Free tickets from a friend sent my companion and me to a production of the musical Big staged by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre on a sunny Sunday afternoon in July. My companion grew up in…
Posts published in “Essays”
“He’s gone. Feel free to spread the word,” Michael Simmons said in an email that went out to a few dozen or so of the usual suspects, including Wavy Gravy, Judy Gumbo, Larry (Ratzo) Sloman,…
In the fall of 1848 San Francisco was in a curious state of suspension. Gold had been discovered in January, but the San Franciscans hadn't put much faith in it; they had kept on with…
I met two young men in the dark and lonely intersection at Little Lake Road and the Coast Highway on Wednesday night. I was on my way back home, walking up Little Lake, past the…
So the Adventist advance team has come to town and made a number of vague proposals. It's hard to know what to make of their pitch, isn't it? Having worked in their system for almost…
The fast approaching 50th anniversary of the successful launch, landing upon the Moon, and recovery of Apollo 11 this week seems an auspicious and fitting occasion to remember my father and some of our times.…
The National Association for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)— which was founded in 1970 by Keith Stroup and that now has 135 chapters nation-wide and 550 lawyers ready to serve — is still going…
To paraphrase former San Francisco Mayor and former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in a recent San Francisco Chronicle column, “From now on, everything President Donald Trump does in office will be to win the…
The world, filled as it is with war, poverty, corrupt officialdom and all manner of skullduggery, doesn’t often give us reporters the chance to set aside the necessary cynicism of our chosen profession to write…