Berkeley’s loudest anarchist is a street vendor named Jasper. He’s the anarchist who ran straight to the city authorities to report that the fish-cart didn’t have the right city permit to be considered a free speech table. (12/6), so he’s el schmucko to me.

Now that the fish-cart is street legal, bearing the same silly free-speech permit that’s on Jasper’s table, he & I are supposed to be sell only on the free-speech side of the one block of Telegraph Ave where “free speech vendors” are permitted. When it comes to that rule, though, Jasper is a scofflaw anarchist. He usually sets up his table on a different block, or on the disallowed side of the free-speech block, so I don’t see him too terribly often, which is OK.

Well, in the springtime he migrates, because today he was very much my neighbor. It was busier than it’s been since Xmas, with lots of vendors selling, and Jasper worked on one side of Brenda, with me on her other side. I like Brenda, but Jasper was Jasper all day long.

We didn’t have any confrontations, and in fact, Jasper and I said not a word to each other. That’s my preference, and probably his, too.

I chatted with Brenda all day, and had a nice day, thank you, except for being close enough to hear every loud, obnoxious comment out of Jasper’s fat ugly face. Whenever I wasn’t selling a fish or talking with Brenda and sometimes when I was, the recurring thought monopolizing my own ugly face was, That darn Jasper!

Anything anyone says to him is an opportunity for Jasper to rattle off his smash-the-state politics, which gets so very tedious. And I know, yeah, that I was rattling off my own smash-the-state politics in the day before yesterday’s entry, but it’s different, in two ways. First, my anarchist thoughts are brilliant while Jasper’s are stupid, but second, you have to drag me into that kind of conversation, but Jasper lives for it.

Ask him how much a sticker costs, and he’ll tell you that the control and enforced scarcity of money is how the capitalist pigs keep us all under their bloody thumbs and that the workers ought to control the economy democratically. Then he’ll tell you that the stickers are three dollars, “suggested donation,” but if you don’t have three dollars he’ll suggest you turn and walk away.

My (least) favorite Jasper moment today was when a guy tried to sell him a stack of bumper stickers. It was a college boy, and he’d had a bunch of stickers printed up that said “Quayl ’97.” I’m sick of Dan Quayle jokes, and thankfully he’s been out of office and mostly out of the news for four years now, but I at least get the joke — the sticker misspells his name like Quayle misspelled potatoe, and no national elections will be held in 1997. It’s not a funny joke, but obviously it’s a joke, right

Jasper doesn’t joke. He immediately started hollering at the guy, “I don’t want anything with Quayle’s name on it!” and “You think I’d sell stickers supporting that idiot for president?” and on and on.

Whenever the guy with the stickers tried to respond or explain, Jasper only yelled louder, Jasperier, until the kid walked away flipping him the finger.

♦ ♦ ♦  

I was helping a customer, as Berkeley’s crippled Christian rolled his wheelchair up to my table, looked at the fish, and maybe glared at me. It’s hard to tell, because he keeps a cross dangling over his face, so maybe the cross was what was cross, not the man.

I’ve only written about him once before (1/6) but this disabled mega-Christian rolls around Telegraph several times every month, and in a word, he is creepy. His body and wheelchair are festooned with multiple crosses and crucifixes, he has crosses tattooed on each hand, more crosses are probably embroidered on his underwear, and he carries a Bible in his lap.

He’s never yet said anything to me, but I’m certain I don’t sell the style of Jesus fish he’d want to buy. And yet this afternoon, he parked his chair adjacent to my table, and silently stared at the fish.

I finished selling an Anti-Christ magnet to another college kid, and glanced at the holy roller, thinking, You’re waiting to talk to me? It’s been a while since the Christers have given me a good yelling-at, so it’s due, and if this paraplegic wants to scold me for selling blasphemous fish, I will give him the same rage I’d give anyone. You get no slack for your disability, mister, not from me. Equal rights for equal wrongs.

So I smiled and said thanks to my customer, then turned to the very Christian in a wheelchair, and with a phony lilt to my voice said to him, “Our sacrilegious fish are all available as stickers or as magnets.”

Oh, I was itchin’ for a bitchin’ Christian, and I wanted an excuse to ask him why in Christ’s name he rolls around town sporting so many Christs on a cross, all with agonized looks on their wooden or metallic faces. But verily, before I’d finished my opening line about the stickers and magnets, he wheeled himself away.

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The #50 bus was crowded, when a gray but colorfully-dressed adult boarded, and took a sideways seat at the front. Wearing a checkerboard jacket over a plaid shirt, and two-tone pants — left leg bright purple, right leg flaming orange — this person’s gender was a question mark, but that’s not uncommon in the big city.

It’s their face, though, that held my attention — neither black nor white nor any other ethnic, it shined with an exceptional gray, the color of a walk on the moon, or dust from a limestone quarry. The hands were the same shade of chalk or ash, and the hair, of course, was fluorescent green, but the face was fascination. Grayness, interrupted only by an inch-wide and perfectly-flat streak of black eyeshadow, curved around to the ears.

When riding the bus, people-watching is included and often unavoidable, at no extra charge. Nose-pickers, butt-scratchers, drunks, singers, dancers, droolers, karate kickers, naked riders, fentanyl smokers — never say you’ve seen it all, but I’ve seen a lot, and this was different. This was better. This was joy.

Whether this person was male, female, or non-binary, black trying to present as white, or white trying to present as black, your guess would be as good as mine, but I refused to guess. I loved the confident certainty of this strange stranger’s intentional uncertainty, and it had to be intentional. Nobody’s born that color, and if it was a medical condition it would probably be painful, but this was the opposite — celebration! This person was thoroughly pleased with themself and their appearance, and you knew it, because every block or two along the ride, they pulled a handheld mirror from their grocery bag, looked at themself, and smiled.

In the sideways seats, you’re supposed to stand if someone comes aboard who needs the disabled seating, and with proper manners, the passenger stood, curtsied, and yielded when a woman in a wheelchair joined our crowd.

This gray-on-gray, explosively-dressed green-haired ambisexual passenger then stood near the side door, which put them within eyeshot of a curved mirror showing most of the bus’s interior. As I watched (because how could I not?) this passenger glanced at that fish-eye mirror a few times, and always the mirror smiled back.

My stop was next. To reach the exit, I’d have to squeeze past them, and I’d decided to say, “You look fantastic.” After ringing the bell, though, I reconsidered the word ‘look’, and instead said, “You are fantastic.”

“Oh, thank you!” the passenger squealed, and offered a high-five I cheerfully slapped back. Through the door and onto the sidewalk, I looked back and they were smiling even bigger than before, waving at me, and I waved back.

On my half-block walk home, I wasn’t so much thinking about that person on the bus, as about people who would feel awkward, uncomfortable, offended, or even angry at that passenger’s happiness. In particular, I flashed back to a breakfast with my brother, who’d frowned when a trans lady walked into the restaurant.

My brother had muttered, “Something is wrong with that person,” but obviously, whatever had once been wrong with that person, they’d corrected it! And I’ll never understand anyone who misses that very, very obvious point.

3/22/2026

Transit Takes

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Any day selling fish on Telegraph Ave, surrounded by college kids, utopian dreamers, stoners, drunks, hippies, yuppies, the homeless, the street preachers, a few crazy vendors, and of course the cops. Strange is the baseline, and the daily variations can be wild.

Always expect the unexpected, is what you’re expecting me to say, but I fooled you and won’t say that. Still, as l rolled the cart toward my block on the Ave, something in my gut told me that today would be especially on the edge or even over the top.

My gut was wrong, though. It was a predictably dull day. Some fish sold themselves, and some pretty women ignored me, and there was preaching, and Umberto and Jasper argued about something, but only for a few minutes and not very loudly.

Oh, and whatever was going down last weekend must’ve gone down, because the police are back. Plenty of cops were riding their preposterous 10-speeds bikes the wrong way on one-way streets, harassing the homeless and demanding ID from people you could guess don’t carry ID, and treating the general public with ordinary disrespect and intimidation.

All in all, just another day in Berkeley.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Didn’t see Jacque on the Avenue, but when I came home his voice on my machine invited me to dinner and another video double feature “some night soon.” He said he’d had a terrific time last night, which surprised me. I’d enjoyed myself last night more than I enjoyed Jacque — it was fun being intentionally antagonistic and more of an ass than I usually am.

But I’m not really bubbling over with feelings of friendship for the guy, so I called back, thinking I’d say I was busy and can we put it off for a week or three…

Instead of Jacque or an answering machine, though, Lori answered the phone, and we talked for maybe 20 minutes, about good books, French films, idiots in the news, and what it’s like being married to an eggplant. Well, actually neither of us used the word ‘eggplant’, but when I asked how she likes being married to Jacque she said it’s wonderful. I wasn’t convinced. and she quickly changed the subject.

I’d bet bagels to balsa wood that last night was the first and most intelligent conversation she’d had for a while, and she talked me into dinner and a movie with her and Jacque, on Monday night.

♦ ♦ ♦  

There are no further amusing anecdotes of the day, except that Judith bought seven boxes of generic Pop Tarts a few weeks past their expiration dates, on sale for 25¢ each. That works out to about 4¢ per Pop Tart, and she gave me four boxes for free, which works out to nothing per Pop Tart, so for dinner I had 24 expired but free Pop Tarts.

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