Simple story. I was talking to a guy I see a lot at one of my favorite Oakland grocery stores. We were speaking about how scary some of the bizarre changes in the weather have been. “The really bad [changes in the weather] are pretty freaky,” he explained, “but they’re pretty far down the road.” He went on: “The stuff that really scares me are the things that are a threat right now.” I asked him what some of those things were, and he gave me a list. I asked him if I could record him speaking, and I told him I’d be doing a drawing of him and writing this short anecdote. Mad props to him for giving me permission. Here’s what he said about the six things that scare him the most.
Guns really scare me. I’ve never owned one, never touched one. I don’t like ’em.
The cops scare me worse than guns, ‘cuz some of then just don’t like Black folks. I’m just speaking the truth. Some of them don’t like people like us, and their guns are legal.
I’ll be honest. I’m scared of dying. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I’m scared of the unknown.
I’m scared of women. I mean, not all women, not like you. I mean I’m not really scared of women at all, really. Seriously. What I mean is that I’m scared of a woman breaking my heart. I scared of heartbreak. I am admitting to you right now that I am scared of having my heart broken.
When I was a kid, I saw a photo of a man who’d been struck by lightning. Scared the something out of me. I’ve hated lightning ever since. In the summers I’d go see my grandparents in Arkansas where they had real thunderstorms. I couldn’t even stand it. I’d climb under the bed.
I guess this ties in with hating guns, but I am definitely scare of getting shot. Some of these young men walk around talking about having a target on their back like it’s something to be proud of. I can’t understand it myself. We were never like that. They have so much to live fore. I’m scared of getting shot. In some ways, all Black men have a target on their backs, but I’m working to stay away from violence. I’m a man of peace.
When I came up out of the 16th Street BART station there was some sort of emergency taking place. Cops were already on the scene, and a fire truck pulled up while the man in this drawing observed, repeatedly and loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to here (not just the friends he was standing with), “Police and fire! Yep! 16th and Mission! Somebody called them and they got here fast. They got here real fast! They sure did.” This continued after all the emergency personnel had had rushed out of their trucks and down the stairs and into the station. By the time I returned to the station to get a train back to Oakland, there was no sign of the earlier crisis, and everything was back to normal. People were talking to themselves and each other, skateboarders were narrowly avoiding the moms pushing strollers who were, in turn, making no attempt to avoid any non-stroller-pushing pedestrians in their path. The only sign of the morning’s excitement were two cops who looked exquisitely bored.
Strange things happen when you tell people you’re a professor of African American literature. Some folks make uncomfortable jokes about their bad grammar, while others share the names of some of their favorite Black novelists and poets. Upon learning that I was a specialist in U.S. Black literature, the man in this drawing quickly concluded that we were kindred spirits and immediately embarked on a 20 minute monologue of “knowledge and truth, my sister.” “We are sister and brother,” he assured me, “even though I am from Ethiopia and your are American.” He then shared with me his perspectives on religion, the environment, the prison industrial complex, Africa, nuclear energy, and Black masculinity, as well as the ways that all of these issues were being addressed by his favorite contemporary African American novel, Beloved. The main idea that I took away from this encounter? I desperately need to reread this novel.
Whenever I encounter a young person who is living on the streets, I wonder whether or not his or her family knows where s/he is. I have to admit that my first instinct is to question how his or her family has allowed their loved one to become so marginalized and isolated. But then it occurs to me that he or she may have already exhausted the family’s resources for taking care of a troubled adult. Still, there is a big difference between a business or park posting no loitering signs and a group of family members effectively passing a no loitering sign in their hearts.
If you were driving down San Pablo on Friday afternoon, you may have spotted these gentlemen. They were standing in front of the Easy Market, at Haskell St., chatting and watching the world good by. I passed them as I was heading into Berkeley around 1pm, and I was surprised to see that they were still there two hours later, when I was heading back toward Emeryville. I’m not sure what they were talking about, but the conversation must have been good. As one of my friends likes to say, “they were coversatin’ HARD.”
This drawing takes a stylishly dressed gentleman who was sitting a couple tables down from me at Peet’s Emeryville, and places him at the boardroom table where he really seemed to belong. Maybe it was his demeanor, or his geeky-chic confidence, but something about him conveyed self-possession and power.
Saw these two brothers talking to each other in downtown Oakland. Actually, the guy on the left was doing all the talking, and the guy on the right was mostly listening. I don’t think they knew each other, and I think the guy on the left was asking for money. It was interesting just to see how the man on on the right gradually warmed up to the man who was speaking with him, as his expression turned from annoyed to engaged. In this drawing, he’s somewhere in the middle, just leaving annoyed and heading for a bit more intrigued. I don’t know if the man on the left, who really was dressed in a red shirt, every extracted any cash from the guy he was talking to, but he just may have made a bit of a friend.
In this drawing of a young brother who was standing on the sidewalk in front of the Marcus Garvey Commons, I was inspired by the work of John Biggers, especially paintings like “Shotguns” (1987) and “Four Seasons” (1984).
The line at Peet’s coffee in Emeryville seems to collect some of the most interesting characters in all of Alameda County. This guy stood out because he was the tallest person in the entire cafe, by at least 4 or 5 inches, I would guess. It was his detailed and animated description of the way he liked his latte–complete with dramatic gestures and expressions–that scored him a post on this blog.
It’s not hard to figure out why I noticed the gentleman in this drawing. He was the only person in the Macy’s men’s store who was dressed in all white…and he wasn’t a store employee. He was just stylin’– and stylin’ HARD. Even though he was easy to notice, and for obvious reasons, this drawing made me think about how it is that I decide who to draw. It made me wonder which of the Black men I encounter in my daily life stand out for me and why. When I come up with some answers, I’ll post them. For now, though, I decided to use a photograph of a crowd as the background for this drawing, to sorta kinda capture the idea of standing out in a crowd. The background is from a photo I took at the USA Rugby Sevens in 2010.
