The Legend of Mister Butch

I first heard that Mister Butch died when I was at the street paper conference in Portland last weekend. He was fifty-six, and perhaps the most famous homeless person in Boston. I didn't know him well when I was there, although Street Magazine, the first paper I edited after college, did a story on him in 1987. With his wild dreds, crazy guitar, and ad-libbed street poetry, he was irresistible to us.

It's not every homeless guy who has an entry on Wikipedia.

He bought a scooter, and apparently everyone who knew him was worried about it. On July 12, he drove the thing into a pole at 50 mph and was killed. When he died, 1,000 people came to his funeral parade in Alston-Brighton. A friend sent me the above clip from that.

It's something to look at when I need a reminder that people are good.

The clip inspired me to see what else I could find, and it turns out that Mister Butch had no shortage of documentarians on You Tube. I love the two-part Sleeping with Mister Butch documentary because it's about caring for someone — even when they're a pain in the ass — just because it's the right thing to do. We can all learn something about love and community from the tattooed woman.

I included the final clip, because it shows him with his guitar. He first became a street celebrity in the 70s, playing chords on his open tuned electric guitar with one finger. Sometimes, attitude is everything.

Sleeping With Mister Butch (Part One)


Sleeping With Mister Butch (Part Two)


Mister Butch on Guitar

Working Poor in Waltham: Part One of Two

The summer between the Air Force and college was spent in a barely furnished third floor room in a Waltham SRO. There was a second floor bathroom shared by four of us. The landlord was a grizzled gray slob who had graduated to stretched out sweat pants. He managed a number of properties from a tiny Main Street storefront and would shove my weekly rent into a wallet the size of a doubled up fist.

Each week, the surly fat guy got about half my money. After a tank of gas, cigarettes, and food, the rest was gone.

I'd applied for state unemployment and been told that I didn't qualify, but might be able to get food stamps. I spent several hours in line, only to be humiliated by some state worker who looked at my military discharge and said "What's the matter? Couldn't you cut it."

That was enough for me. If this was what it took to get help, I didn't want it.

My hang-out buddy that summer was an impoverished gay balalaika-playing playboy who received a small stipend from his parents and lived on the floor below. His dad was a parking lot magnate in Maine. My new college dropout friend was embittered by the prospect of having to work for a living. His dad, he'd complain, should just give him one of the family lots. Then he'd be set.

This was 1983, and AIDS had yet to become a public issue. Anonymous, unprotected sex between gay men was still common. He told me how to flag down truckers for sex, and — during our long weekend bike rides — showed me the local cruising grounds at Prospect Park. This was a new world. I wasn't interested in the sex, but wasn't really put off either. He was someone fun to ride bikes and smoke a little pot with. I became his unattainable "het" friend.

I found work, and drove my decrepit Audi each day to an auto parts warehouse near Central Square in Cambridge. This being Boston, I made a game of seeing how many lights I could run in eight miles. My record was six.

One day, as I walked around the neighborhood on my lunch break, I wandered into Revolution Books, the storefront of the Revolutionary Communist Party. I didn't know what to make of the place, and struck up a conversation with the guy behind the counter. Confronted with a real live worker, the bespectacled young man knew just what to do. He gave me a copy of Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and asked me to come back and discuss my findings. I took the book, but never returned.

I didn't need the RCP to teach me about class struggle and capitalism.

My days were spent packaging up pallets of radiators and fenders and such and putting away stock as it came in. There was a re-chroming operation downstairs where non-english speaking immigrants and other people of color worked with noxious chemicals all day in temperatures that made my warehouse seem balmy by comparison. It was common knowledge that acid and other chemicals were being dumped into the Charles River.

I worked alone. Three sales guys manned the phones in the adjacent air conditioned office while I'd sweat out the hundred degree heat. The dust that hung in the air turned to mud on my skin. Three days a week I'd drive a parts run to Springfield and back. I learned to speed without getting caught.

The administrative area had large offices for the owner and the head supervisor that overlooked a half dozen sales and accounting desks. This area was clean, well-lit, and air-conditioned. Their bathroom had fragrant soap and soft toilet paper. The laborer's bathroom, on the other hand, was filthy, smelled horrible, and had only paper towels.

My complaints were not well received. I hadn't been hired to advise management. I made a point of peeing where I wasn't welcome. Occasionally, the boss would mention that my bathroom was upstairs. I'd nod, but my rebellion continued. I knew something they didn't. In late-August, I'd be gone. The knowledge made me cocky. I was a wage slave, but I was a wage slave that was leaving soon for college, and that made all the difference.

See also:
The Beginnings
Young, Gifted, and Miserable
Everybody Must Get Stoned
Life Begins at Seventeen
The Year of Living Dangerously
The Air Force Years: Part One
The Air Force Years: Part Two
The Air Force Years: Part Three
The Air Force Years: Part Four
The Air Force Years: Part Five
Working Poor In Waltham: Part One
Working Poor In Waltham: Part Two
Birth of a Student Radical
Harvest of Shame
The Owl of Minerva Flies at Midnight
The Road to Street
The Street Years: Part One
The Street Years: Part Two

Boston vs. Seattle

It's been thirteen years to the day since I moved here from Boston to start Real Change. I no longer feel as though the ocean is misplaced. It seems normal that cops drink mineral water instead of Dunkin Donuts coffee, and that everyone else drinks coffee like water. Seattle is my home. I am damp, but happy.

Still, being in San Francisco this week made me nostalgic for a real city. Here's my scorecard:

Boston is better.

1.) The Boston Globe is a world class newspaper.
2.) Driving is a blood sport, and way more fun.
3.) WGBH kicks KCTS's ass.
4.) People on the City Council openly hate each other.
5.) The T.
6.) Used bookstores are better and cheaper.
7.) Triple decker apartments and gas stoves.
8.) Jaywalking is not a crime.
9.) The people and politics are aggressive, but not passive.
10.)They have the Statehouse.

Seattle is better.

1.) Mt. Ranier, the Cascades, the Olympic Peninsula.
2.) Generally overcast skies (yes, I like that).
3.) Coffee, everywhere.
4.) Greenness.
5.) Temperate weather.
6.) Real Change.
7.) Water, everywhere.
8.) Capitol Hill Queers
9.) KEXP
10.)ummm. Did I mention Real Change?

OK. I guess outside of the geography, weather, coffee, Queers, KEXP, and Real Change, Boston actually is better. Most of the best stuff about Seattle, even since I've moved here, has been eclipsed by yuppie monoculture.

As the density increases and average incomes rise, everything that makes Seattle feel like a real city — danger, excitement, diversity — is being lost. Faux urban, in all of it's coopted and commodified glory, is mostly what's left.

We're a long way from Cinderella Liberty.