The meridian sunshine of real Bohemian life:
I visited my friends in Berkeley and found that Bones and May had a place for me to stay, rent free. It was a small cottage in the backyard of a two-story house on seventh street, a few blocks off University avenue. It had a long room comprising one side and a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom on the other. It was dilapidated but livable, with water and electricity but no phone. Bones and May were moving out to a nicer place.
In the front house lived Eddy and Roy and Spike, a drummer who sometimes played with Bones, some fifteen years older than us. Apparently the landlord never came by, renting the front house out and considering the back shack unlivable. It was in the slums of Berkeley, on the wrong side of San Pablo avenue. All the houses were run down but it was quiet and peaceful.
So I moved into this backyard cottage and a few days later so did Kim. There was a room for both of us, a bed for me and a couch for him and the kitchen and bathroom, much better than John’s floor. He too had no money and no job. But, like me, he could stare poverty in the face with the unconcern of a Tibetan Trappist monk. We were perfect housemates, happy with each other’s company and our wealth of free time.
We made friends with the boys in the front house and every day we took the twenty-minute hike up to Telegraph avenue together, the hub of our universe, in search of friends, food and adventure. We were rarely disappointed.
I believe these were some of the happiest months of my life. We were a team and each day was a contest to get food, in ever different, challenging ways. And each day we won the battle and returned home, full bellied and happy.
Our devices were manifold, our ingenuity boundless and our friendship adamantine, operating as a team and sharing every ‘find’. I couldn’t have pulled it off alone, or even tried. It would have been little above the life of a tramp rummaging through garbage cans. But together we shared all our assets, doubling the possibilities. Without ever stooping, or begging or demeaning ourselves in any way, we managed to win and come home with full stomachs every night for almost three months, to sit and talk about each day’s success in our free and comfortable abode.
Here are some of the ways we fed ourselves.
Norma would drive over from Marin once or twice a week and always bring a large casserole or some other plate that would serve us for two or three dinners. She’d spend the evening or night, hear the latest news then drive off back to work. She was our anchor in the food department and she loved the task, because she loved Kim.
The blood bank, located conveniently on Telegraph avenue, was good for ten dollars in cash, twice a week. This was reduced to five after a month because I passed out during a session and they wouldn’t take my blood anymore. Kim still went and religiously split the proceeds with me each time, right as he stepped out the blood bank door.
Rich’s falafel hut. Rich was a good friend of Bones from our parties above the Plough and knew us well us. He ran his falafel stand at the top of Telegraph right where the University begins. There were other stands there too, all very profitable and busy with students on their way to class. He would slip us free ones maybe twice a week.
Taquito place, a hole in the wall Mexican eatery right off Telegraph where my longtime friend Bruce (the artist) worked. Wherever his boss stepped out and there were few customers, free tacos.
There was a bar on Shattuck avenue that once a week put out a spread of free appetizers for anyone who bought a beer. They always lost money on us, but in the crowds, never noticed.
Various friends and acquaintances who, as Kim would say, we could ‘tap’ if we happened to drop by right at mealtime. John Seebach’s sister, also named Kim, (and who once had a crush on him), was a sure bet.
‘Deus ex Machina’, or freak good luck. As a frequenter of bookstores I find a book selling for ten dollars at Moe’s bookstore and know the very same volume is selling for forty dollars across the street at ‘Shakespeare books’. They pay half of what they sell it for. Our blood money is doubled in five minutes as the book changes stores.
Food stamps. They went a long way at the dented can store nearby, though Kim spent half of his at a place he could exchange them for cigarettes.
My only vice was the thirty-five cents I needed each day for the cheapest cup of coffee at the cafe Med, where I would sit for hours each afternoon in the usually empty mezzanine, nursing it and reading.
I’ll just add that during this time we never had to resort to dumpster diving or going to a church for a free meal. That was beneath us.
It was during this time that my father once again met up with me. He was flying into S.F. for a few days and wanted to take me to dinner. He had my address and the phone number at Roy and Eddie’s. They would let us use their phone or come get us for the very rare calls we received. I talked to him the day before and he told the hotel he’d be staying at, and to phone him after he got in. I told him I didn’t have a dime and wasn’t sure I could do this. When Eddy and Roy were out I had to use a pay phone and I literally didn’t have a dime to my name that night. I don’t think he fully registered this. He had said he would pick me up at seven, which he did, whisking me across the bay to a very fine and expensive seafood dinner at Alioto’s on fisherman’s wharf. We had a great meal, lobster and steak, a bottle of wine and a long conversation on his choice of career compared with my freewheeling, bohemian artist’s life, never bringing up the matter of my present poverty. He paid the hundred-dollar tab then drove me home and dropped me off as penniless as I was that morning. Once again at any time that evening I could have asked him for a hundred dollars and he would have pulled it from his wallet. But the sharp irony of being so poor and dining so finely amused me to no end, so I didn’t ask. That’s how happy I was at the time, in a very philosophical, morally rich, self- imposed poverty. I’m glad to have tried it, as few have, (willingly, that is) when I had money free for the asking, a phone call away. I just wanted to see how little of life’s material assets one needed to live comfortably, like Diogenes, the Cynic.
