A tale of two hippies
by Michael Maiello

It had to happen. You can only hang around Berkeley for so long until you meet some gutter punk hippies with a bizarre history and a tendency to ask every five minutes if you want to go around the corner with them and "hit our tea." Tea. Hadn't heard that as a word for marijuana since I read Keroauc's On the Road. But that's the new Berkeley street culture. Part hippie, part beatnik, part Gen-X apathy.

No politics on the corner sidewalk outside Cody's book store. Sure, an older black lady sells marijuana brownies for five bucks a pop and hippie kids Stuart and Shell sell cheesy rope necklaces when they're not trying to bum cigarettes. Shell's pregnant, so she only smokes American Spirits. Her baby doesn't need the additives, she says. Just pure tobacco, which, she points out, has been smoked for thousands of years by many cultures who have produced non-defective young. But she can't afford to be too choosy. Three bucks for a pack of the "specialty cigarettes" as they're called in convenience stores is a meal for two, and they don't often get more than one of those per day.

Shell grew up in a wholesome family in Tucson. That's how she describes it, and it'd be wild speculation to say she's hiding a history of sexual abuse and has a father in jail for auto theft. She went to college in Florida, but didn't find anything there, except Stuart.

Stuart drifted through after fleeing a childhood in "Nebraska of all places" that he doesn't talk much about. Again, any traumatic experience which drove him to hit the road would be total speculation. Neither of these young urchins seem particularly victimized, and they seem happy about their predicament.

They live in an abandoned building in North Oakland, about a twenty minute walk from Berkeley. It's an old movie theatre, and they live in one of the offices up stairs. They have a neighbor in the basement, a neo-Nazi speed freak who had never smoked pot until they offered it. But now they regret being friendly to the Nazi. He hasn't done anything, but he makes them uncomfortable, twitching around and babbling all the time, which is what meth heads do when they've already cleaned the apartment twice that day and don't want to go out into the sun.

This morning, Stuart and Shell woke to the sounds of pounding hammers. They'd been boarded in. But, Stuart says they did a flimsy job of sealing the building, and he was able to get out with two well placed kicks. But the heat is on, and they're bound to be discovered and forced to move, if they're not arrested for trespassing. m It couldn't have come at a worse time. They'd just acquired a mattress, table, chair and lamp and were on the verge of what Stuart calls a "phat squat."

Stuart is the father of Shell's baby. It happened when they met in Florida, during a wild night which involved four people, magic mushrooms, weed, and a gallon of Bacardi 151. Stuart and Shell went off together when the cops broke up their party. They were, after all, driving around in a '69 Mustang with no plates, registration, insurance, or licenses, stealing street signs. The cop let them off, but they impounded the Mustang.

They split soon after. Shell went home to Tucson, and found out she was pregnant. Stuart drifted through Tucson and met her on the street. They took off again, this time, west. They're not sure what to do when the baby comes along, but they've certainly decided to bring it into the world, and to raise it together. They can't mean in Berkeley. California's an expensive place and it'll be nearly impossible to raise a child while being jobless drifters. So they'll probably seek refuge from Shell's parents in Tucson. They didn't say that, but I know girls who've gone through this, and they always end up in their home towns, close to their own parents. Which is the best bet for a baby so far along that other options are out of the question. Shell's not going to put the baby up for adoption, either. At 17, she's glowing pregnant. She's found that bit of womanhood she's always longed for, and she's not about to just give it away.

How they have so much weed all the time is beyond me. They don't sell the stuff, and would probably be beaten to a pulp by cops or the competition if they did it on the street. Besides, serious drug users don't want to buy from a couple of dirty street kids they don't even know. It's just too dangerous. Know, they're buying for personal use, and to share with the other drifters on their corner hang out. But the costs would be astronomical. An eighth of grass goes for $50 bucks in these parts. Ounces are up in the hundreds. Or, so I'm told.

They're politically ambivalent. They dress like paupers and spend most of the day talking about drugs. Reminiscing about psychedelic trips past, and figuring out how to beef up their supply of leafy greens so they don't run out by the middle of next week. m They even talk about their favorite covers of High Times magazine.

Which means, after the initial novelty of talking to these kids who living contrary to every American impulse, that they're boring. The American equivalent of Europe-trashers, a bohemia designed to accomplish nothing.

I met them the same day I took a train into San Francisco to see the Museum of Modern Art, which has a wonderful collection of impressionist and surrealist European paintings from the bohemia of Paris in the time known as "The Banquet Years." Alfred Jarry, Andre Breton, Matisse, Van Gogh, Dada. The bohemia that changed the world, that ushered existentialism and absurdism into art and into the modern consciousness. But what are these modern bohemians doing?

"I like to draw," Shell says, smiling. But she hasn't had drawing supplies for months, and, honestly, it's not a major priority when it comes to spending her time, bumming smokes, finding grass, and waiting for her baby.

Michael Maiello is subsidising a major magazine in San Francisco.

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