Market Street Mystery
In 1972, we were living in a big Victorian house on Potrero Hill in San Francisco. Johnny was about 15 months old at the time and the house belonged to an East Bay commune that we were a part of. The communal organization held encounter group type sessions weeknights, and offered weekend seminars in communication and sensuality.
The Morehouse organization by this time had communes all over the country and a wide array of adherents in all walks of life. One of the people involved was a San Francisco real estate investor. The plot was that he owned a formerly grand eight-story office building at the corner of Fifth and Market in the heart of what had become the seamy "Tenderloin" district. There had been a fire on the top floor that burned a big hole in the roof. The rains came in and leaked down through all the floors and all the offices; and the businesses had moved out. He had a big empty unrentable space that would have to remain vacant for at least 6 months to get the insurance sorted out and to take whatever steps necessary to get permits to rebuild.
So he allowed the organization to open it up as a crash pad; today we would call it a homeless shelter. 300 people who had been living on the streets became our guests. Doors opened right before Thanksgiving, with a big turkey dinner.
For the two months it was open, we kept the multitude fed, and did what we could to help with their needs. And as you would expect, there were rampant mental health and drug problems. We made countless trips to the emergency rooms. The Morehouse communes had limousines as a gimmick. We were jokers. A limousine is just a Cadillac station wagon with the back in the middle, after they're a few years old and not immaculate anymore, they are sold rather cheaply. We had a lot of people to move around, and almost every house had one or two limos. So whenever one of our Market Street people needed a trip to the emergency room, we would bring them to the hospital in a limousine and one of us would stay with them and advocate for them until they were seen and had their needs taken care of.
Perhaps not what you would expect, of all the drugs in use by the street people at the time, as far as I could tell, the worst, most debilitating and deadly substance turned out to be alcohol. It was the people that spent their days falling down drunk that were the most unable to control their physical movements, or make coherent sentences. They were the most likely to be hallucinating, and in withdrawal have the most severe physical reactions. These were most of the people we were taking to the emergency room with life threatening conditions.
Throughout December we were getting a lot of resistance from the city about what we were doing, and the Building Department, the Health Department, Police and Fire departments all made their run at us to get us to close it down. The Morehouse Organization had our own lawyer, good friend Blackie Burak, and he kept up constant resistance and challenge to all the blustering of the city. He kept them at bay for awhile and we were probably helped by it not being such a good PR move to pull the plug on an attempt to help the homeless street people right before Christmas.
The floor that was in the best condition was the fifth floor, and we had set up a post there for people coming in from the outside. We had a desk across the doorway of the office closest to the elevator. The idea was we were having people check their weapons at the desk, and they could pick them up when they went back out on the street. We had a desk drawer full of knives and blades of various kinds.
One day when it was my turn to man the desk, a fight broke out in front of the elevator, right in front of the desk. I went around to try to break it up, and as I pushed them apart, the one with his back to the elevator turned and started to swing a knife at my midsection. I snapped and flew into a rage at the thought that anyone would endanger me over so trivial a provocation. I grabbed him with such fury that he dropped the knife just as the elevator doors opened behind him. I spun him around and slammed him face first into the back corner of the elevator, with both arms up behind his back. The doors closed and the elevator started down. I was pushing his arms up as much as I could and grinding him into the corner all the way down. When we got to the lobby and the elevator doors opened, I spun him around and ran him toward the marble faced wall opposite the elevator, with the idea I was going to smash him into it. He saw what was happening and got a foot up in time to blunt that. Then I turned him and ran him, again face first with his arms still up behind his back, toward the heavy glass entrance doors that opened onto the Market Street sidewalk. Again, he got a foot up and he kicked the door out of the way. Next, I was running him across the wide sidewalk, still in a rage, and steering him so that I could throw him onto a fire hydrant.
As we neared the edge of the sidewalk, he twisted away from me. At the same time, an unmarked police car had swooped across wide Market Street and screeched to a halt, straight in front of the hydrant. Two plainclothes cops jumped out of the car and hustled the guy I had been bouncing into the back seat of their car. They quickly drove away, without making any contact with me.
I went back in the building and went back to what I had been doing. We kept the crash pad open through Christmas but around the first of the year, the authorities had had enough of us. Someone had thrown a knife from the window on one of the upper floors, and it struck a police officer, on the sidewalk below. He was apparently not injured. The city ramped up its efforts to evict us, and finally we were given the order to vacate. People coming into the building reported that there was a large group of TAC squad officers in riot gear assembling in an alley around the corner. We let it be known that that wouldn't be necessary, and limousine after limousine began to pull up to cart away what stuff we had accumulated. Of the nearly 300 souls we housed at the "Market Street Morehouse" at the peak, we were able to take 50 home with us to the three houses we had on Potrero Hill. After a while, most of them drifted back to the streets, and a year later, the Potrero Hill houses were closed down, and our little San Francisco sub-tribe of the commune drifted away also, in a diaspora that reconvened in Hawaii the years following.
I've examined my mental movie of that Market Street fight scene through innumerable replays, and over time I have come to a different conclusion about what was happening in my two or three minutes of rage. A few things didn't add up.
I never had any kind of training for fighting, except for High School football. I could knock somebody down, but I didn't have any skills that would have prepared me to disarm somebody with a knife. But just like I knew what I was doing, I quickly took control of that guy, turned him and slammed him into the elevator corner, then I held him there as the elevator went down. Once out of the elevator he kept himself from being slammed against the wall, and again kept himself from being slammed against the glass doors, and when it looked like I was going to succeed at running him into the fire hydrant, he twisted away in a move he hadn't attempted all the way down. It seems like I had an awfully easy time of it, having no experience. It's the next few frames of my memory that I slow the replay way down and zoom in on: During the bum's rush across the wide sidewalk, he twists away and takes a few strides into the street just as the unmarked car screeches up to a stop right in front of us. They must have started their swoop across the wide dark Market Street before we hit the sidewalk a few moments prior. And somehow they already knew that I wasn't the problem, they just grabbed my attacker. Then the frames that confirm my suspicion most: my attacker seems to willingly run and jump into the back seat of the car, and the cop that put him in the back seat didn't do much more than open the back door for him. Then, without a word to me standing there on the sidewalk, they screeched away. They were rescuing him. He was one of them.
I include this story under the category of disasters that almost happened. First, the attacker might have been real, and he might have cut me. More likely he was an undercover cop, and even the original fight in front of the elevator was a charade with another cop. The disaster then that almost happened is that I might have hurt that guy badly, if I had any training at all in the violent arts.
Anyway, that was the only episode of violence in my adult life, and it's curious how I prevailed. For the years until I realized it was probably police theater, it made me feel like a stud to recall it. I'm not that kind of stud; I'm just the build things kind.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
The Morehouse organization by this time had communes all over the country and a wide array of adherents in all walks of life. One of the people involved was a San Francisco real estate investor. The plot was that he owned a formerly grand eight-story office building at the corner of Fifth and Market in the heart of what had become the seamy "Tenderloin" district. There had been a fire on the top floor that burned a big hole in the roof. The rains came in and leaked down through all the floors and all the offices; and the businesses had moved out. He had a big empty unrentable space that would have to remain vacant for at least 6 months to get the insurance sorted out and to take whatever steps necessary to get permits to rebuild.
So he allowed the organization to open it up as a crash pad; today we would call it a homeless shelter. 300 people who had been living on the streets became our guests. Doors opened right before Thanksgiving, with a big turkey dinner.
For the two months it was open, we kept the multitude fed, and did what we could to help with their needs. And as you would expect, there were rampant mental health and drug problems. We made countless trips to the emergency rooms. The Morehouse communes had limousines as a gimmick. We were jokers. A limousine is just a Cadillac station wagon with the back in the middle, after they're a few years old and not immaculate anymore, they are sold rather cheaply. We had a lot of people to move around, and almost every house had one or two limos. So whenever one of our Market Street people needed a trip to the emergency room, we would bring them to the hospital in a limousine and one of us would stay with them and advocate for them until they were seen and had their needs taken care of.
Perhaps not what you would expect, of all the drugs in use by the street people at the time, as far as I could tell, the worst, most debilitating and deadly substance turned out to be alcohol. It was the people that spent their days falling down drunk that were the most unable to control their physical movements, or make coherent sentences. They were the most likely to be hallucinating, and in withdrawal have the most severe physical reactions. These were most of the people we were taking to the emergency room with life threatening conditions.
Throughout December we were getting a lot of resistance from the city about what we were doing, and the Building Department, the Health Department, Police and Fire departments all made their run at us to get us to close it down. The Morehouse Organization had our own lawyer, good friend Blackie Burak, and he kept up constant resistance and challenge to all the blustering of the city. He kept them at bay for awhile and we were probably helped by it not being such a good PR move to pull the plug on an attempt to help the homeless street people right before Christmas.
The floor that was in the best condition was the fifth floor, and we had set up a post there for people coming in from the outside. We had a desk across the doorway of the office closest to the elevator. The idea was we were having people check their weapons at the desk, and they could pick them up when they went back out on the street. We had a desk drawer full of knives and blades of various kinds.
One day when it was my turn to man the desk, a fight broke out in front of the elevator, right in front of the desk. I went around to try to break it up, and as I pushed them apart, the one with his back to the elevator turned and started to swing a knife at my midsection. I snapped and flew into a rage at the thought that anyone would endanger me over so trivial a provocation. I grabbed him with such fury that he dropped the knife just as the elevator doors opened behind him. I spun him around and slammed him face first into the back corner of the elevator, with both arms up behind his back. The doors closed and the elevator started down. I was pushing his arms up as much as I could and grinding him into the corner all the way down. When we got to the lobby and the elevator doors opened, I spun him around and ran him toward the marble faced wall opposite the elevator, with the idea I was going to smash him into it. He saw what was happening and got a foot up in time to blunt that. Then I turned him and ran him, again face first with his arms still up behind his back, toward the heavy glass entrance doors that opened onto the Market Street sidewalk. Again, he got a foot up and he kicked the door out of the way. Next, I was running him across the wide sidewalk, still in a rage, and steering him so that I could throw him onto a fire hydrant.
As we neared the edge of the sidewalk, he twisted away from me. At the same time, an unmarked police car had swooped across wide Market Street and screeched to a halt, straight in front of the hydrant. Two plainclothes cops jumped out of the car and hustled the guy I had been bouncing into the back seat of their car. They quickly drove away, without making any contact with me.
I went back in the building and went back to what I had been doing. We kept the crash pad open through Christmas but around the first of the year, the authorities had had enough of us. Someone had thrown a knife from the window on one of the upper floors, and it struck a police officer, on the sidewalk below. He was apparently not injured. The city ramped up its efforts to evict us, and finally we were given the order to vacate. People coming into the building reported that there was a large group of TAC squad officers in riot gear assembling in an alley around the corner. We let it be known that that wouldn't be necessary, and limousine after limousine began to pull up to cart away what stuff we had accumulated. Of the nearly 300 souls we housed at the "Market Street Morehouse" at the peak, we were able to take 50 home with us to the three houses we had on Potrero Hill. After a while, most of them drifted back to the streets, and a year later, the Potrero Hill houses were closed down, and our little San Francisco sub-tribe of the commune drifted away also, in a diaspora that reconvened in Hawaii the years following.
I've examined my mental movie of that Market Street fight scene through innumerable replays, and over time I have come to a different conclusion about what was happening in my two or three minutes of rage. A few things didn't add up.
I never had any kind of training for fighting, except for High School football. I could knock somebody down, but I didn't have any skills that would have prepared me to disarm somebody with a knife. But just like I knew what I was doing, I quickly took control of that guy, turned him and slammed him into the elevator corner, then I held him there as the elevator went down. Once out of the elevator he kept himself from being slammed against the wall, and again kept himself from being slammed against the glass doors, and when it looked like I was going to succeed at running him into the fire hydrant, he twisted away in a move he hadn't attempted all the way down. It seems like I had an awfully easy time of it, having no experience. It's the next few frames of my memory that I slow the replay way down and zoom in on: During the bum's rush across the wide sidewalk, he twists away and takes a few strides into the street just as the unmarked car screeches up to a stop right in front of us. They must have started their swoop across the wide dark Market Street before we hit the sidewalk a few moments prior. And somehow they already knew that I wasn't the problem, they just grabbed my attacker. Then the frames that confirm my suspicion most: my attacker seems to willingly run and jump into the back seat of the car, and the cop that put him in the back seat didn't do much more than open the back door for him. Then, without a word to me standing there on the sidewalk, they screeched away. They were rescuing him. He was one of them.
I include this story under the category of disasters that almost happened. First, the attacker might have been real, and he might have cut me. More likely he was an undercover cop, and even the original fight in front of the elevator was a charade with another cop. The disaster then that almost happened is that I might have hurt that guy badly, if I had any training at all in the violent arts.
Anyway, that was the only episode of violence in my adult life, and it's curious how I prevailed. For the years until I realized it was probably police theater, it made me feel like a stud to recall it. I'm not that kind of stud; I'm just the build things kind.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com