King Of Gonzo

“Gonzo journalism” was popularized by Hunter S. Thompson, and means injecting yourself, your antics and behavior, into the story and making it as much about you as about the alleged subject. 

Perhaps gonzo journalism predates Thompson, maybe it’s anyone’s journal, anyone’s life turned into a story, but Thompson was good at it, pioneered it in popular culture, and had many articles, columns, and books published in his illustrious drug-fused career. (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and The Hell’s Angels are a few examples of Thompson’s work. He also once took the job as night manager at the most famous strip club in San Francisco, The Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre, to research a book about pornography.) 

He used to smoke my finger hash back in the ‘90’s. I had been whining to my girlfriend about how difficult and stressful it was trying to sell weed, she took six ounces down to San Francisco, sold it to a friend of hers, a hairdresser who was Don Johnson’s brother’s roommate, my weed ended up at Johnson’s annual party in Aspen, and it was smoked by him, Jonny Depp, Kevin Costner, Thompson, and others. 

Those six ounces turned into pounds and soon she was selling all my weed as well as the neighbors’ and somehow my finger hash got up to Thompson. (Even after we broke up she continued moving weed, until she lost her grubstake in a bad deal, six pounds were lost, at four big ones per, and she got out of the biz.)

That’s an example of gonzo journalism: it starts out being about Hunter Thompson, and the description of a term, then devolves back into my “journal entry.” (Gonzo also became a more generalized, undefined term meaning odd, weird or eccentric, like “You’re going all gonzo on me man,” and stuff like that.)

Another local Southern Humboldt connection was Andy Barnett, who once somehow got the gig to be the guy taking the mic around the audience for questions for Thompson after one of his talks in Colorado. (I also met his ex-wife at a party at Keith and Star’s house in Whale Gulch in that era, and she thought the drugs had held him back creatively.)