Finally, Unequivocal Proof Of A Pudding

Readers of my ongoing story, The Syndicate of Eternal Friendship, besides wondering when the next chapter is coming out, must sometimes wonder about the story's veracity. I mean, how likely is it someone invented a radio that picks up signals from forty years in the past? Or a transmitter that allows The Syndicate to communicate with a fifteen year old disc jockey living in the year 1927? On the face of it, I have to admit, we have some credibility issues.

Yet, every word is true. Every word! I wasn't actually there myself of course, but I've interviewed both Sylvie Potemkin and Paulie Ratskiwatsky many times and I always made careful notes afterwards. When I could still see my notebook. If only I could talk with Walrus Pemmican too, but I just can't find him. Nobody can. It's like he was sucked up in a cyclone and blown all the way to Oz. Maybe he's living in a hut in a forest somewhere in the kingdom of the Winkies. Well, even without his testimony, I have evidence. Incontrovertible evidence, which I now present for the first time. Step right up. Admission 10 cents.

To gather this evidence, I hitchhiked across the wild steppes of Oregon all the way to San Francisco, slept out in the rain in abandoned pigsties, made friends with the Rogue River Rustlers who let me sleep under their porch, bunked in virginal youth hostels with young Ostrogoths and Franks, all with one intent and one intent only - to get to San Francisco to convince you, gentle reader, of the absolute truth of every wild claim, no matter how outlandish.

I now present, for the first time ever, actual photographs of the very locations where The Syndicate of Eternal Friendship takes place. If these don't convince you, then you are a hard case indeed, and probably eat boiled owl...


Here is the fabled intersection of Page and Clayton, the geographical center of the story's universe. Half a block north lies the Hancock house. Someday there'll be a plaque. And half a block west you'll find the bay-windowed, asbestos-shingled, anonymous-looking flat where the Syndicate of Eternal Friendship began their incredible adventure.


Here's where Tosh stood knocking, waiting for someone to answer the door, on that morning that changed their lives forever...


Half a block north on Clayton you'll find the Hancock home and the dumpster where Paulie and Walrus first found the time radio. You can see where Margaret had her attic studio there at the top of the building. Ken and Don, the gay landlords who bought the place from the Hancock estate, sold it in 1981. Now, in 2008, it's being remodeled back into a single family home. How likely is that, oh mocker? I wonder if there's anything else still hiding under the floorboards of the attic?

Looks like they're converting the garden apartment where the old man with the Siamese cat lived into a garage...

Here is the Childrens' Playground in Golden Gate Park, where Walrus and Tosh first met. Kismet, I guess. It was six o'clock in the morning. Walrus was trying to wake up the chickens in their little chicken house while Tosh watched in amazement from atop her carousel horse. They didn't do things like this at home in St. John's Wood. If you look closely you can still see the columns of the merry-go round peeking through the trees.

And here is the very chicken house, a little larger than in 1965 and it no longer houses chickens, of course. Other than that, you must admit there really is a chicken house right where they said it was.

Finally, compelling, incontrovertible evidence! Here is the exact tree that Howie Morris climbed like the great apes after he accidentally and innocently absorbed a megadose of 100% pure, pharmaceutical grade, Sandoz-manufactured, lysergic acid diethylamide. In the crook of this very tree, in the rain, he gibbered and shivered, attracting a small crowd of neighborhood toughs in the process, who urged him on to greater heights. The police had to call the fire department to get him down. After which they put him in the back seat of their patrol car and hauled him off to the bughouse.

Of course the tree was a little smaller then.


Editor's Note: If you have no idea what the Pig is talking about and kind of wish you did, just reach over to the sidebar where it says The Syndicate Of Eternal Friendship; A Novel In Progress, click on Chapter One, start reading and pretty soon you'll find yourself in the Haight-Ashbury in 1965. A real trip, man. Good luck.