Walking down Telegraph across from Shakespeare's Books I think much, much later, 1971 I was still using that Avenue to get places. Even though I didn't like it then, because it was getting funky and it seemed everything had just fallen to ruin.

And I saw this weird guy gliding up the sidewalk towards me. He had short hair cut and was wearing a light blue sports coat and he kind of reminded me of the crazed guy in the air force jacket who had punched out General Wastemoreland all those years before. And he had a big stuffed frog on his shoulder with long legs dangling down the front of his jacket.

I was sidling past him, but he looked familiar, and he was stopped then and turning to enter some kind of bread and soup place. When I saw another musician I recognized, who was falling apart in laughter just watching the expression on my face.

And I realized the guy wearing the frog was James Gurley (of Big Brother and the Holding Company). And I thought, "Oh my GOD!!!!"

The casualties would stroll along Telegraph, too. And a friend of mine, Gloria, who was the wife of a manager of a once famous psychedelic band of the era who was in a position to know, when I told her about this encounter, said "It's amazing he even survived. Nobody thought he would."

Eee-ww. James Gurley had been in the newspapers, which would have been in my knowledge banks at the time, because he'd been arrested on a charge of murder because his wife had died of an overdose of heroin that he had administered. He was still fighting the charges when I saw him on Telegraph that day. And as I said above, taken with all the other news of the day, everything on Telegraph seemed funky like everyone and everything had fallen to ruin.  ¶ 1/05/2011 11:39:00 AM