BLAH-BLAH-BLAH

BIOGRAPHY (of sorts)

I was one of those lucky people who was born in the right place at the right time...just good fortune. Dad grew up in the Haight-Ashbury before and during the Depression, and I grew up listening to his wondrous and magical tales of him, Whitey, Zeke, McGill, Moose, Sherwood, and the gang and all the amazing adventures they got up to with no money and precious little in the way of toys or sports equipment. But they had a great childhood, living by their wits in this friendly neighborhood.

The Haight-Ashbury was already a fairy-tale haven to me, and by the time I got there, it really WAS a fairy-tale haven!

As mentioned elsewhere, I met the delightfully "insane" Bob Knickerbocker at Foothill College in what is now loosely labelled Silicone Valley, but is Los Altos Hills in the Peninsula (what locals have ALWAYS called Silicone Valley). Bob played two life-changing roles for me: the first was that there was an alternative way of looking at life and the brain-numbing right-wing religious rigidity of American society; and the second was when we met up in 1965 in the Haight and Bob introduced me to LSD...in my case, the drug that put me on the "right" rails from the getgo in terms of who the hell I really was.

But between college and that crazy time, there was the dreaded Draft. I opted for six months in the Marines rather than three years in the Army...hell, how tough could the Marines be, anyway? I was an Eagle Scout, I could swim a mile without breathing hard and had been through the wringer. HA! I knew I had made a BIG mistake when I got to Lindbergh Field in San Diego and a corporal made of titanium strode up to me and barked, "Olsen? Get your ass in this truck!" and without waiting for me to comply, picked me up by my belt and collar and threw me in. But in fact, I didn't make a mistake in retrospect...my Marine Corps training has had nothing but positive results all through my life and I'm glad I went through it (easy to say now, huh?). So, I became a totally fearless, hard-ass Marine, refused to go to Vietnam with the rest of my unit from Pendleton (who were gung-ho to start killing people who had not threatened us in the slightest), ended up in Federal Court, was exonerated, marched in the streets of Berkeley, and generally became a social renegade (along with 10 million other disaffected citizens).

A chance meeting with a very long-haired bookstore proprietor in late1965 led to a first gathering of the Artist's Liberation Front where I met Bill Graham and Jack Healy. It turned out Jack liked fast bikes same as I, so we became fast friends immediately. In the meantime I was doing some high-visibility art events that were covered all round the world, plus doing many paintings (some of which ended up in movies like "Play It Again, Sam"), and producing a series of explosion paintings (my send-up of "pop" art which I was also heavily into and really enjoyed doing...my major piece being the Monopoly board and all the separate properties for sale in real dollars what they cost in Monopoly dollars) that were the result of placing a firecracker vertically on a canvas and dolloping gobs of acrylic tube paint around the thing, lighting it, and running away. I sold out my first show because of the publicity and interest I generated. Jack was putting together a psychedelic poster company with Sam Ridge, but he and Sam didn't know how to make posters...now how's that for moxie!? My kinda guys. I knew how to do all that stuff, so it seemed we were destined for each other. Jack was the businessman, Sam was the salesman, and I was the artsman. It worked.

The famous (or infamous) Funky Features House at 142 Central, two doors off Haight. Our fantastic shipping room papered from floor to ceiling with beautiful wash-up sheets (from printed posters) was on the ground floor behind bars (where we belonged), and this is Bill, our shipping whiz, with our famous "postal van" delivering another batch of posters hot off the presses! This photo is from a feature article about us in the Saturday Evening Post of March 23, 1968. The lounge was the next one up, Jack's office was on the third level complete with Tiffany lamp over his desk....the windows were always uncurtained and passersby would look up to see the famous Funky Jack at work (or playing darts), and the little guest bedroom at the top is where I watched Neil Armstrong take that incredible first step on the moon. For three years this place buzzed like crazy.

The van was bought by Jack on a whim in early '67 at a government auction for $220. We spent a day painting it back to it's original postal livery, then I called up the post office and asked if I could get a couple of "Mr. Zippy" decals (they were just bringing in Zip codes then, and were advertising them with a character known as "Mr. Zippy"). Groovy, huh? Not. Having the Mr. Zippy decals plus the other numbering and lettering decals turned this into a postal truck! It was never spotted by the cops because it was assumed to be what we wanted them to think it was....a postal van! We parked that baby everywhere with impunity and never got a ticket in three years. It was great not only for deliveries, but especially for pulling up to the Fillmore, Winterland, or the Avalon and stopping right in front, disgorging all our friends and leaving the van in a red zone, white zone, or whatever zone until the concert was over.

(As I was leaving for Japan in 1969, the wrist strap on my brand new Konica super-8 camera let go, and the camera bounced all the way down these steep, hard, and unforgiving terrazzo steps, making very expensive-sounding breaking noises on it's way. I picked up the destroyed camera, threw it in my bag and kept going to SFO airport. In Tokyo, I found Konica's headquarters in the Ginza and popped in, asking if they could fix it, and what would it cost. Lots of concerned looks and many gasps and serious intakes of breath accompanied by lots of nodding...then I was told to come back later in the day. The damage looked and sounded severe, so I reckoned they would have an answer for me then. When I came back, huge smiles all round, and they handed me my REPAIRED camera for NO CHARGE! It was that kind of hustling and customer service that enabled Japan to cream us economically)

(Oh! And on the sixth floor of Mitsukoshi I was astounded to find in the optical department that you could get your eyes tested, pick out frames, wander around for an hour, and come back to have your finished glasses ready!!!! When could you do this in America? In the mid 80's maybe???? Japan blew me away--in more ways than one....those bath houses and those lovely, giggly, charming bath house girls...hubba-hubba!!!!).

We formed Funky Features after a hilarious naming session in Golden Gate Park where none of us could think of a suitable name. Sam blurted out, "How about Funky Features?" Jack and I pissed ourselves laughing....so Funky Features it was. I jumped in the car (my trusty Allard) and dashed downtown to a printer I knew and ordered business cards in the weirdest Letraset type I could find in this color and this color. ALL business cards at this time were in Henry Ford's favorite color, so this was quite racy. For a laugh, rather than print Paul Olsen, Jack Healy, and Sam Ridge on our respective cards, I emblazoned "Funky Paul," "Funky Sam," and "Funky Jack" on them...unbeknownst to the other two.

I picked up the cards the following day, and they looked GREAT. I laughed, and couldn't wait to get back to spring them on Jack and Sam. I had parked the Allard roadster in an alleyway that was peppered with short steel poles in the curb every 15 feet to stop trucks from unloading and blocking the alley. Mallard (the Allard) fit between two poles nicely, and I vaulted into the car in my excitement to get back to the Funky Features house, started the engine, rammed her in first, popped the clutch and BLAM! ran straight into one of the totally immovable poles that was shorter than the hood of the car and which I couldn't see and had forgotten about. I was catapaulted over the windshield onto the aluminum hood which I dented severely with my head when I landed. What was left of my brain was spinning. This was before seatbelts were common.

After my eyeballs settled down enough to see, I hared back to the Haight and delivered the anxious Sam and Jack their cards with a flourish. They creased up in hysterics. It was now official: we were Funky Sam, Funky Jack, and Funky Paul!! The media seized on the "Funkies" and we became famous. Everyone wanted one of our crazy business cards to keep (I wish I had kept some). We were very successful and had a fantastic partnership with never a cross word in three years. Lots of laughter, though! At the bottom of all our posters and underneath our logo it said: "We're really funky!" We were, too. Just look at this photo:

Unbelievable, I know, but this was the "official photo" of Funky Paul, Funky Jack, and Funky Sam in the lounge of the Funky Features house at 142 Central, taken in 1966. Hey, it was early days, what can I say? Why am I not wearing pants??? Jack, in the middle, was always the cool dude with plenty of style...he's certainly a lot cooler than the two idiots flanking him! Note the "Day in the Life" poster in the background of which we just had 10,000 copies printed. Keith Reid, the lyricist for Procol Harum (or Freakle-Frackle as we called them--what kind of weirdo English hi-falutin name was "Procol Harum" anyway????) would spend hours in the wheelchair composing his strange lyrics about falling and flying ceilings, quite happy while the rest of us were getting up to some form of no-good or other. Usually involving gallons of Red Mountain wine--hey, we were a classy bunch, y'know? Reidy now lives in Manhattan, jogs every day, and doesn't look a day older than he did then (the bastard).

For more info on Gary Brooker, Keith Reid, and Procol Harum, please go to: www.procolharum.com

One day there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find a New York streetwise fast talker who opened with, "Is this the Funky house?" I told him it was and he said, "My name's Lenny, I want to print your posters in Europe for distribution over there." Lenny opened his thick wallet and rifled through thousands of dollars in hundred dollar bills, then looked up at me inquisitively. "Come on IN, Lenny!" I said with a flourish, and swung the door wi-i-i-i-ide open.

Lenny lived in Wimbledon, about as far from the Bronx as one could get, and was obviously loaded with cold, hard, motorcycle-buying CASH. Jack and I were paying verrrry close attention to dear Lenny as he laid out his plans. He was busy buying up hip Haight-Ashbury goodies and was going to be the psychedelic King of Europe! I always wanted to go to England and saw my chance. Lenny wanted me there to supervise the printing, so off I went.

Lenny had earlier made a pile and had helped the struggling actor, Oliver Reed, when he needed a leg up...a kindness Oliver never forgot. As things happen, Lenny fell on hard times and the now emergingly successful Oliver was there big-time to return the favor, bankrolling Lenny's psychedelic venture.

While I was off in England, Funky Jack was busy spending Lenny's cash and getting married, forgetting about dear old Funky Paul who was probably having a wonderful time in England, anyway. But Jack held the pursestrings, and Paul needed cash to get back home. I remember a long distance telephone conversation that went something like this: "Jack, I need my planefare money to get back to San Francisco...I only have a ticket to New York and I'm broke and freezing cold!" The response was classic Healy: "Gee, Paul, I'd like to help ya, but the simple truth is, man, there just ain't any! But wait 'til you see the groovy new bike I bought!" You had to like the guy. Moxie in spades (I'll give him moxie). To be fair, Healy "let" me use the bike anytime I liked. And I liked. What a way to run a business, huh? (a GREAT way to run a business!).

My last day of my 6 weeks in England saw me with 5 shillings and a dime to my name. I had noticed that Wimbledon was at the end of one of the District Underground line spurs, and thought I would go there to see what the tennis capitol of the world was like. The fare was 2'-6 return from West Kensington, where I was staying at Olympia. That left me with just two-and-a-half shillings...the price of a pint. Well...I would go to Wimbledon, wander around, have that pint, then head back to my friends' house and leave for the Big Apple in the morning.