I MET HANK IN 1968

He was publishing a prose column in a New Orleans
periodical: Nola Express and concurrently,
experiencing a certain underground reverence for
his Dirty Old Man stories printed in Open City.
Open City was, at the time, alternative newsprint
on a level with Art Kunkin’s LA Free Press, The
Oracle, The World Countdown or Rick Merlin’s
Los Angeles Image tabloid. It was located on
Melrose Avenue, then, practically, in City College’s
backyard. It was edited by John Bryan who had
published one of the seminal beat generation
literary magazines Renaissance Review in the early
‘60s. He was sort of a self-styled radical and a very
high-energy guy. His old lady worked the Open City
front desk and named herself Supermother : in a
very real sense pre-dating the whole female
liberation vibe. Anyway, there was this bright
Indian summer afternoon in October 1968.
Bukowski had come by the office to drop off some
copy. I guess, it was an occasion for me to deliver
music journalism paragraphs or a page heading
stanza of poetry for that week; and we both
walked right into the center of this historical
meeting about to take place. Jerry Rubin was
there. Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman people. Local
heavies: community activists fell by. Levi Kingston,
a wonderful cat who was the proprietor of a very
with-it coffee house scene Pogo’s Swamp named,
of course, after the 1960s political gadfly cartoon
by Walt Kelly. At any rate, Bukowski and I ended
up cacked out in these Abbey Rents chairs listening
to what was obviously the initial planning stage for
the Yippie invasion of Chicago, which was, in essence,
designed to make a mockery out of leftwing social
Democrats and their war machine convention.
So it was this landmark occasion with these voices
supercharging the air and we’re eavesdropping on
the announcement of this upcoming mock
insurrection, this carnival of anarchy, this clear
blueprint for a clown-show revolt. And all this, in
retrospect, created the atmosphere which led America
directly into an election of Richard Nixon: who (unlike
Kennedy) became a victim of, simply, character
assassination; also, culminating in conclusion of the
Vietnam War and the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial.
As a matter of fact, there were many at this meeting
who were taking it very seriously. Right in the middle
of all the electric dialogue, someone calls out: “We’re
gonna have a revolution! This is the beginning of a
new American revolution.” So, following the event’s
conclusion, Bryan requested that each of us carry
our respective chairs back into the loft above the
newsroom. And I say: “Hey, Hank, waddaya think?”
Bukowski drawls out his answer: “Well. Kid, I guess
the revolution is over!”
Los Angeles {1986}