I can do for my friend because I’ve joined the ranks of those I hate, The Silent.

Before I go off on my rant, I believe silence has been the catalyst for most things evil and unfathomable. It was due to the silence of others that all bad events have been allowed to happen.

I’m simplifying, but not by much.

Today is the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. There is so much to say about what went wrong with what happen in New Orleans but for me, beyond the horrific tragedies most of us could only witness on TV, the image I am most stuck with is? When groups of Americans were turned around when trying to cross bridges to higher ground and were told, “You’re not welcome here.”

I couldn’t imagine Americans doing that to each other. But now I can. I am going to do that myself.

I live in the Haight/Ashbury district of San Francisco. During the month of August when Europe takes a holiday, my little burg is overrun by Lederhosen-wearing tourists trying to find the Sixties. The Sixties left the Haight in ’67, when the Diggers gave ‘The Summer of Love’ a funeral. But it doesn’t matter; we are a tourist destination because of our fabled hippie history.

We are also a destination for all those broken toys, runaways, throwaways and the odd fellows that roam among us. The Haight has always been a depository for all that were confused and unsure. The West is the end for many, and San Francisco is their Dead End. And because the Haight/Ashbury borders Golden Gate Park where an estimated 5,000 illegal campers pitch their blankets a night, I live in Homeless-central, not counting the rest of the town.

I live on your average Rand-McNally city street. I live on a block and there are the other three streets that square off, creating your major city square block. So imagine a big city square block. My street must be about eight hundred yards long, with the two perpendicular streets three-quarters that length.

There’s this couple in my building that are in their early thirties. He works late, coming home around Midnight. She walks their dogs at Ten PM every night. She can’t walk her two little guys without a bunch of smelly strangers talking to her.

On my street, on my street alone, there are usually seven to fifteen people sleeping in the various doorways and entryways to the buildings and apartments on the street. But around the corner where there is a business that is vacant at night, not a residential apartment or flat, where people look down at you, there are sometimes five to fifteen people sleeping in that little space at night. The other streets of my city block are occupied at any given time with another ten to twenty people per city block a night trying to find a place to crash that is relatively safe.

It’s weird to leave your place and have some thirty sets of eyes knowing your movements.

Many homeless fear sleeping in the park because of violence. There have been two homicides in the past two weeks in the Park to validate that opinion. But I don’t care.

   I care more about the woman in my building that can’t walk her dogs at night without someone saying something to her. I care more about my Girlfriend and our Daughter. The Girlfriend comes home after dark and the grown-up twenty-two Daughter leaves our place often after dark during the week, refusing my help to walk her to her bus.

When it gets down to it, these are the people I really care about.

I think.

Last Wednesday night, a woman was attacked around the corner when I was coming home from a meeting about what to do about the Homeless. It would have been ironic if it had not been real.

We’re all trying to be compassionate like the good Liberals we are. At the meeting, a representative from the Homeless right’s group, Coalition for the Homeless, ripped off the facts of what we are facing in California in the Summer of ‘10.

San Francisco sets aside about 100 million dollars for the Homeless.

About 19 million of that really hits the streets for the real programs that kind of work.

In terms of social services that are provided for the Homeless, there are 50% more adults asking for help. But what is staggering is, an upshot of more than 200% in kids seeking some form of help in San Francisco these days. And that’s what we’re seeing in the Haight.

So I come upon a cat-fight between two women. Katharine has just been punched in the mouth for being too loud. The Avenging Angel in a hoody who that just dispatched the street justice was telling Katharine to shut up or else the cops would come.  Katharine at the point when I approached the scene was wildly throwing other people’s stuff like sleeping bags and their belongings into the middle of the street, like she had snapped.

The hooded Angel warned Katharine right in front of me that if she doesn’t shut up, “I’ll slit your throat in the Park.”

In a moment I can’t forget, when I step in between the two of them, Katharine grab a bunch of my jacket and spun herself around me, putting me between the Hooded Avenger and her, pleading with me to save her. She said that there were going to kill her.

Katharine is in her late twenties and alone.

Two police cars soon arrived and Katharine fled. The Hooded Avenger became tranquil and clearly manipulative. In the calmest voice possible, the Hooded Liar blamed the incident on Katharine, and for anyone who was watching it did looked like she was at fault. The police who have better things to do listened but because of their beat, The Haight, dealing with the Homeless is an ongoing battle. They eventually drove off after things had settled.

That is the last I’ve seen of Katharine.

There are guys I see all the time in the neighborhood who I talk to. I don’t ask where they sleep and they don’t ask me for money or anything else. Many of the Homeless sweep our streets and clean them, I guess in a subtle form of payback. It is an uneasy alliance.

Every morning between 3:30 and 4AM, the police roust the Homeless from the Park, and now from our streets. For the past twenty years, except for a few occasions, the police have let the Homeless be.

But it is all changing. Tent cities are going up. Cities that have never had a Homeless problem are now being faced with humans walking their streets. The paper today says it’s going to be another ten years until the economy really bounces back like we knew it.

 I know that a lot of what is happening on my streets is because of the economy. I don’t think I care anymore. The Girlfriend and I have had to make financial changes. We don’t have the money we had five years ago.

And sadly that is my whole point. It really gets down to the individual. I was livid when I saw the video of Black Americans being turned away at gunpoint from crossing bridges to get to another parish for safety.

Now the cops are rounding up the Homeless like never before. I tried talking to a couple of the Alpha-males of the group reminding them to be…cool, or else my neighbors are going to make you move. Too late, it’s already happening.

I’ve talked to my friend, Paul, who lives on the corner of my block about what does he want from Life? He’s in his mid-thirties. He says he has a bad back, but he sits in a broken-down festival lawn chair on the corner all day until beddy-by time when he pulls out his cardboard and sleeping bag.

I’ve asked him if I could find him work, would he take it. Paul replies that he’s not ready for full time work.

I don’t pretend to know any answers or what is right for someone else. I feel like I was the last hold-out on my block for sympathy for the Homeless. That once I don’t care, they’re gone.

For me, it used to be convenient to have Paul around when I needed him to help me move pianos. But now that there are so many ‘Pauls’ living on my block, I need to turn away. I’m not sure how much compassion is left in the tank.

But it is about me, I know that.

It was once about not being able to walk by and NOT do something for others that have found themselves in bad predicaments. I felt compelled by the smaller, more manageable numbers that used to be on my street, to do something.

I used to joke, “How can there be a Homeless problem, when you know their names?”

Now, it is becoming overwhelming to just not my neighbors who have to walk over bodies to leave their homes, but to me. I’m afraid of looking. I no longer want to know the people who live on my street. I’m talking about the PEOPLE WHO LIVE ON THE STREET. The people on the outside, not the inside people who I don’t know but yet care more about anonymously.

I can’t look into any more strange faces and care.

Because it is about me and my fears is the reason I can’t look.

 I’m afraid that when the time comes, when the cops load up the truck with the undesirables. I’m afraid I might see an old friend with hurting eyes staring back at me and I won’t care.



Update on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 by Jack's Blog Site

My Liberal guilt did kick in and I was bringing Paul some food and water, only to find Paul, gone from his corner. In looking for Paul, I bumped into the pretty building Mgr. that oversees the building that Paul sits in front of daily. When I asked what happen to Paul, she the cops and left it at that. Which could mean that Paul is in custody or he is hiding in the Park until dark. The Building Mgr. says she also brings Paul food and coffee becasue Paul keeps the kids from writing graffiti on her building. She said if it wasn't for Paul, the rent in that building would be another fifty bucks per because of the repair and painting costs involved with having a building in the graffit-proned Haight.

The Week and the Strong in Review (August 27)

Its official…it is now getting darker before it will get light again. The drooping Summer Sun is spending less time with us, knocking some sense into that Sensimillan eco-alarm clock, in turn, causing the green sinewy thighs of Pot plants everywhere, to produce sweet, sweaty, moisture-dripping buds. In another month or so, the Indicas, those donkey-dongs of cannon-like flower tops will be ready for harvest. Then some weeks after that get your hand saws out because it’s now time to bring in your later blooming Sativas.

Starting around Mid-Rocktober, NorCal is gonna stink…like an Oakland Mega-Weed-warehouse during a power outage.

But as everyone is gearing up for the harvest, both sides of the Smuggling coin are hard at work. The police have stepped up their busts. Plants are being eradicated, left, right and center. But at the same time, like the Granny Grower who was…never really busted by the DEA (the local cops were there but let the DEA run things) when they came onto her property on the southern edge of the Triangle, they just took her 99 plants that she was growing for…some relatives who own dispensaries in San Diego, plus she had her personal 25 taken. But I’ve learned that two to three weeks after her crop was confiscated, she was back in business growing another 99 plants with the local police’s consent.

But boy oh boy, it does seem like law enforcement is trying to do their best to bust as many people before this shit becomes Legal in November. Then again, it is almost harvest time, the stuff still is illegal, so I’m sure some are just doing their jobs.

But what is the job of cops these days? The whole industry to me is confusing. Some people get busted while others are allowed to grow.

Then there’s Los Ganjales…

I’ve said it over and over, if there is any county in Cali that is going to tip the bong over and smell it up the state for the rest of us, it is going to be Los Angeles. Because L.A. is so greedy and has very little understanding or compassion for the rest of the state, (Check out the new water canal that is going to divide the state physically and politically with the billion tons of concrete that is going to be pour creating a new water and revenue stream to Los Angeles.) they are fucking it up with the dispensaries that were supposed to close, but haven’t.

To be fair, I don’t blame some of the dispensaries for not closing. There are some very legitimate dispensaries that put in their paperwork, followed the guidelines, and they’re still being put out of business by the less ethical Pot shop that opened during the Green Rush. It is being left to the corrupt city officials as to what and who stays open.

The good thing about the Greed of Southern Cali, they see dollar signs the same way the tourists see the Hollywood sign. The same pipe dream that has caused kids from the Middle-West to hop on buses that say ‘Hollywood Boulevard or Bust,’ SoCal has the same hopeful look concerning the future of WEED. Instead of stars in their eyes, they have Pot Leafs.

 That stick-up-your-ass older brother of a County, namely Orange, is going to be supremely behind Prop. 19 because they think they can become the next Oakland. Notice how the new Agro-money behind WEED sees Oakland as the business model, not Humboldt or Mendo. Because of their GREED, it just might work for us come voting time.

Beware of the Pot Leafs…

Now that those kids at Facebook have said Pot Leafs Bad- Sarah Palin’s chatterbox of Buffet-speak and ‘I miss George Bush’ groups, Good.  There’s a battle of images being argued here in the Bay Area. The heroic Kevin Reed of Green Cross is lobbying to get ads on the sides of our municipal buses, advertising WEED just like the other guys get to do. You know, ‘Cannabis Cup coming up in November’ or maybe a local dispensary offering a special on Q-T’s. Just your normal going down the road side of bus advertising that announces Heart Walks or upcoming events. It is already on our subway system ads. But nooo, even though it is impossible to walk the streets of Frissy without smelling some WEED, we still can’t have pictures of it driving by. I guess it sends the wrong message.

Hypocrisy lines this industry like the floor boards of a new building. Montana, a state I fear to drive through because of my hippie past. Livingston is kewl, but elsewhere in the early seventies, I felt like a couple of times, I might get a broken beer bottle haircut just by being around. But it always struck me that Montana was about personal freedom. Even the guy that could possibly attack my long locks of the day, I believe that guy would be against the government interfering with…anything. It was always my belief concerning any state that Dick Cheney might hunt in, that the prevailing idea was the less the government there is, the better it is. But apparently that’s not true when it comes to Medical Marijuana for those people who pretend to be preservationist of personal freedoms. Montana is being a total dick when it comes to patient’s rights. About 23,000 people are registered Medical Marijuana card holders. Now the state is worried it is getting out of hand. The question that one official is asking, is how much Marijuana does a person need? What happens when the patient takes their WEED and goes home? Now they’re asking these questions after Medical Marijuana was voted passed in 2006.

It would be great if we could just LEGALIZE the shit and be done with all the different rules.

I ran into my buddy, Smokin’ Joe at T.J.’s the other day. He finally got his MM card. He told me, he and three other people were ushered into the doctor’s office where he got his recommendation. The doctor didn’t even check records or question the patients about their possible afflictions. Literally five minutes later, Smokin’ Joe had his piece of paper stating he could walk into any dispensary in Cali and score WEED legally.

A serious question you may want to ask the doctor who wrote you your recommendation is, “Would you be available to come to court if needed if there was a problem surrounding my recommendation?” If the answer is ‘No.’ Get a new doctor. A legitimate doctor has to represent you, or be witness if call upon. So good luck with that.

 To me, that’s pushing it but it is a sign of the times. It’s like the land grabs in the western part of the states in the late Nineteenth century. People did what they had to in order to get a piece of the land, and in this case, like coming out of Prohibition of the Thirties, everyone’s trying to get a piece of the action.

Growers, doctors and cops alike.

Two stories to end with…

I’ve seen some funny stuff to grow out of this incredibly interesting time we are experiencing. There are local insurance agencies that will insure your crop against bugs, vandals or theft. I heard of the restaurant in Colorado that serves Cannabis-laden food for your epicurean and Spicollian desires. Here in the Bay Area where everything is about trying to find the best restaurants that deliver, there’s a new guy out there.

Cannabis Catering. Had to happen. Only makes sense if you have some killer WEED, a table and an apartment. If you and all members of your party have a MM card, the 420 Chef will come to your abode and whip up a THC-infused meal, they say is on par with the best five-star restaurants in Napa. I guess if you really have a hankering for quail eggs drenched in a nice, sweet, danky sauce, more power to you.

Call me old fashion. I like to get high, get the munchies, and then eat. See, there should be an order to the World, even when it comes to ordering out.

And finally, those fucking bears.

I write about the politics and the culture of Dope. Most of the time when my work appears in magazine or in blogs, I am competing for readers or clicks against a video of a hottie taking bong hits wearing nothing but a goofy smile. I take it in stride that sex or whatever you call it, draws the public in like a peep show at the carnival. But these fucking bears…

So I’m sure you’ve heard the tales of a lady in B.C. that had bears guarding her crop in the Canadian wilderness. By all accounts these bears were gentle and from what I read, domesticated through the feeding of dog food, producing a coalition of guard bears. If you saw the movie, ‘The Congo,’ I imagine it is a little like that without all the need to rip off a human’s arm when they got bored or were spooked by a battery of locating finding cameras.

But this story, that is now a week old, a lifetime on the Internet, won’t go away. Everyday there seems to be an update on the status of the fuckin’ bears.

Here’s my point…

Marc Emery is in jail for being a pioneer of the movement. Police are busting WEED merchants like they’re going out of business. The State of California is going to vote on whether Marijuana should be LEGALIZED. Pot Leafs are being banned on city buses because of the fear that a bus moving at ten miles per hour might capture the attention of an easily manipulated public, causing said public to either want to try Marijuana at that moment as an impulse buy or possible skipping Marijuana all together, and jumping on the ganja-wagon, using our municipal buses as a surrogate gateway to other drugs?

 I mean what is the fear there? The children will see it? If it wasn’t for the high high-school dealer, Glad sandwich bags would be out of business and most of your recent graduates would be budless.

We are in crazy times when POT is still illegal and there are over a thousand businesses in California where one can purchase MARIJUANA. Some people get busted while others open warehouses and delivery services. Some go to jail while others get zip ties from the local police, preventing that grower from getting busted.

A returning three-toured Iraqi Vet in Montana is denied Medical Marijuana until the State can figure out what he’s going to do with his WEED once he gets home. The argument is how much is enough, not, let’s get the guy his fucking medicine like he wants. Even if you give up an arm and leg for this country, does that mean you still can’t get a hand-out from the Government?

But the first big movie that will come out of this whole mess, it will be about those Marijuana guarding fuckin’ bears. It would be an adorable feel-good movie in the vein of ‘Marley and Me’. Maybe they could call it, ‘Bob Marley, Bears and Me.’ PETA will hate it. Dopers may love it. Non-Dope smokers might think it is cute. But it will say nothing about what we are going through to get this stuff Legalize and keep innocent people out of jail.

Mark my words. L.A. and Hollywood doesn’t have a clue. Barely owns the game. The first movie to come out to digest what has transpired after all the smoke has settled will be the ‘Bad News for You Bears’ or something like that. The real stories are too hard to tell in the beginning. It wasn’t until about twenty years later after John Wayne’s Green Berets movie came out that the real Viet Nam movie were produced.

Hey Young Hollywood, show me wrong. We need digitized short films depicting the positive aspects of WEED. In the next few years, if Legalization passes, get ready for Stoner’s Lit and Stoner movies. There will be a new market for all things giggly-based, visual material. Please don’t let it be about ten cute bears in the wilds being Panda-cute around a forest of WEED. It can’t be good for our side.

That is the last that you’re going to hear about those fuckin’ bears from me.

Have a Smokin’ Weekend!

More Later.