The Bad Peanut of Temescal
Posted on August 13, 2015 by Royal Rosamond Press
William Carter Spann was the manager of the building I lived in on Shafter with Gloria Ehlers. Bill may be the foremost celebrity of the Bohemian enclave gathering momentum in Temescal, an area in Oakland next to Rockridge. There is a Friday Art Walk and neighborhood fair. I love the Temescal Alley.
The news tonight said President Carter has cancer. His nephew died of exposure. He was a homeless person suffering from AIDS. He called himself ‘The Bad Peanut’. The first time I paid my rent I asked him why he had peanut bags hanging on the wall with the name CARTER.
“My uncle is the Governor of Georgia, and we own peanut farms.”
Bill was not the first rebel of Temescal. Thelma Reid got caught up in a Love Cult. If she lived on 47th. she was in Temescal, where thanks to her, the birth of the Hippies can be traced.
“In 1927, 17-year-old Thelma Reid had just begun her first year of college at UC Berkeley. She was living on 45th street in Oakland’s Rockridge district with her family and did many of the typical things a college coed did—went to class, helped around the house and did her homework. She never expected her studies would spawn one of the biggest scandals in Rockridge history. But then again, it wasn’t ordinary homework.”
Here is the house that was raided by Oakland Cops led by Earl Warren who authored a report of the assassination of President Kennedy. It is right on the cusp of Temsecal and Rockridge at 460 Forest. This is where it all began. Before there were Beats and Hippies in San Francisco, there was the Great White Brotherhood, and their Love Cult. Consider Mel Lyman and Charlie Manson. Then there is that Cornell crowd, Richard Farina and Thomas Pynchon. Let’s no leave out the ‘Last Bohemian’ Jiryl Zorthian and his daughters.
The building we lived in was torn down and replaced with these modern rentals. Carter got fired and moved across the street into a cottage in back of the old house on the left.
I met Gloria in SF and moved into her apartment on 51st. Street. (right) Michael Harkins has a speaker shop on 51st. (left)
I lived with Amber in a apartment in the building on the lower right. I caught her in bed with my friend Paul Drake, who played the Bad Peanut, Mick, in Sudden Impact. About twenty Oakland Cops showed up for that Love Scene. There was a big storm that night that blew over a big redwood that was in the driveway and came to rest on the building by Amber’s window who was going to the California College of Arts and Crafts. She took me to her poetry class. She wanted me to meet Michael McClure who I had already met thru Michael Harkins who took me to see his good friends play ‘The Beard’. Harkins was a good friend of Jim Morrison. Oliver Stone wanted my friend’s take.
I was a original Hippie and Amber was showing me off, she not wanting to be seen as a wanna-be and McLure groupie. Did she know McClure was the wanna-be? I went and saw him at the first Be In. Ginsberg was on stage. His poem ‘Howl’ was ruled obscene, and when Ferlenghetti published it, he got arrested.
In 1965 I lived on 51st and Miles with Sherry Souza who had Bill Arnold’s baby that Christine came by to see. Sherry was a friend and neighbor of Nancy Hamren who works at the Kesey Creamery. Nancy got me on the bus with Ken Kesey. She had been Bill’s lover. Two blocks up Miles I lived with my wife, Mary Ann Tharaldsen , who was married to Thomas Pymchon. Harkins lived on Shafter. My friend Bryan MacLean, who was in the rock group ‘Love’, played at our wedding. Mary Ann went to Cornell and was good friends of Richard and Mimi.
This is the scene that Bill Carter considered himself a part of. There is a good chance President Carter funded his nephew’s Bohemian lifestyle that Ronald Reagan and Ed Meese exploited in his rise to the White House. It was Reagan’s promise to right-wing voters to destroy the Pagan Cult of the Hippie Love Generation that led him to defeat Carter. Reagan was also aided by Radical Iranian Terrorists who took hostages. The Great Culture Wars, rage on!
Gloria Ehlers and Jon Presco ‘Temescal Pioneers’. 1975
Jon Presco
Copyright 2015
http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/05/27/rosamunde-sausage-now-grilling-in-oaklands-temescal/
Best Art Murmur Offshoot” in the East Bay Express Readers’ Poll, Temescal First Friday takes place from 6-9 pm every first Friday of the month.
Galleries, cafes, bars, and retailers in Oakland’s Temescal district have teamed up to bring you art, music, food, drinks, and strolling the streets along Telegraph Avenue and in Temescal Alley and Alley 49.
http://sf.funcheap.com/event-series/fridays-temescal-alley-art-walk-oakland/
An estimated 10-15,000 people are expected Sunday for the annual Temescal Street Fair on Telegraph Avenue.
The event runs from noon-6 p.m, and about 120 booths selling local crafts will be set up along Telegraph, between 45th and 51st Streets.
Two stages will be set up, the main at 51st Street, featuring mostly dance bands, and kids’ entertainers will perform at a second stage at 47th Street. Oakland apparel company Oaklandish will have its own stage, a wrestling ring, at 48th Street.
The “Temescal Flows” mural, painted on the Highway 24 underpass at 52nd Street, between Shattuck and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, will be unveiled as well. Artist Alan Leon is scheduled to talk about the mural on the main stage during the afternoon.
“We’re celebrating all things Temescal,” organizer Karen Hester said.
The street fair was scheduled for June but was called off due to heavy rain. This is the first year it will take place in July.
http://www.roseannbathphoto.com/blog/enakedrose.com/2012/11/temescal-alley-oakland.html
Recently, I’ve been thinking pretty seriously about moving closer to the middle of Temescal. Right now, I’m technically in Temescal (at least, according to some), but I’m many blocks and a freeway overpass away from 51st and Telegraph and all the great stuff in that area. But there was one reason that had been holding me back – no grocery store! Where I currently live, I can walk to four grocery stores – Whole Foods in Berkeley, Market Hall, Trader Joe’s, and Safeway on College. From 51st, I could still walk to the Safeway on Pleasant Valley, but there’s no way I could do the majority of my shopping there.
But just under a month ago, the Temescal Produce Market opened on Telegraph between 51st and 52nd, and I got a chance to stop in yesterday. It’s certainly not a full-scale grocery store, but they do have nearly all the staples (well, if you’re a vegetarian, and I am). There’s tons of produce, which would be great to augment anything not available at the farmer’s market, but I’m even more excited about their grocery selection, which is mostly organic. The store has a decent bulk foods section, dairy, baking goods (including a huge selection of spices), snacks, frozen food, and plenty more.
I just picked up some half and half because I had done my shopping the day before (but, oddly, Whole Foods was entirely out of organic half and half), but I plan to be back in the future, especially if I move further down Telegraph. For pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders, this is the perfect store to run to if you realize you’re missing an ingredient (or a few) or just don’t have time to trek down to one of the bigger stores.
If you’re in the neighborhood, stop by. Here’s some of what you’ll find:
ROSAMUNDE NOW OPEN IN TEMESCAL Rosamunde has been selling sausages and craft beer out of its location in Old Oakland’s Swan’s Marketplace for a few years now. They opened their second East Bay location in Temescal over Memorial Day weekend. This new location, in the former Good Bellie’s café at 4659 Telegraph Ave., is the fifth for the the San Francisco-based restaurant. The Temescal location has the same food menu as at its Old Oakland location, including three varieties of vegan sausages and 14 varieties of beer on tap. Rosamunde Temescal will hold an official grand opening June 11, complete with $1 beer specials and an in-house DJ. Rosamunde Sausage Grill is at 4659 Telegraph Ave. (between 46th and 47th streets), Oakland. Connect with the restaurant on Facebook.
http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-16/news/mn-38842_1_jimmy-carter/3
Jimmy Carter sent his nephew clothes, helped him find places to stay, paid for his methadone. When Carter was in the Bay Area, he’d track Willie down through a parole officer and arrange a visit. He also reached out to Drew, who lived with his mother. Carter always remembered his birthday.
In December, Jimmy Carter came to San Francisco and found Willie in the hospital, his face cut and bruised. He said he’d been beaten up while walking past a bar.
“He had all the nurses charmed,” Carter recalls. Carter asked if he needed money, and Willie took $20 for cab fare home.
On Dec. 16, after a record nine months of no violations, the California Department of Corrections finally discharged William Carter Spann from parole. He was 50.
Six weeks later, he stood in the predawn chill, trying to turn his jacket into a drink.
Francisco Noyola had gone inside the house for something to eat when he heard screaming outside.
“That man is dead!”
Noyola found a woman standing on the sidewalk, pointing at William through the chain-link fence. “He’s turning blue!”
Noyola’s head was pounding. “He’s just drunk,” he assured her. But when he went over and grabbed William’s wrist, he felt no pulse.
“He could have died on the street, but I didn’t let him lay down,” Noyola would say a few weeks later. “He had his last cigarette, his last drink. At least he died in somebody’s yard.”
The coroner notified Jimmy Carter. Since leaving office, he had negotiated peace in Haiti, brokered fair elections in Nicaragua, fought to eradicate the guinea worm from Africa. But he could not save his nephew from himself.
The autopsy found a toxic level of alcohol but no drugs. Drew’s mother had the body cremated and collected the ashes; even in death, the Bad Peanut did not go back to Plains.
On January 14, 1967, McClure read at the epochal Human Be-In event in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and transcended his Beat label to become an important member of the 1960s Hippie counterculture. Barry Miles famously referred to McClure as “the Prince of the San Francisco Scene”.[3]
McClure would later court controversy as a playwright with his play The Beard. The play tells of a fictional encounter in the blue velvet of eternity between Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow and is a theatrical exploration of his “Meat Politics” theory, in which all human beings are “bags of meat.”
Rockridge is a residential neighborhood and commercial district in Oakland, California. Rockridge is generally defined as the area east of Telegraph Avenue, south of the Berkeley city limits, west of the Oakland hills and north of the intersection of Pleasant Valley Avenue/51st Street and Broadway. It is known for being one of the wealthiest areas of Oakland.[citation needed] Rockridge was listed by Money Magazine in 2002 as one of the “best places to live”.[1]
In 1927, 17-year-old Thelma Reid had just begun her first year of college at UC Berkeley. She was living on 45th street in Oakland’s Rockridge district with her family and did many of the typical things a college coed did—went to class, helped around the house and did her homework. She never expected her studies would spawn one of the biggest scandals in Rockridge history. But then again, it wasn’t ordinary homework.
The collection of poems that would eventually set into motion police raids, arrests and a full-blown media circus was assigned to Reid not by any of her UC Berkeley professors, but by a neighbor, Gertrude Wright. Wright’s home, a few blocks away from Reid’s at 468 Forest Street, served as the international headquarters for a mystical society—called the “Great White Brotherhood”—that blended aspects of Eastern religion with notions of Christian love, racial harmony and communing with God through sexual acts. Reid had been attending one of Wright’s “Sacred Schools”—classes where Wright delivered her unconventional teachings and handed out writings advocating “sacred phallic laws” and “mystical marriages” in which both parties had absolute freedom to explore love in all its exotic forms. Reid’s mother discovered the poems in the family’s home, and referred them to the Oakland Police Department.
But it wasn’t until another mother, Margaret Merwin, concerned about her 18-year-old daughter Caroline, who was also attending brotherhood classes, went to the police that then-District Attorney Earl Warren decided to take action. Warren sent OPD officers to 468 Forest Street and what they found there sent a shockwave through the sleepy Rockridge community for months to come.
In Wright’s home, a full-fledged, old-fashioned pagan society had taken root. According to police records, the raid found an “effigy of a woman with a sword piercing her heart, incoherent messages, cards bearing linked names of males and females and other equally weird evidence.” The Rockridge bungalow had become headquarters for the brotherhood that also had branches in San Francisco, San Jose, Portland and Chicago. Members of the Rockridge society included city council members, schoolteachers and businessmen. Cult founder and high priestess Wright was taken into police custody, along with her disciple Irma Gibbs and three others, on charges of encouraging delinquency.
The media went to town. The brotherhood was dubbed a “love cult” by newspapers around the Bay Area, which painted Rockridge as the epicenter of sexual perversion. Articles spawned sensational tales of paganism and decadence. LA Times columnist Harry Carr had this to say about Reid and Merwin:
“The attempt to paint these girls—and their beef-fed sheiks—as innocent, wide-eyed victims of a freak religion is enough to make anybody laugh. Girls of this day and age are wise guys. And any one of them knows that a so-called religious cult that involves being ‘initiated’ in the presence of men with most of their clothes off is merely an excuse for a debauch.”
The only sympathetic voice at the time belonged to Oakland Tribune reporter Nancy Barr Mavity. “Whether the web in which [Wright] is intangled is one of wheels within wheels of enmity on the part of deserters from the order,” wrote Mavity, “Or whether she is the priestess of views not favored in Western society, she remains the romantic lady in a world where a white stucco bungalow easily becomes a temple.”
In May of 1927, one of the arrested society members, Russel Alley, was tried before a jury, and found guilty of contributing to the delinquency of minors. Unconvinced they could receive a fair trial, Wright and Gibbs jumped bail and disappeared across the border to Mexico. For two years there was no sign of either of them, until Wright sent an emissary back to Alameda County to negotiate her return to Oakland in 1929. Local authorities refused her permission to return, and Wright was never heard from again. Whether she was a pagan cult priestess or just a “romantic lady,” in the end she went down in history as a fugitive from justice.
Dagmar’s Acid and Crash Pad
Posted on November 21, 2018 by Royal Rosamond Press
If you were looking to drop some acid, you went to Dagmar’s on Telegraph. If you wanted a place to crash, throw you bag on Dagmar’s floor. Her door was always open. There were three shifts of Trippers. We were ‘Trailblazers’. The year is 1965-66.
Dagmar was married to Brian Purvis, Keith’s brother, who is seen on this canal bridge in Venice with his buddies. From the left: Me, Peter Shapiro, Tim O’Connor, Susie, Keith.
I rented the bottom floor of this house in Alameda in 1971 and lived with Peter and Tim.
Death In Venice
Posted on August 5, 2013by Royal Rosamond Press
One evening we talked about the crazy raid of the Berkeley Cops. They broke down doors and rushed in with vacuum cleaners. If they found a pot seed in their bag, it was used in court to bust your ass off to San Quintin. Would the Oakland Cops follow suit?
Country Joe lived a block away on Telegraph (red tile awning) and held a open appartment for Trippy Hippies. We smoked pot with him. When Janis Joplin stopped by, Joe put her in the back of his pickup and drove her up Telegraph, her ostrich feathers flowing after her. I got to see that. I also got to see a big bag of Acid put in a suitcase at the appartment on Claremont where I lived with Keith and James. My art patron made Acid with his childhood friend, Tim Skully.
“This is going to the Beatles!”
According to the Holy and Sane Nurse Ratched Squad, their Killer Jesus will wipe out all this history, and all of the world’s history. Only Humble Emperor Jesus’ history will be allowed. When you turn on the news in heaven, you will only hear Jesus’ opinions. This is why I am convinced our President will not be going to heaven. Huffington News just said Mad Trump is a Accessory to Murder. He is telling the world he has formed a Rich Man Cult. I am reminded of the movie 2012. They got their arks ready to go. This is what you get for thinking Trump is the Messiah.
“So long – suckers!”
Bellow is a photo of Donald selling space on his Ark to the Crown Prince. I declare the Commander in Chief of the United States of America – A DESERTER!
Down the street from Joe’s was a Safeway that was open 24 hours. We tripped in there, with other strange Trailblazers floating down the isles looking for munchies, or, hallucinating on the packaging, we not able to grasp the idea that we are – Food Eaters.
Sure we thought Jesus was just like us! The Kimites were pleased to know they bagged a Real Hippie – for Jesus, and were divvying up their 300 Sanity Points, when they realized they bagged Mr. Big! Now, their mind is blown, seeing they got ten zillion Sanity Points. They are online talking with other Jesus Freaks about a possible Pre-Rapture, a early liftoff! Super Sane Jesus is checking them out.
Wave to the computer camera! Say – cheese!
I declare Thelma Reid the forerunner of the Hippy.
John Presco
Copyright 2018
Robert Miles – Vietnam Vet
Posted on November 11, 2011by Royal Rosamond Press
Robert W. Miles is my father-in-law. He is five months younger then me. He met my mother in a bar in Reseda California, and then, left for Vietnam. He told Rosemary if he survived, he would marry her. I do not know the date of their marriage.
At my wedding reception, Robert got into a discussion with Tim O’Connor, the son of a famous actor of the same name. He told Tim about the horrific things he and his platoon did to produce a body-count, they coming to understand that is why they are there for, and that was what was expected of them. Robert was very volatile, and suffered from PTSD. My wife was friends of the Mimi Baez, Joan’s sister. I was very anti-war.
Here is where I had my second Acid Freak-out! I saw the FBI and CIA climbing this telephone pole to spy on us. They attached a coiled wire with jack and sent it towards my bellybutton. They wanted to get plugged in to our Cosmic Truths.
McDonald has noted that his ex-girlfriend at the time, Janis Joplin, showed much anger for breaking up with her to be with Menken but asked him to write a song about her; the result was “Janis”.[7][16]
McDonald has four other children, Devin (b. 1976) and Tara (b. 1980) from his marriage to Janice Taylor, and Emily (b. 1988) and Ryan (b. 1991) from his marriage to Kathy Wright.[12]
As of 2012, McDonald still lived in Berkeley, California.[17]
Sacred School of the Great White Brotherhood
Posted on August 12, 2015by Royal Rosamond Press
Last night I discovered the opening shot of the trillion dollar war against members of a Pagan Cult that led to the imprisoning of mullions, many of them white hippies, beats, and Bohemians. This war began when Alemeda District Attroney, Earl Warrne instructed Oakland Cops to raid a house on Forest Street. As fate would have it, this house is around the corner from a duplex on Claremont where I saw members of the Brotherhood of Eternal prepare a suitcase of LSD for tripsters in England. I heard a rumor the Beatles were customers. Earl Warren, Ed Meese, Frank Coakley, and Ronald Reagan, conducted a modern day Witch Hunt against Paganism. This was not a war against drugs. This is a Conservative Christian Crusade that the Religious-right has been conducting since 1927. And who is King Ben of the House of David? Is this what Dan Brown was eluding to?
http://www.lashtal.com/scanac/1927-Nov-27.pdf
With the demonstration of ‘Black Lives Matter’ against the radical socialists, Bernie Sanders, this history is now very pertinent, because in the 60s ‘White Bohemian Lives Matter” in the fight against racism and oppression. These articles establish a historic culture that is not confined to the Flower Children, and thus deserves all the respect other cultures enjoy. There were no drugs involved. Moral Cops and Prigs were riding around in cop cars armed to the teeth. ISIS are Moral Cops who will cut off your hand if you are caught smoking a cigarette. Do the they gouge out the eyes of the people they oppress for reading a Western Poem? The goal was to destroys these young people’s lives as an example to other young people. One youth appears to have been sent to a orphanage.
The Bad Peanut of Temescal
Posted on August 13, 2015by Royal Rosamond Press
William Carter Spann was the manager of the building I lived in on Shafter with Gloria Ehlers. Bill may be the foremost celebrity of the Bohemian enclave gathering momentum in Temescal, an area in Oakland next to Rockridge. There is a Friday Art Walk and neighborhood fair. I love the Temescal Alley.
The news tonight said President Carter has cancer. His nephew died of exposure. He was a homeless person suffering from AIDS. He called himself ‘The Bad Peanut’. The first time I paid my rent I asked him why he had peanut bags hanging on the wall with the name CARTER.
“My uncle is the Governor of Georgia, and we own peanut farms.”
Bill was not the first rebel of Temescal. Thelma Reid got caught up in a Love Cult. If she lived on 47th. she was in Temescal, where thanks to her, the birth of the Hippies can be traced.
“In 1927, 17-year-old Thelma Reid had just begun her first year of college at UC Berkeley. She was living on 45th street in Oakland’s Rockridge district with her family and did many of the typical things a college coed did—went to class, helped around the house and did her homework. She never expected her studies would spawn one of the biggest scandals in Rockridge history. But then again, it wasn’t ordinary homework.”
Here is the house that was raided by Oakland Cops led by Earl Warren who authored a report of the assassination of President Kennedy. It is right on the cusp of Temsecal and Rockridge at 460 Forest. This is where it all began. Before there were Beats and Hippies in San Francisco, there was the Great White Brotherhood, and their Love Cult. Consider Mel Lyman and Charlie Manson. Then there is that Cornell crowd, Richard Farina and Thomas Pynchon. Let’s no leave out the ‘Last Bohemian’ Jiryl Zorthian and his daughters.
The building we lived in was torn down and replaced with these modern rentals. Carter got fired and moved across the street into a cottage in back of the old house on the left.
I met Gloria in SF and moved into her apartment on 51st. Street. (right) Michael Harkins has a speaker shop on 51st. (left)
I lived with Amber in a apartment in the building on the lower right. I caught her in bed with my friend Paul Drake, who played the Bad Peanut, Mick, in Sudden Impact. About twenty Oakland Cops showed up for that Love Scene. There was a big storm that night that blew over a big redwood that was in the driveway and came to rest on the building by Amber’s window who was going to the California College of Arts and Crafts. She took me to her poetry class. She wanted me to meet Michael McClure who I had already met thru Michael Harkins who took me to see his good friends play ‘The Beard’. Harkins was a good friend of Jim Morrison. Oliver Stone wanted my friend’s take.
I was a original Hippie and Amber was showing me off, she not wanting to be seen as a wanna-be and McLure groupie. Did she know McClure was the wanna-be? I went and saw him at the first Be In. Ginsberg was on stage. His poem ‘Howl’ was ruled obscene, and when Ferlenghetti published it, he got arrested.
In 1965 I lived on 51st and Miles with Sherry Souza who had Bill Arnold’s baby that Christine came by to see. Sherry was a friend and neighbor of Nancy Hamren who works at the Kesey Creamery. Nancy got me on the bus with Ken Kesey. She had been Bill’s lover. Two blocks up Miles I lived with my wife, Mary Ann Tharaldsen , who was married to Thomas Pymchon. Harkins lived on Shafter. My friend Bryan MacLean, who was in the rock group ‘Love’, played at our wedding. Mary Ann went to Cornell and was good friends of Richard and Mimi.
This is the scene that Bill Carter considered himself a part of. There is a good chance President Carter funded his nephew’s Bohemian lifestyle that Ronald Reagan and Ed Meese exploited in his rise to the White House. It was Reagan’s promise to right-wing voters to destroy the Pagan Cult of the Hippie Love Generation that led him to defeat Carter. Reagan was also aided by Radical Iranian Terrorists who took hostages. The Great Culture Wars, rage on!
Gloria Ehlers and Jon Presco ‘Temescal Pioneers’. 1975
Jon Presco
Copyright 2015
Vintage Venice
Posted on February 26, 2014 by Royal Rosamond Press
Out of spite and jealousy, Rena Easton, is denying history her story, and perhaps photos, of her road trip to Venice California. Rednecks are the most destructive people on earth. They are self-righteous drunks and bigots.
I will make sure Rena gets full credit, along with the other lying outsiders and Redneck members of my family, for destroying the Rosamond Family literary and Artistic legacy – out of spite and jealousy! These legacies are rare! Fuck fake cowboys and beer guzzlers!
Jon Presco
http://selvedgeyard.com/2011/04/12/1970s-vintage-venice-beach-shots-epic-surf-sun-skate-radness/
Rosamond Press 
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