Sumit's Inkwell

San Francisco’s famous summer fog rolled in, covering the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, like a final curtain coming to veil the city’s weirdos and rejects. From where we were sitting, it was the perfect view for the end of our strange day. We were bored kids from the Central Valley, fleeing the summer heat and our own restlessness. Beneath our aimless wondering lay an insatiable curiosity – why are we here?

Not in the Central Valley. Earth.

“How’s the view up there?” I hear a voice under us ask, as I’m recapping the day in my mind.

Back in the early 2010s I spent a lot of time hanging out in San Francisco, it was never anything spectacular, a few dudes with little money exploring the disorienting maze of hills and skyscrapers. Being from where we are, just about anything was better than staying put.

We’d drive to nearest BART station, the Bay Areas version of the Subway, about 45 minutes away in a city called Livermore and ride the train into SF. Thinking about it now the drives to the BART station were my favorite, MF Doom pulsating through the speakers as we pass through the sun scorched hills of the Altamont pass.

Going through the hills I’d remember being a kid sitting in the back seat of my parents Durango, driving my late Grandparents to the airport. When they were alive, they’d plan trips to India for months at a time, and I would hate how much I was going to miss them. When we’d reach those hills, I knew I only had about another hour to spend with them. A strange feeling that hangs on to me to this day.

Those same hills that held memories of my grandparent’s departures would later become a familiar backdrop for my adventures to San Francisco with my good friends Javier, Bruno, and Marlon.

Javier was a character. Tall medium build bearded Mexican dude with the curiosity of a child and confidence of a honey badger. He viewed the world as quite literally his playground often taking off in any direction in his little green Honda.

His car was an adventure in itself, scattered throughout the backseat would be books on anthropology, his satchels, random instruments, and bull horn water bottle he brought along everywhere.  

Spontaneity wasn’t in my personality’s repertoire. Rigid in my way, I wouldn’t leave the comforts of home without a detailed plan of exactly what, where, and when. Maybe that is why I was so drawn to the unscripted madness that was Javier.

Our conversations were most often always about the inner workings of the Universe, the Human mind, the great question of Why? And of course, psychedelics, and how cool it would be trip out hard and perceive the world and all its “chess pieces “in an alternative mindset.

Every now and then we’d be joined by our two other friends Bruno and Marlon.

Bruno was a short, angel-eyed Assyrian enigma with an ever-present camera, moving silently capturing life in frames. He never really said a lot, and I always found his presence a bit surreal. One time while waiting for Javier outside of a bar, I wasn’t 21 yet, he had me focus my strength on a small stone and break it in half. And another time he cooked us apple sausage at his house while his dad talked to us music.

Marlon looked like the blonde Michelin man. A stout dude with a heart of gold, cruising through life on a cloud of chronic. He was a bit more conventional than us, but every now and then his conversations veered into the cosmos, fueled by Terence McKenna philosophies, making him a perfect fit to our group.

 Our San Francisco expeditions were largely centered around Golden Gate Park. That’s where we’d always start off by paying homage to Hippie Hill and watching drum circles from a safe distance. Once we felt we had soaked in enough of the vibe we would head back towards the city center.

Navigating though the vibrant tapestry of Haight Street, past the forgotten elder hippies, street artists and tourists, eventually arriving downtown among the tech entrepreneurs, cable cars and more tourists.

One hot Central Valley summer weekend the three of us clowns decided to take one of our usual SF Day trips, but we wanted to do something different this time. Not just go there, smoke shitty weed and watch the dancing alternative lifestyle advocates.

 There was something specific we wanted to experience so we sat down to plan this one. We wanted to trip the fuck out, we wanted to take psychedelics in San Francisco, the psychedelic capital of the world. Being home to a whole host of people against such a colorful landscape, what better place to indulge in such reveries?

Javier, Bruno and I had some experience in the psychedelic realm, having tripped on psilocybin mushrooms earlier that year while climbing a 2000 mountain infested with rattlesnakes, a story for another time. What we had perceived was so intense we became entirely too curious to see what insights we would gain in the same state of mind in the San Franciscan environment with both it’s rich and dark history.

Although this trip was planned, there was an important element missing. Psychedelics. Which was not an easy thing to find on the valley floor back then, so we figured we’d just get them when we get to SF, someone would be have to have them.

All four of us loaded into Javier’s little green Honda and made our way to the BART station. The train ride was a bit of a hazy blur, but we eventually made it into SF. We hopped off the train at Montgomery station and rode the Muni to Haight St.

The moment you set foot onto that street you feel an instant change of aura. Stepping into the kaleidoscope that is Haight-Ashbury, sounds swirled around me with an unknown source of music pulsating through the air, voices mingling, and that hiccup from bus engines between gear changes.

Everywhere, faces blurred together, their eyes slipping past mine. Above, the Victorian-era facades stretching to the sky, the intricate details in harmony with the unhinged, graffiti framed murals draped on every wall. The air was alive with the smell of weed, cigarettes, and a hint of pizza.

You could feel this place man.

We began making our way to the Holy Land of Psychedelics and Drum Circles. Golden Gate Park.

The plan was to try and get shrooms, or magic mushrooms, but somewhere along the trip Javier and Bruno decided they wanted to try acid instead. Because of Bruno’s line of work, he was able to connect with some scientist who was making it in his apartment near the park.

Marlon and I stuck to our original plan of tripping out on something more natural, I didn’t want to fuck around with acid, at least not yet. At that time, I had little knowledge of the city and depended on those two to get us around, but now it was just Marlon and I in this unfamiliar environment about to ask strangers for shamanic substances.

Keep in mind this was 2009, marijuana was still mostly illegal, so being caught with psilocybin mushrooms certainly meant jail. But like I said, we were in San Francisco standing on the very ground that held the Summer of Love. We weren’t too concerned.  

Scanning the area, I was looking for a person who would look like they would have mushrooms. Here they could look like Steve Jobs or Willie Nelson.

I took notice of a strange elf-looking fellow holding a hash pipe, leaning against a large tree looking in our direction. I figured he was about to ask us for money or something, so I quickly looked away, but he had other plans.

I turn to Marlon to say something and suddenly, inches behind me I hear “You guys looking for something?”

I’m a tall guy, I turn around and look down, and its elf man looking up at me with a sharp smirk on his face. Seeing him up close threw me off, he was short and pale with rat like features and looked like he was between 23 and 68, his scruffy hair stuck out from all directions from under his dirty cap and covered the tops of his ears giving him that strange elf quiddity.

Confused by his approach paranoia kicked in. “He might be a cop” I thought to myself, but I also wanted to get trippy. “Y-yeah, shrooms” I stuttered nervously.

“I think I might be able to help you out”, said Elf man, blowing out odorless smoke.

Fucker looked like he was right out of a Beavis and Butthead episode.  

He wanted us to follow him. We did. Cautiously.

We kept a safe distance behind him. I figured if he tries to lead us into some dark corner, we can just bail into the public. Nope. It was just a few yards away near the tree he was standing at scoping us.

He introduced himself as Tick. I didn’t ask how he got that name, not sure if we wanted to know. But I do wish I had talked to the guy a little bit more about his life. At that moment, though, I just wanted to get our stuff and get away.

We didn’t tell him our real names, and I think he knew that. I kept the conversation light, just telling him about our plan for the day and what we were looking for.

We approach the tree he probably lived in and Tick crouches down and begins digging near the trunk, we’re still talking at this point. The whole time I’m looking at Marlon trying to read his body language, he looked calm enough which put me at ease. He later revealed to me he was scared as shit, and didn’t want to buy anything from him.

Tick gets back up, holding a small dirty sandwich bag with strange blue contents inside.

“Check it out”, he said, as he hands me the bag.

I unsurely take it from him and notice the skin on his hands is discolored and peeling, making me feel a bit uneasy. I looked in the bag, sure enough they were mushrooms, but they looked strange, they were blue. I show Marlon and he just acknowledges without saying anything.

I agree to buy them hoping for a quick transaction, but before he takes the money this fucking elf wants us to smoke from his hash pipe, so he knows we’re not cops. This guy looked like he was immune to every anti-viral medication known to man, and I almost refused, but I’m getting my mushrooms dammit.

He handed the pipe and a lighter to Marlon first, who took a hit, and mirroring his confidence I took a drag, but didn’t inhale and was relieved by the taste of low-quality marijuana. Back before the fentanyl epidemic we used to worry about getting dosed with heroine or angel dust, that or we just watched Friday too many times.

I’ll leave out the exacts, we had enough of what we needed, paid the man and said our goodbyes.

A thought that I’ll most likely never see this guy again crossed my mind. As we walked away, I remembered looking back at him a few times. Like an NPC in a video game, he reset himself back at same tree he was leaning against to scope out his next “consciousness explorer tourists”.

“I don’t know what the hell was in the pipe bro” Marlon says in an unfazed manner.

“I really hope it was weed” I said.

“I don’t think it was” Marlon replied, calmly.

I often think about Tick, that moment, and how perfectly executed everything was. Maybe it was just a stroke of luck, or maybe the Universe lined up the stars for us. It hadn’t even been an hour since we arrived and already, we had what we were looking for.

Or. It was just some homeless dude who had various caches of drugs buried throughout the park and scopes out tourists looking to score. But why take away the magic?

Still, it just seemed too easy which once again aroused suspicion of our goods being spiked.

Marlon and I found a clearing in the park and sat down to thoroughly examine our procurements. The mushrooms had long stems with blue pointy caps, kind of looking like tiny gnome hats on broomsticks. I had never seen blue mushrooms before, but they couldn’t be good for ingesting.

We both sat there in silence for a minute, suddenly I just snapped right into one of those gnome hats and scarfed down the broomstick along with it. Marlon did the same. I bit into two more pieces, they tasted like pumpkin seeds, and rot. In other words, shit.

After that I do not remember much of what happened, not in detail anyway. We had supplemented with a bit of vitamin THC. Marlon and I start walking around on the edges of Hippie Hill and go down to watch a drum circle near the benches below.

I’m feeling nauseous, with a churning feeling in my stomach. There are people dancing around me but suddenly I feel alone, and incredibly aware. The cool air blows through my skin and I’m imagining the cold looking like little ice crystals entering through the pores. The trees suddenly are breathing, their dancing branches moving in some unknown purposeful geometric pattern.

I don’t know how much time had passed between our interactions with Tick, but suddenly Javier and Bruno appeared before us. It seemed like they just took form right in front of us, we didn’t see them coming from any direction.

With a huge grin on his face Javier says, “You find them?”

I didn’t know it at the time, but these fuckers were Bart Simpsoned up to their necks in acid. His Cheshire cat smile should’ve given it away.

I’m looking at him in almost disbelief as I’m handing him the bag with a couple of gnome hats left.

He and Bruno both examine the bag, pleasantly surprised.

“Dam, these look fucking good” said Javier, handing them back to me.

Bruno agreed, but looking slightly concerned asks us “How many did you take?”

They both laughed when I told them. “Enjoy the ride,” said Javier. Famous last words.

The next few hours happened in flashes, something I remember being consistent was the nauseous churning feeling in my stomach that seemed to spiral out within me. It felt as if I could feel the figurative umbilical cord that attaches us to mother nature.

Bruno and Javier wanted to take pictures around the park, and we ran into two dudes from Ohio who took notice of their cameras. Paul and Andrew. They were exploring California and we briefly talked about other places they should check out around the state.

The rocket we were riding began experiencing some turbulence, and the sun was beginning to set, so we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.

We left the park and made our way back onto Haight to catch the Muni back into downtown. None of us said much to each other, the Universe was perceiving the world through four separate human perspectives.

Everything seemed brighter, more vivid, and in the most unexplainable way I was aware of every single event unfolding before my eyes. A hyper awareness took over my body and it felt as I was an observer.  Everything could be felt through some nonexistent sense that was coming from somewhere beyond me.

We’re just antennas.

We’re just conscience antennas with emotions, problems, and attachments.

I watched people living, I watched them be, I could almost read their bullshit written all over them.

Not once did I try to make sense of any of it. I remained serendipitous and absorbed it all.

We passed a curious looking staircase on a hill covered by trees that seemed to lead to nowhere. It was getting dark, but there was still enough light in the sky and in us having one more little adventure. The staircase led to an empty playground on a large hill with a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge towering over the sprawl of rooftops, steeples, and towers.

 We settle in on a ledge facing near the playground, facing the bridge, I notice a homeless dude napping on a bench about 20 feet below us. Javier mentions Andrew and Paul were making their way to the bridge, as I hear the familiar click of a bic lighter to the right followed by an emanating smell of a passing skunk.

We had not talked to each other much that day, and this was a good moment to catch up. Javier and Bruno told us about how they ran into a scientist mapping the human genome and sold them acid, we told them about Tick. We talked about whatever else 20-year-olds talked about in 2010, the iPhone 3GS, women, life, the future.

Bruno mentions the fog coming in on top of the bridge.

As I’m watching, I’m thinking about the day, my life, these guys next to me and the future, not knowing the curtain of fog was coming to veil the end of our friendship.

The four us never assembled again. Though we have gone back to the city at various times, never together as that group. We kept touch throughout the years but at some point, life happened, and like that Pink Floyd song goes “And then one day you find ten years have got behind you”.

It’s been nearly 20.

Somewhere in the Universe’s gallery must be a picture of the four us sitting up on the hill.

“It’s beautiful” I replied.

-Sumit Randhawa