Top Hat

Top Hat

Ever wonder what happened to the Uncle Sam top hat Mick Jagger wore at Madison Square Garden in 1969? I have it. It’s right over there, next to one of the baskets of rose petals he threw into the audience. I have a treasure trove of such artifacts.

My neighbor is the naked fat girl who tried to climb onto the stage at Altamont. She married the naked fat guy the Hell’s Angels beat up with pool cues at the same concert. They met in the medical tent there. Four years ago she had her stomach stapled and lost a hundred pounds, but he's gained at least that much over the last 38 years so they still weigh about the same together. I have one of the pool cues over there, beside the coonskin hat one of the Angels wore.

My neighbors covet Mick’s hat and are always trying to trade something for it, but their stuff is rubbish. Last week they offered me four Fillmore West Grateful Dead posters with matching ticket stubs. As if: you can get that shit on Ebay, where no one can vouch for its authenticity. I, on the other hand, have the Dead license plate Billy Kruetzmann taped to the front of his bass drum in the Grateful Dead Movie. It’s the real thing and I could prove it if I wanted to. But I won’t, because it’s not for sale.

Down the street lives a kid who was born at Woodstock. His mother hadn't yet gotten over seeing 2001 on acid the year before, so his name is Starchild. He refuses to change his name, so naturally he can't get a serious job. Maybe that's a lame excuse for working in a head shop at the age of 38, but it's a better one than most of the rest of us have here in my neighborhood. The guy who rents the house behind me is the dude with the hat pulled down over his eyes who was selling "LSD... hashish... psilocybin" at Altamont. He occasionally drives a cab part time, and claims he's still working on his Phd dissertation in philosophy. If you ask him why he can't get a job teaching somewhere he'll tell you it's because he's a convicted felon. His next door neighbor dropped out of school following his freak out in front of the Maysles' brothers sound man and was then drafted and sent to Viet Nam, where he was exposed to Agent Orange. That guy supplements his disability income by selling the narcotics he's prescribed at the VA hospital in Fresno.

Me? Before moving here I made a modest but honest income selling tie-dye at Grateful Dead concerts until Jerry G. died. Now I don't do anything at all.