psychoceramics: Unikooks

[tbyfield @ panix.com (t byfield)]

>> > I've heard stories from friends in CA about a hippie that took too much
>> >acid and has been tripping for 20+ years.  He walks the Berkeley campus
    <...>
>> I can anti-corroborate.  This is just one popular variant on the 'takes too
>> much drugs and is permanently deranged' urban legend.  Check the AFU faq and
>> archives for more details.
>
>There appear to be quite a few "guys" in Berkeley; people who seem to
>be sort of like characters with a theme of some sort. <...>

        Columbia University, my neighbor and alma, is positively rife with
such urban-legend magnets: "the Spanish poet," a hunched, wizened man who's
allegedly been toiling over an epic for decades (it supposedly involves
"beautiful princesses" in "crystal palaces" etc.); "Mr. Natural," an aggro
middle-aged hippy who's forever striding through the 'hood in the manner of
R. Crumb's "Keep on Truckin'" hitchhiker and berating people for their
unhealthy practices; "the prophet," a solemn, soiled, bearded stick figure
who paces the streets (said to be Ali McGraw's brother); "the cowboy
philosopher" who haunts a particular library making photocopy collages
involving, I think, UFOs; "the Right Reverend Ralph Washington," founder
and sole member of the local "Ethiopianerian Church," who rants about how
former president Gerald Ford is out to kill him (because he "knows too
much" about secret US-Habsburg exchange rates) and designates various blank
surface "US Army GHQ" and the like; the list goes on. Time-worn rumors
circulate to the effect that most of them are beneficiaries of settlements
received after they got clobbered too hard in the '68 riots etc. No naked
guys around here, though there's more than enough shirtless wonders when
the weather's nice.
        FWIW.

Ted