The Kid zipped up the nylon track bag he had just stuffed with everything he would need to conduct the interviews to complete his Senior film project. He had just spent the morning checking out one of the college’s brand new Sony DCR-VX1000 video cameras upon penalty of painful death. He had also mortgaged his soul to the drama department for the use of one of their portable lights.

With Shane’s solid presence gone from the scene, the concrete bunker seemed to close in on the pair left alone for the first time since they left the airport. “So…” Rosenda began before being cut off by a recalcitrant Cole. “Look,” the fallen star looked down at his bare feet, “I’ve been a right twit, and I’m sorry. For everything.”

A heavy drizzle spattered the Lincoln as it rolled through the damp San Francisco night. Karoline Rosenda was silent and still except for periodically twisting around in her seat to check on their charge. Be OK! Be OK! Echoed over and over in her thoughts like a fire alarm, but she wisely kept it to herself. Shane, of course, said nothing.

That must have been some really good coke. It what seemed like no time at all, Zongo and I had hacked our way through the heavy stuff and were starting to see moonlight coming through the other side. The night was dead quiet except for what I took for the hypnotic crashing of the surf somewhere far in the distance. I was the first to break through the undergrowth and distinctly heard the sound of a bullet being chambered.

I guess every community has its own creation myths; stories that bring members together in shared tradition while allowing new people to understand in a deeper way where the group was coming from. Girassol was no different. My favorite one was when Charlie almost shot Zongo and Enrique as they first popped out of the forest. I had taken a little hike into the woods to pee, so I missed it, but I would have loved to see Zongo’s face; not just at seeing the property for the first time, but staring down the barrel of an automatic for the first time as well.

I had been surfing the late afternoon break at Manchester, north of the lighthouse, and the sun was starting to drop behind the mountain. The great whites off the coast have been known to come in to feed when it gets dark, so I rode one last wave all the way to the beach, collected my stuff, and lashed my board to the copper’s skid.

It had been a couple of years since I’d been back north, but I thought I knew every place there was to know. In fact, that’s one of the things that made me want to leave in the first place. I had directions and a map to Garissol from Mrs. Chaves, but they didn’t really make sense. Where she had drawn the road to the old ranch, there was only a solid wall of brambles.

To be familiar with punk rock veteran Mike Watt is to know and appreciate his idiosyncrasies, moreover, to have learned to expect him to make those left turns that light out for the territories and sometimes veer into the weeds. The thing about left turns, however, is if you make enough of them, you end up heading in the same direction that you started.

It has only been three years since Canadian writer Stephen March took a hard look at his country’s downstairs neighbor and found us… well, let’s just say that we aren’t going to get our deposit back. Like a tenant that has decided to start cooking meth in the kitchen at night, what the United States does affects the entire building, and March smartly surmised that the future of the American experiment would best be sussed somewhat from arm’s length.

There are three things in life you can be sure of: death, taxes, and Motörhead. When this album dropped, it felt like the Devil’s favorite band was everywhere. A documentary, Lemmy: 49% Motherf**ker, 51% Son Of A Bitch, was burning cigarette holes in the screen, and this punishing new album was shredding speakers across the globe. Lemmy Kilmister and the lads were having quite a year, unbelievably, their 35th in existence.



Time don’t slip away It panics the blocked egress
 Of a burning room

At this level The windows don’t open for anyone In the last hour or so, I’ve learned How to breathe Down in the carpeted fathoms Without the hindrance of a mask I have amused myself while swimming Between the tables Watching the blind fish In a world that knows no night or day At this depth The pressure breeds strange animals

Upon an oaken knollThe seeker rests beside silent waterWhen the ancient trope of flaming bush gathers notAttention enow, more direct lines to heavenAre called for and are so called down Those angels that call themselves holyAnd fixers of what has come to passThis Earth, created then forgotBy God in his firmamentBecomes, in good time, a cess…

Originally published as a 10-issue series, this compilation makes up one of the most imaginative, and ultimately moving, graphic novels I’ve yet encountered. The Brazilian twin bothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá have delivered a truly heartfelt story that transcends the comic book genre, while taking advantage of the graphic format to capture the wonder of the human experience in line and masterful use of color.

Back in January, two days after President Biden’s Farewell Address, I flipped on YouTube to catch up, having long given up on network news. The first thing I saw is what looked to be an agricultural landscape complete with a tiny tractor slowly moving under a text overlay reading BIG CHANGE in a distressed serif font. Ten seconds into the video, a squeal of feedback prompted the camera to reel back revealing the metal bars of a fence while the familiar tones of Old Black, Neil Young’s signature ’53 Gibson Les Paul, bashed out a three-chord stomp.

Belfast’s beloved son Van Morrison has been a recording artist longer than I’ve been alive. Them’s first, and penultimate, album—having dropped in ’65—preceded me by a full year. This is to say that the mystic blues shouter has always been around as far as I’m concerned. Growing up on AM radio, Dr. Don Rose on San Francisco’s KFRC must have introduced the first Morrison classic I fell in love with, probably 1970’s…

I don’t like to fly, let me just put that out there. The day I met Zongo, I was a wreck, having just got off a flight from McKinleyville. We hit some pretty gnarly turbulence over the coastal range and I was doing my deep meditation most of the time to keep from freaking out. It would have been a real drag if I had lost it, as I was carrying enough primo seeds from Humboldt County to revolutionize the entire situation up at Spy Rock.


I first discovered the old Girassol Ranch by accident. When I finally bought my chopper, I talked my way into doing some fire spotting for the Department of Forestry. It had the added benefit of giving me an excuse to be be flying back and forth over the back forty when it was harvest time, and I could help some of my friends move out some keys.

The wide world is full of things That do not belong To me; what a great relief

Scanning the used books over at the wonderful Book Passage in Corte Madera, I came across several faded paperbacks by Beat writer Lew Welch. One of the lesser-known Beats, Welch is probably best known as the other hopeless drunk in Jack Kerouac’s majestically depressing Big Sur. Flipping through his work, however, I found Welch to be a gifted poet with a value system more in line with the nascent hippie movement that was emerging in the mid-to-late-’60s.

“So there we were, at the Canadian border, five of us in a van crammed with instruments and two pounds of the best Humboldt County weed you could imagine,” Cole entertained a captive audience of very stoned fans with tales of adventure and debauchery on the road. “Woody was the one driving as he hadn’t come on to the acid yet, and we were hoping to make it to Vancouver before he did.”

The black ’65 Lincoln Continental idled at the curb of the decrepit Victorian on Webster St. in the Lower Haight. Dry weeds reached out from a parched patch of dirt as if straining to see their sorry reflection in the perfectly polished chrome hubcaps. The driver, an Irishman named Bearach Shane, just Bear to friends and enemies alike, had been in this position many times driving for Zev Avidan’s record company.

You have to remember that these were the days when record companies, even small ones like Celestial, literally had money to burn. Z had set me up with a car and driver in order to shuttle Lucious Cole around with the all-important caveat that he make all three of the Winterland gigs. He didn’t care what else we got ourselves up to, which, in hindsight, perhaps he should have.

Across the weary river, a ragged stand stands silent sentinel to the current turning backward, and shallows that grow by the day. Pilgrims, driven by craving, migrate from moribund districts, and fight their way up concrete streams to half-remembered city streets. Soon, all will gladly grant gold for a single drink. Even foaming dogs know the word for the fear of water; …