Adams Writings New Link

Fred Nemo has uploaded almost 100 articles written by Adam block.
You can find the by going to
http://www.monkeychicken.com/adam.htm

from Roger Henry

I carry Adam with me every day. In mannerisms I've picked up from him, from the way I say, or hear the word "Un-believable!", to the silly little voices we would do with fingers in the air while doing a little dance. I realize I not only got to know the adult Adam, the one who could think on a global scale, but couldn't see 5 feet in front of him leading on occasion to him knocking down various little old Chinese ladies around North Beach, but also the opportunity to know the kid in Adam. The side not afraid to make a fool of himself, the endless imagination, the incredible sense of adventure, the one who would laugh at and do great impersonations of my Grandma. And what a laugh!

Don't get me wrong, the man drove me nuts but with Adam, you just looked past that cause you knew that he was a special guy.

I picture Adam with his hat, sun glasses, filtered cigarette, multi-colored scarf, black leather jacket with a stack of newspapers under on arm, jeans with an ink stain in the back pocket, one pant leg caught on the top of his black boot heading out for his next adventure. Where ever that adventure is, you can bet he will find the center of it and explore and experience it to it's fullest.

I love you Adam, and I will miss you.

-Roger

from Christopher Wild

I am a friend of Larry-bob's and am co-founder of The Queer Zine Archive Project. I read a post at queerpunks.com written by Larry about Adam's passing. It was a random coincidence that in November 2007 I had written about Adam's articles on queer zines from The Advocate. My article appeared in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin based Queer Life News which has limited circulation in the Milwaukee and Madison metro areas as well as other parts of the state.
for article go to
http://adamblockwritings.blogspot.com/2008/03/qzines-by-christopher-wilde.html

I will be publishing this and my other queer zine articles in a book at some point later this year. I would love for other fans of Adam's to read my article and learn about his important contribution to the history of queer zines.

Christopher WildeCo-
Founder
The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP)
http://www.qzap.org/

Photo from Brook Dillon

Entrenched - by Brook Dillon
San Francisco 1997


I like this image and there are many more from that day. I came over to clean, fighting to recycle every New York Times (and sneaking others into the recycling bag, evil), and my payment to myself was bringing my camera and tripod and photographing Adam and a fair amount of his flat. I didn't do this to shame Adam, but to honor the reality of it, for better, Adam's grand appreciation of culture, and worse, Adam overwhelmed by all that combined with his addictions. I knew Adam for 18 years and went thru many ups and downs with him and loved him dearly and I'm a photographer, it's my art and a passion, so I felt allowed, and Adam didn't stop me, though he was so obsessively reading and talking on the phone that he hardly payed any attention to my endeavor.

from Thor Anderson

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975
"Now, this is a fine piece of horse manure!" Adam waved a draft chapter of my senior thesis under my nose. "Only fine?" I gave him a look, and was rewarded with a lop-sided grin. "Well, whoever heard of a bunch of Indians wearing cowboy hats! I'm sure that they could do better than that. Didn't you say they're Mayans? It seems to me" "Adam." "they're not taking their Native American heritage very seriously!" "Adam." "You say here that they wear plastic cowboy hats! Good Lord." "Adam, I'll be sure to pass that on next time I'm there. Better yet, you should tell them." "Well, someone's got to tell them!" The image of Adam Block presenting a fashion statement to a village of Maya Indians in the highlands of Chiapas flashed before my mind, and I knew that he was fully capable of showing up with just such a mission in mind. "So, how about the writing?" He waved a hand. "It needs some work." We set out to page through the manuscript.

Switzerland, 1985
It was well into Spring, but mounds of heavy snow persisted in drifts and piles as we made our way to a tiny, over-heated bar. It was bustling with locals from neighboring alpine villages. In short order Adam provisioned us, and then sought out the cutest boy in the establishment. Soon he was holding forth at the far end of the bar, communicating through a smattering of French, English, Swiss German, and alcohol. He probably mentioned our audience with Pope John Paul, perhaps without emphasizing that we were amongst thousands receiving His Easter benediction. Somehow the evening concluded with Adam's young friend eating his wine glass, right down to the stem. I don't really know how this came to pass, but I do remember Adam's infinite delight-- in the moment, in spectacle, and at life's ever-unfolding absurdities.

San Francisco, 1995
"Adam, there's a newspaper on the stove." "Could you please not move anything!"

San Leandro, 2007
"We have got to make this movie! Wait. Ahhh. Uhhh. Let me catch my breath. I was surrounded by chanting rabbis, but they were actually rat-people." "Adam, I think that was us around your bed, trying to bring you back." "Hum. But now, you've got to be here when this chimney blows. It's like an atomic reactor or something. It's unbelievable. And the people here. They keep changing, and no one speaks English! They're all born-again Christians. I tell them that when they get swept up into heaven in the rapture, this atheist Jew-boy isn't going anywhere, and there had better be someone here to help me." For some reason Adam intones the last phrase with a gentle Texan twang.

San Francisco, 2007
"I realize that I don't really have anything more to do here. I know I'm a handful, and I don't want to just hang around. Lord knows, that's the last thing I want." The same lop-sided grin, this time with a wide-eyed glance over my shoulder. After fussing with the humidifier, I took my leave. "Give my love to Consuela and the girls." My wife of twenty years is named Consuelo, but I gave up correcting Adam long ago. "I love you Adam." "I know."

Thor Anderson, San Francisco

from Hayne Bayless

I have a distinct memory of Adam at a party at your house in the early 60s. We kids had sequestered ourselves in a room away from the parents to listen to something called rock 'n' roll on the record player. Adam was MC. At one point he leapt up saying, "Now watch this, this is the Twist!" Grinning, he proceeded to dance. It shocked me just as I imagine Elvis' debut shocked Ed Sullivan's audience. But what I recall most fondly was Adam's sheer joy at his own audacity.

Eulogy from Kenan Block

Adam’s Memorial Service----March 6, 2008---Temple De Hirsch, Seattle
Remarks by Kenan Block, Adam’s younger brother.

Adam, Adam, Adam. There was no person in my life who could make me laugh harder, make me angry and frustrated for long periods, or who taught me more than my big brother.

Adam was a remarkable older brother, the best man at my wedding and often, my best friend. He was someone I loved and to paraphrase Woody Allan, I idolized all out of proportion.

Adam cared about injustice and would generally side with the underdog. My memories of him include my first day of first grade at Stevens Elementary when Adam found me in the crowded cafeteria at lunch to check how I was doing. Later that same year he woke me at dawn to watch the first American space launch.

I remember around age 9, Adam challenging me at the dinner table one night to prove the earth was in fact round. Every seemingly sensible argument I offered faced a tough rebut---How did I know all the photographs from space were not fakes?---and the least acceptable response to Adam was my saying that my teacher had told me so.

One day when I was 12, Adam told us about this amazing new band from England we had never heard of before---The Beatles and he insisting we watch them for those 4 weeks they were on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Adam was always recommending books, music and movies. His advice trumped any teachers. At 12 Adam had me reading “Cather in the Rye” and for years to follow he would take me and other siblings to the University Book Store to buy us a stacks of paperbacks that we had to read---from Anis Nin to Kurt Vonnegut and Ken Kesey.
Adam was born with chutzpa. He was 11 during the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and would constantly take our father’s gold pass to get in. He loved meeting the famous. So when John Glenn visited the Fair, Adam put on his blue Brooks Brothers blazer and snuck into the Space Needle elevator with the superstar astronaut and his entourage. Adam carried himself as though he belonged so everyone just assumed he was the son of some VIP as he followed the group around.

Adam liked being the center of attention and never seemed to mind that he constantly made everyone wait for him. By the time he was in college Adam had earned a fitting nickname from our father that would continue through adulthood---“His Lordship”.
Perhaps most important of all---Adam had a curiosity and a dose of fearlessness about experiencing life and the world on many levels and dragging anyone who was with him along for the adventure. It was at times maddening---at times embarrassing---but never dull. And no one was safe from being interrogated by Adam---or being offered advice.

On one of our periodic expeditions, we found ourselves on the strange tourist island of Freeport in the Bahamas---I think it had to do with a Pan Am $99 dollar roundtrip promotional fare that we couldn’t pass up---a 3 day lark. Adam had a young boyfriend in tow as he often did. After landing we grabbed a cab at the airport and Adam began interviewing our driver who had the unforgettable name Simeon Wildgoose…after a through interrogation we found out what the locals really do---like going to the visiting Third World carnival that was in town. Adam insisted we go---an adventure that included an actual freak show with adult Siamese twins that we viewed for 75 cents. On that same trip, Adam got Simeon to set up a private visit to his cousin’s coconut rum factory. Over the years Adam would affectionately invoke the name of Simeon Wildgoose.

In the mid-eighties, on a trip to New Orleans we joined some friends with a rental car. Adam had scouted out a bayou backwoods day trip that took us to a diner in Baton Rouge that invented the fried chicken salad, then off to a tiny town with a legendary instrument store that was famous for making guitars and squeeze boxes. Next, just winging it, Adam directed us down a long dirt road where he found a young Cajun boy who he talked into taking us out on his rickety motor boat for a tour of the bayou that was right out of Tennessee Williams.

Then there was going to restaurants with Adam. First came Adam’s preliminary research to make sure we were eating at the most interesting place in town. No matter how fancy the restaurant, after getting menus, Adam would rise and wander table to table to inspect the food folks had ordered and interrogate them about how it tasted. All of us in Adam’s party would do our best to pretend we had no association with this rude character---but of course Adam would return with great insights allowing us to place our orders based on his shameless reconnaissance.
For anyone in Adam’s orbit there was his constant questioning and unsolicited advice. What was particularly maddening---with his remarkable thirst for information and his stunning memory, Adam often knew more about a given topic than the “expert” he was talking to and advising.

During the many years I worked at what was then The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour Adam would bully me about the boring, centrist guests we had on the air. With great frequency Adam berated me for failing to get the likes of Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky on the NewsHour as regulars.
I may not have gotten Michel Moore on the NewsHour---but in part because of Adam I did get folks like Molly Ivins to become regulars.

There are too many stories and memories. But in full candor during the last ten years or so, dealing with Adam increasingly became a struggle. As his health started to fail, he stopped his freelance writing and became even more self absorbed, combative and angry. The phone ringing after midnight was almost certainly Adam, who would be leave me an annoyed message because I wasn’t awake and waiting to listen to him carry on for an hour or two. The notion of working during the day and sleeping at night were bourgeois rituals to Adam.

But through it all, Adam had a truly remarkable group of loyal and loving pals who put up with him, tried to be of help and tolerated Adam’s constant second guessing of any effort to help.

Adam did finally manage to die peacefully at home and on his own terms. I and others were in the process of moving him up to Seattle to Bailey-Boushay House, but clearly Adam didn’t want to leave. San Francisco had truly become Adam’s home and he got live out his life in that city he’d so come to love.

There was one tragedy of the timing of Adam’s death---it was just days before the California Presidential primary and we had failed to get him an absentee ballot to so he could cast his vote for Barack Obama.

Wherever Adam is now, I hope he is at peace, but I am confident of one thing--- he is not giving any peace to those who are with him.

from Jonathan Block -When Death Comes

by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity,
wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up having simply visited this world.

Eulogy from Jill Bullitt

Adam’s Memorial Service----March 6, 2008
Temple De Hirsch, Seattle

I was recently reading Adam’s Salon Magazine commentary on a 1995 Bruce Springsteen concert in Berkeley. In it, Adam suggests that “the Boss” watch the Preston Sturges' film, “ Sullivan’s Travels’” to learn how to stop impersonating the misery of those he sings about (now that he’s so rich) and to worry more about entertaining them, instead. In “Sullivan’s Travels”, Adam says: “Joel McCrea plays a successful Hollywood director of screwball comedies who feels compelled by the Depression to make a serious Capra-esque film about social justice. Setting off disguised as a bum, (McCrea) ends up jailed in a dismal Southern prison. At a rare screening for the prisoners, McCrea discovers that the anarchic humor of a cartoon provides the cons with glorious brief respite from their grim lives. McCrea learns first-hand that a dose of laughter and delight can offer the oppressed something they need far more than any earnest indictment of social ills.”

Anyway, when I was reading this a couple of weeks ago,I thought ”omigod, I’ve got to tell Adam about the time I snuck into the party Robert De Niro threw for Mandela right after he got out of prison and got to hear Mandela tell Eddie Murphy the exact same thing! In a case of life mimicking fiction, I saw Mandela lean over and tell Murphy how deeply important his comedies were to him at Robben Island. I couldn’t believe it, Eddie Murphy (of all people!), made continuing with daily life seem possible for Mandela and his fellow political prisoners! Since this was right after (morally craven) Murphy had made the hugely stereotypical and bigoted ”Coming to America,” I was astounded.

Of course, I had forgotten that I can’t tell Adam.

Adam and I grew up on the same street. The Block kids were smarter, funnier, naughtier, and more argumentative, than any other family we knew, and my older brother and sister and I continually sought to go play with them at their lively, boisterous house.

Right after Adam’s mother (who was also my god-mother) Dorothy, died, Adam and I started the 3rd grade together at Stevens School, here on Capitol Hill. To our dismay, we found ourselves squarely “in the peculiar world of third grade” (to paraphrase what he later told Schuyler, regarding another school) ”in which you are held prisoner by adults often less intelligent than you are.” Adam, when he discovered that our teacher, Miss Straight, was both criminally dull and moderately cruel, almost immediately made his move. And he did so in what I would call classic Adam fashion: he talked her to death. Before my eyes, he became a kind of machine-gun of humiliation for her, firing one question after another at her that she couldn’t answer. Adam skipped a grade, based on this performance, leaving me behind, to get beaten up after school and to try out a tentative 3rd grade friendship with a girl who lived near us too, until I learned her brothers were famous for shooting the legs off birds.

Although he came to visit me when I was in college in Palo Alto, and we rode around in my blue and white 1956 Buick Special; our friendship mostly took place later, in San Francisco. Starting thirty years ago or so, after I moved to New York, I would look up Adam when I came to town. We would sit in one little North Beach cafe or another and just talk, and I would show him images of my recent work. He seemed unfailingly interested in seeing what I was doing, which puzzled me, slightly, because my paintings didn’t fall within any parameters that I imagined him to be very interested in at that time. Although we had both grown up around fine examples of the work of Morris Graves and Mark Tobey, and my work was derived from a language rooted in, among other things, NW painting, I couldn’t really imagine why he would be that interested in it. Sometimes, I felt his interest came from a kind of loyalty to our shared past. But, in any event, with regard to wanting to see me and what I was up to, his interest was unfailing. Adam was family, also, in the way that your first friends with whom you share ideas become your family.

Right before my 50th birthday, Adam called me in Paris to offer to come celebrate it with us. When my husband and I were married 12 years ago, we eloped, and although we had a very nice reception a year later, we were hoping to have a real party for my 50th, for the self-selected group that would make such a journey to come play. I had mailed out scores of very colorful invitations designed by my daughter, Makaiya, who was 10, of a kitty flying over the world. The picture was one that I, the mom, considered to be an utterly charming image, one that I imagined would be impossible to turn down. We were inviting our stateside family and friends to launch into the air to us, and the invites contained an offer to put up our guests in Paris for a few days (possibly, but not necessarily on the floor of my mother’s Paris apartment) but, offering food and lodging of some sort, anyway. When Adam called, fully intending to come, I had to regretfully inform him that he was actually the only one planning to come from the States, although, as I told him, the turnout of friends from Europe would be considerably better. Unfortunately, this news dampened his enthusiasm enough to cause him to reconsider. But, how I loved him for that instinct, for his loyalty and warm heart, and for his special brand of wit and intelligence that has helped keep us all warm during the cold times.

Adam Blocks Summer Camp Report Card

from 1963 circa

http://erbe38.googlepages.com/HiddenValleyreportAPB.pdf

from Julie Glantz

Adam was basically the Majordomo Extraordinaire of my welcoming committee when I first chased a dream and a boyfriend to San Francisco in the early eighties and moved into the three story Victorian on Grant Street with Adam Block and Rob Morris.

There was always some opinion or advice Adam had to offer, whether it was invited or not. He certainly had a point of view and a sense of humor that was unique.

The endless rants about the Chinese landlords were unforgettable, as was Adam's remarkable sense of decor, in the form of every single newspaper, magazine, book, postcard he'd ever received just stacked everywhere. The parade of visitors, and the accompanying comments or full on critiques when they left were the stuff of brilliant comic monologues and sharp social commentary.

That experience certainly made a lasting impression: after returning to New York for a couple of years, I truly left my heart in San Francisco and returned to stay in the early nineties.

I spoke with Adam many times after I'd made the big migration, even saw him on a couple of occasions, but my life had changed so much that we hardly moved in the same circles anymore. When I got the email with this news of Adam's passing, I felt a sharp pang in my heart, knowing for certain that an incredibly bright star would shine in everyone's memory. Truly an unforgettable character.

Julie Glantz

from Larry Bob Roberts

RIP Adam Block
http://queerpunks.com/wordpress/2008/02/03/rip-adam-block/

from Kathy Galvin Block

The Only Moving Gallery
I wish I'd thought to ask Adam about his memories of that whole enterprise when we spoke in January... The moving gallery was several chemically-enhanced pals of Adam (from Reed, I think) who took on personae like The Sixties Earth Mother (I think that was his beautiful friend Catherine), angry ghetto revolutionary, street druggie, other cliche characters of the times.
They would go to the galleries in costume and in character and actually interact with gallery patrons. It was terrific performance art. I especially remember the black guy being really cheeky and rude to fancy society types who thought they were liberal but had not actually met a young angry African-American man, nor heard many of the words he was using in an art setting...wish I remembered more. Seattle seems so sophisticated now, but, as I know you remember, it was a wannabe city then. Not as bad as Denver where the audiences still clapped between movements of the Symphony, but not quite Paris. I used to think Seattle was the most middle-class place I had ever seen, but I hadn't been anywhere yet so I wasn't the best judge. One of Adams Reed buddys was a Brit called John Sutcliffe, who was educated at Sandhurst (the Brit version of West Point). ( note from Daniel Today John and his wife Emily have Sutcliffe Vineyards in Colorado http://www.sutcliffewines.com/)... Don't remember much about him, except he was pretty entrepreneurial and a fast talker.

Barbecue Sauce
I must ask Kenan if he remembers stopping to see us in Illinois on his and Adam's legendary pilgrimage to Graceland. They got off the City of New Orleans train at about 8am. We had all the kids (only three then) in carseats. Adam and Kenan each had a paper bag concealing a bottle of bourbon, and Adam had a huge plastic vat of some BBQ sauce he had scored somewhere known only to the BBQ cognoscenti. When he lost it he reckoned someone had followed him from the Big Easy and waited for the chance to rip it off and abscond. It was a memorable family get-together, i must say!
(note from Kenan: The Barbeque Sauce was from Brady and Lill's in Memphis now called The Bar-B-Q Shop www.southernfoodways.com/oral_history/tnbbq/M02_barbqshop.shtml)

The Elvis Painting
I also one Xmas remember Jonathan and I gave Adam a large velour towel-cum-velvet painting of Elvis. We thought we were being arch and sophisticated and too, too witty. But later I overheard him describing it to a friend. (He did not know I was listening) Adam was describing our gift as "so beautiful, if you hold it against the light it's like a stained glass window." Oy, what was Adam on, anyhow?

Recovering Drugs and Cash
I remember when he left his wallet at the Lamphere house after a Fourth of July party? He rang Barb at like 4am and demanded she drive to 1617 RIGHT NOW because there was money anddrugs in it and he needed them RIGHT NOW. Barb is no wuss: Adam's powers in the area of turning his imaginative creations of guilt and a sense of criminally abandoning their most sacred responsibility on people like a look at Medusa's face (or was it the Gorgon?) should have been studied by Think Tanks or made into a book like Dominating, Controlling and Imposing the Compulsion to Obey You on Anyone (for Dummies ). A rational, intelligent and strong-minded adult would suddenly turn into gabbling, apologetic mush and do Adam's bidding just to stop the pain.

from Anna Shapiro

I was at Putney with your brother, and we were often in the art studio together ca. 1967-8. An echo of him made its way into a scene of a novel I wrote. There are further echoes in the published book, but this scene got cut before I published the book (Living on Air, Soho, 2006). I wish I'd known him in later life, but I certainly thought of him during the last nearly 40 years. I hope this captures him a little.
Yours,
Anna Shapiro

___________________________________________________

Unpublished Excerp from Living on Air,
by Anna Shapiro © Soho, 2006

go to link below

http://adamblockwritings.blogspot.com/search?q=living+on+air

from Dan Smith

I last saw Adam at the Putney School, where we graduated in 1968. I am saddened to learn of his passing, but in reading just a few posts it is obvious he crammed several lifetimes into 56 years.

The story I want to contribute involves my desperate attempt to avoid going home for spring vacation of my senior year. I was doing everything I could to remain close to Marney Lindsay, with whom I believed I was in love. To remain in New York meant I had to impose on the kindness of several classmates, one of whom was Adam. He showed me a great time by hanging out with me, somehow getting us dinner at the Harvard Club of NYC with a friend of his family and then scoring comp tickets from the same friend for us to see "Rosencrantz and Gilderstern are Dead" on Broadway.

My love affair with Marney cooled off, though I am happy to say we are great friends many years later.

Adam will live on as an edgy, funny and respectful friend in my memory.

Dan Smith

from Fam Bayless

So sorry to hear the news - its hard to loose a sibling at any time but doubly so when its much too early. The obit was quite wonderful & good to read about his many contributions to San Francisco life & culture .

My condolences to all the family.

Love, Fam

from D'Arcy Hyde

I feel so fortunate to have been able to meet a person such as Adam. They broke the mold after him for sure. Watching Adam interact with his family and especially Kenan was a exceptionally entertaining and unforgettable experience-none would disagree. I so clearly remember what it felt like to be in the room when Kenan and Adam would take a stroll down memory lane of some of the greatest shared family adventures. They would bring the room to tears with screams of laughter. In the end, our stories and our adventures is really all we have. Adam had enough for us all. His presence will be greatly missed.
xo

from Catherine Kae

To begin to remember my time and relationship with Adam is to open a floodgate of memories. From the many years of our close friendship, to later times, when our different choices took us to separate locations and experiences, there was an underground river of love and affection, and a dose of amusement, that carried our relationship along.

I met Adam in horseback riding class, during his freshman year at Reed. It was our PE class. We become friends, shared laughs and parties, occasional annoyances, and then became even closer friends as a few years went by and we had bigger parties to attend, politics to shake heads about, and relationship problems, seemingly endless, to discuss. Then there would be the times of bandaging wounds, eating dinners at well reviewed restaurants, or decent bargains, and even living as roommates (with the help of a contract and a housekeeper).

Adam specialized in fun and information. His energy was contagious and bubbling (often doubtless fueled by numerous chemicals). He loved the world of stars, both music and writing. He also had a beautiful and inspiring knack for making his new friends and boyfriends feel like stars. He loved that way, at least for the first three months. What a gift he gave to a number of people. Adam was usually so generous, with a great sense of abundance around him. Ok, so it would also be filthy abundance sometimes. Yes he was messy and so irascible and confessed to being full of fears at the end. Who wouldn't be full of fears facing all of this...

Toward the end, I was struck, by the kind of aura he developed in his well used grease-rimmed Stetson. Some of his own star quality emerged. He looked like an aging and ill version of someone you should recognize. Heads would turn. Well after all, his life was his art. Beyond fears, I am sure he will be partying again soon. When I feel sad at his departure and sad at his suffering, I remember his incredible strength of body, and spirit and send my love.


-Catherine K

from Farrell Ingle

There are many reasons for my existence. It can be traced back to my parents (obviously), to their meeting at the Block house so many years ago. It could be said that they were simply meant to be together and that it was in the cards that I'd come strutting into existence in the autumn of 1985. But I've always believed--and always told anyone who asks how my parents met--that my uncle Adam was the sole reason. He was my dad's best friend, my mom's step-brother. If it wasn't for him I might not be here.

Many beautiful things have been written about Adam over the past few weeks and I have found myself thinking what I could add. I figured that giving him the props he deserved for being that cog, that enzyme, that electric jolt that brought me into this world was worthy of what has been written over the past days. As I thought about what an integral part Adam played in my life I found myself recounting the many lucky instances in which our paths crossed. And while I probably never knew Adam in the same way many others have, my encounters with him have always been memorable.

I remember early visits to his epically dirty apartment where CNN was always on, the stove hadn't been cleaned since the 70s, newspapers and magazines were stacked to the ceiling, and bottles of balsamic vinegar lay on the counter with a price tag higher than my young mind could fathom. Adam was quick to offer me a taste as I gazed upon the red waxy corks and the ornate labels. I remember exploring North Beach with my father and Adam at a pace not even a spry teenager could keep, trying to munch down deliciously oily focaccia and trot along behind at the same time. I remember travelling to the Chinese herbal remedy store when mom and I visited and having lizard on a stick waved in my face when I was barely tall enough to see over the counter. I remember really wanting one.

It is interesting how our memory works. As I think back, I have trouble remembering which memory goes where chronologically or even who I was with (mother or father) when Adam told a magical story that I treasure still. But in the end the only truth is that these are memories that will stick in my mind forever, no matter how mashed up dates, times, and witnesses become.

I think everyone who knew him (or even encountered him only once) would quickly agree that Adam was, if anything, memorable. He made his presence known with a glow and effervescence that I will probably never encounter again. I will certainly miss him, but look forward to sharing stories about my uncle Adam with all those who knew and loved him. God knows there are plenty.

And when my kids ask me how my parents met, I'll know exactly what to say. Rest in peace Adam, you will not be forgotten.

Farrell

from Schuyler Ingle

Thirty years ago, maybe more, Adam would often visit in Los Angeles. He knew he could count on a room and a bed, rides hither and yon for God knows what assignations, food and drink and good company. This was long enough ago that Thai food was a new and charming evening out. Can you imagine?

I remember one such dinner with Adam at a small, new Thai restaurant in that Los Angeles gulley between Silver Lake and Los Angeles City College. The place was packed. There were enough of us in our party that several tables were set end to end to accommodate a grand banquet. I believe this was my first taste of Larb Gai. I don't recall how the story began, or why, but at some point during the meal Adam started in on a tale from his school days at Putney, the Vermont farm and prep boarding school to which the elites sent their children to be educated and to work the soil. Adam sat at the head of the tables and within a few words or sentences held our complete attention.

It was a story about a small cadre of miscreants sneaking smokes (his brand of choice would have been Larks back then) and listening to 45s on a portable turntable, both illicit adventures at Putney. He made real the peculiar world of boarding school, where you are liberated from parents only to be held prisoner by adults often less intelligent than you are. A German task master, both despised and imitated by the students, figured in the story. This particular teacher would ever extol the virtues of potatoes, and it was at the potato storage bin that the naughty ones would gather to smoke and gossip and bathe in rock and roll. Adam being Adam, there would have been a digression at this point in the story to explain the enduring virtue and importance of Paul Revere and the Raiders. The kids hated potatoes because they had to dig potatoes, a very simple quid pro quo. So you can imagine where they pissed when they needed to. The punch line, of course, is the German at dinner in the dining hall spearing a potato with his fork and holding it aloft to sing its praises and encourage the reluctant to dig in.

It was a simple story, really, but Adam told it with absolute control and authority, knowing from the first word where he was headed, laying down layers of detail and nuance exactly where they were needed, never overloading any one element, never exhausting either the tale or the audience, letting the laugh lines emerge without any effort or artifice. He spoke in perfectly parsed sentences, a magnificent flow of language. The story went on and on and on and we all sat there, hanging on every word. And when he finished the tale, holding aloft an imaginary pissed on potato and praising it in a thick German accent, we all erupted with cheers and laughter and applause. And much to our surprise, so too did the entire restaurant. Every table had fallen silent to hear the tale, to feel the magic. Adam lifted his Singha to toast the room, making what had transpired seem a simple, almost insignificant thing.

from Ellen Jenkins - San Francisco

I was dismayed to see Adam's picture while glancing through the paper last Sunday. I only knew Adam a little bit - through his roommate, over twenty years ago - but I remember him clearly and liked him very much. He was eccentric, funny and fearless. I'll never forget his practice of drying his hair over an open oven turned up full blast, his Grace Jones posters, his many waist-high stacks of reading material, his fondness for Zippy the Pinhead. And I remember Adam liked to argue, but in a good, teasing way. I was in my twenties and fairly new to the City and thought he was one of the most fascinating people I'd ever met...I also remember going to a Bob Dylan concert in Berkeley with Adam and his brother Kenan....

Ellen Jenkins

note: For more information on Zippy find link at right side of Blog above photos.

from Dr. Jay Lalezari

I'm not sure it makes any difference, but Adam didn't die of AIDS.
I believe HIV regretted the day it ever met Adam.
That's one battle the virus never won.

Jay

from R.M Campell - Seattle

Adam Block was a life force, with wit, style, personality.
He copied no one because he was so singular himself, in attitude and manner. Nearly everything he did he did with all the intelligence at his disposal, which was considerable. He used those brains to give spark to his opinions, which were sometimes based on nothing but his own quirky taste. He was fast-talking, fast-living, vastly amusing, sometimes vastly egocentric, sweeping through life as if it were his oyster. On occasion it was.
Ideas flowed out of him, often in rapid succession. Although I don't think he ever took up debate, in a formal sense, he would have excelled in it because he could take any idea, no matter how far-fetched, and give it credence, if only on a superficial level.

To spend an evening with Adam in San Francisco was always a cornucopia of events and people. It would begin at his North Beach apartment, filled with a horrific clutter of magazines, newspapers and books plus yesterday's garbage and laundry and dirty dishes. Tidiness was not one of Adam's priorities. There would always be drinks and perhaps other amusements, then out the door for another drink with friends or acquaintances, or even someone on the street, then maybe a cocktail party, a stop at a shop, dinner, a concert, a movie, ending up in a bar somewhere in town. One could check out any moment. He would not be offended, wishing you the best and moving on with his own agenda for the night.

He could be difficult and irritating but inevitably memorable. His hard last days would have been even more dire without the steady love and care of his brother Kenan.

R.M Campell

from James Grauerholz - Lawrence, Kansas

I knew Adam almost 34 years, I loved him, I will miss him.

I've been writing at some reminiscences for the memorial blog. He was one of a kind. If only he had written (and left to us) more about his own life, and less (as he called it) "fishwrap" ... But as he'd say, "it's been a hell of an edumacation, darlin'."

James Grauerholz

from Vicki Topaz - San Francisco

Although I only knew Adam for a relatively short while, he touched me deeply with his unending enthusiasm, vitality, and courage--we always had a good giggle together. He was at our home a few times for various parties and one small dinner party where we probably engaged in our longest discussions. Truly a joy!

I hope you are recuperating from this tremendous loss. It is fortunate for Adam that he was able choose a departure date (which I believe he did) but so difficult for all of us to mend the gap.

Wishing you well.

Warm regards,

Vicki Topaz