“DOWN AND OUT IN SAN FRANCISCO”
October 25, 1960
San Francisco, Fillmore St., the bay a few blocks to my left, warm sun in the streets, sitting at a breakfast table two floors above the street, drinking ale, listening to the marvelous vitality of the Kingston Trio—three rummies lucky enough to laugh at the whole world for a half-million dollars a year. No wonder they laugh.
City of hills and fog and water, bankers and boobs—Republicans all. City of no jobs—“sorry, we have no openings here; be glad to talk to you, though”—city of no money except what you find at the General Delivery window, and somehow it’s always enough—city, like all cities, of lonely women, lost souls, and people slowly going under. City of newspapers for Nixon (“careful now, don’t upset the balance of terror”), of neon bars and apartments full of people who can’t pay rent or phone bills or even face the newspaper delivery boy when he comes around to collect. City of music and longshoremen and just enough sunshine to make you appreciate it. City of Alcatraz, where human beings rot in unimaginable isolation, a loneliness so complete and terrifying that only a man who has been in jail can know it, of Alcatraz just a pistol shot away from freedom and the Ramos fizz on Sunday morning, Alcatraz so close that you know they can hear the clang of a cable-car bell on a clear day, Alcatraz where men rot and die while the city dances across the bay.
San Francisco, edge of the western world, where you can drink all night and jump off the bridge to beat a hangover, where you can sell encyclopedias because no other job is available, where you refuse to sell encyclopedias because you have better things to do, because you were born queer and cannot be a salesman like all your american brothers—where you talk with editors and news directors and creative directors and hear over and over again how easy and necessary it is to sell out, where you find sympathy and no work (“it’s hard, I know it’s hard; I tried it myself, but with a wife and kids …”) and countless sips of weak coffee with the want ads and sunday mornings with a quart of ale and a girl on the phone who says “come over for breakfast; we live on Telegraph Hill, you know, and nobody goes hungry over here except when we want something you can’t buy and don’t know how to look for anymore—but we don’t talk about that except when we’re drunk, and then we lie down and open our mouths wide and cry when nothing falls in.”
Say “no” to San Francisco and be rich—spend your last dollar on brandy and swack reality across the cheek. “No, I will not sell out, I will not give you the best hours of my day and let you use my blood to grease the wheels and cogs of a hundred banking machines, sorry, Jack, but I will take your time and your cigarettes and laugh at you quietly for the questions you ask and know all the time that your guts have dried up and your spine is rubber and you measure me against your contempt for the human race and find a disturbing disparity—how so, prince jellyfish? will you endorse this check for me? many thanks; now I can work against you for another week. and when the money runs out, maybe I will beg then, maybe then you can crack me and pinch my smile, but I will never get to work on time, only take your money and laugh again—and you cannot afford to laugh anymore, you will crack one day too, and that will be the end—for you cannot bounce, and I can.
TO SANDY CONKLIN:
October 28, 1960
San Francisco
Dear Princess:
Today marked a turning point in the great San Francisco job hunt; it has become all too obvious that I am not going to get a decent job in this city before January. If you want an explanation, ask for it in your next letter. If not, just live with it.
Monday I’ll ride my thumb south—Carmel, Monterey, Big Sur, and maybe all the way to Los Angeles. Whatever happens will be all right. I do not care and have no plans. All I want to do is get out on the coast and see the California everybody talks about. I’ll go as far as the rides take me, sleep on the beach (sleeping bag), and beg, if necessary, for food. Your $15 is my fortune, and god knows where it will get me, but it will be a break from this wretched frustration—and nothing would be more welcome.
I have taken as many interviews as any thinking man can tolerate. They’ve pumped me so full of bullshit that I feel it rising in my throat, and I need some air. Now I understand the Golden Gate suicides; I understand the drunks and the whores and the dull hedonists who fill the bars and the sad Telegraph Hill apartments. The city is merely an extension of Alcatraz; once you get here there’s no way to go except backward, and the kind of people who flee to San Francisco don’t have the guts or the time to start over again. So you make the best of a bad move; you stand it as long as you can, drinking enough to dull the pain of disappointment and frustration—and then, if it still hurts, you jump.
But I’m just going to amble on out. When the money runs out I’ll come back and look for a job as a parking lot attendant. If that, too, proves impossible, I’ll amble across the desert to Glenwood Springs. Paul is already there and plans to do construction work in Aspen until January. I doubt that I could stay there more than a week, but we shall see. More on this when I return from the south.
Bone & McGarr both intend to move out of the apartment by December 1. We shall have to do something by then. I realize it depends on me, so get ready to jump in almost any direction.
Right now, I want only two things—you, and time to write. These people out here feel sorry for me; they don’t know what I’m going to do, and they can’t understand why it doesn’t seem to worry me. It’s so sad that it makes me laugh. I feel like the man with The Secret. They tell me I need love, and I laugh quietly. They tell me I need a purpose, and I laugh again. I would never tell them how happy I am to know we’re going to be together again, because then they wouldn’t be able to feel sorry for me and they’d feel even worse. I really want nothing more than to be in bed with you, to stay there as long as we want, to have a roof over our heads and food in our mouths, and to be left alone. We already have the big thing, and the rest is trivia. Only three more weeks; save your yanqui dollars; they may make a difference.
Love, H
TO LAURIE HOSFORD:
In late October Thompson left San Francisco for Big Sur, where he decided to settle to write the Great Puerto Rican Novel. Hosford had at last graduated from the ROTC program at the University of Florida; shortly after this point he became a commercial pilot for American Airlines.
November 15, 1960
Big Sur, California
Dear Laurie:
After not hearing from you in half a year, I got two letters from you in the space of five days—one forwarded from Spain, and the other from Louisville. About a month ago, I sent a card to your old Tallahassee address, but I guess it got lost. Anyway, we made the connection.
Obviously, I won’t be showing you Spain in December or anytime in the next few months. I am now stuck in Big Sur with one silver dollar and a crotch full of poison oak. They say California is the big milk and honey land, but all I’ve managed to get out of it so far is wine and perpetual discomfort. Right now it’s cold as hell. I’m about fifty feet from the ocean, my coal is running low, my crotch is driving me crazy, and the short story I’ve been working on for two weeks is a bag of crap. Life is a rathole.
(to be truthful, I’m having a hell of a good time—but don’t ever tell anyone I admitted it.)
Your letter from Tallahassee was a good one. I really envied you sitting out there on the lake, lounging around the house, etc.—and it brought back a lot of good memories. I wrote Ann Frick from Seattle, but got no reply. Perhaps it’s just as well, because I’m pretty involved right now—think I told you in my card that I was considering marriage and I’d like to keep the confusion to a minimum. […]
This “key to life” business really interests me, but I’ll take your word that we have to sit down over a few beers before I can grasp it. I wish to hell we could get together sometime, but we’re both moving around so fast that it seems impossible. If you ever get to San Francisco let me know in advance and I’ll be there when you a
rrive. I have several job feelers up there, but nothing definite as yet. Until something breaks I’ll probably stay here.
I think I told you the novel bounced four times before I gave up and put it in a drawer. It might break up into one or two short stories but I’m not sure. I learned a hell of a lot writing it, and the time was far from wasted. Naturally, I wish it had sold, but it wasn’t really that good. Very fast-moving, sometimes funny, a few good high spots, but no real organization and not a very original theme. My recent short stories are better; they are now with an agent in New York and may do something if I’m lucky. Sooner or later. I don’t work hard enough to deserve “a break,” but if I don’t get one I’m going to cause trouble.
Your plan to leave the AF and fly sounds good. I don’t doubt that it will work out, and I think you’ll enjoy it. If I were half as optimistic about my own future, I’d feel like I had it made. But I’m not pessimistic yet, and I’m making progress, so to hell with it.
Hello to “Little Burl,”21 and write as soon as you can. Cheers.
Hunter
TO J. P. DONLEAVY:
Donleavy’s The Ginger Man remains one of Thompson’s all-time favorite novels. Perhaps more than any other influence, Donleavy’s work taught Thompson the importance of writing in a voice without restraint.
December 8, 1960 Big Sur
Mr. Donleavy:
I’ve been waiting since The Ginger Man for your next effort, a thing the grapevine led me to believe would be called Helen. But all I’ve seen is your short farce on The Beat Generation and Angry Young Men.
Is Helen out? If so, where is it? And if it isn’t, have you done anything big since The Ginger Man?
The GM, by the way, had real balls, a rare thing in these twisted times. I heard the priests gave you a rough time with the stage version, but to hell with them. The church is on its last legs and if we deal them blow for blow I think we may prevail.
At any rate, let me know if you have anything new in the bookstores. I’m stuck out here, writing the Great Puerto Rican Novel, and I’d like to know if anybody’s running interference for me.
If you get to Big Sur, stop in.
Cheers,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO ABE MELLINKOFF, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE:
December 15, 1960
Big Sur, California
Abe Mellinkoff
Chronicle
5th & Mission
San Francisco
Dear Mr. Mellinkoff:
I just got tearsheets of another one of my Caribbean pieces in the New York Herald Tribune and thought I’d hit you again while I’m still feeling big-headed.
The fat is in the fire, Abe; the great spectre of poverty has finally put my shoulder to the mat, and only a salary can save the day. I’m fairly objective about my capabilities and I honestly think I could do a good job for you, if only on a trial basis.
You’ve read my clippings—if you don’t recall, I’ll bring them in again—and I think we agreed they were pretty decent. I’ve read the Chronicle every day since then, so I’m no stranger to the style, and I think the mere fact that I’ve been able to hang on this long without throwing myself on the mercy of the employment agencies is a whomping tribute to my native ingenuity.
I’m considering a trip to New York for Christmas—and perhaps longer—so I’d like to hear from you on this as soon as possible. The chance of an opening on the Chronicle is about the only thing that’s kept me out here this long, and I hope you’ll be frank enough to tell me if I’m wasting my time.
The enclosed clipping will give you a better idea of what I can do. It’s my only copy, so please return it.
Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO ANN SCHOELKOPF:
December 23, 1960
Big Sur, California
Dear Madam—
Glad you warned me about Maxine22 & her gin, because if I hadn’t been prepared for it, I might have gone under. I have just got the last of the bottles out of the house; I was throwing them over the cliff all week, but I couldn’t keep pace. Lord, it was a goatdance like I ain’t done in some while.
Anyway, she left two days ago, bound for New York—so maybe you’d better pick up a little olive oil to grease your stomach. She wanted us to go with her, and it was torture to refuse—but the old wallet couldn’t have handled it … oh lord, the call of the loins in the next room … be back in a moment.…
The trip would have killed me. Can you imagine driving from Big Sur to New York, sucking gin all the way, drinking steadily for a week in New York, then back to Big Sur again? Only a beast could survive it. Maxine will pick up most of my plunder in New York and bring it west when she returns. She will stay with Bone, and I’ll be interested to see how that turns out. Amazing, how all my worlds keep getting tangled up in each other, eh? I can see Bone now, sitting there in the apt., drinking a bit of Tang, absent-mindedly cleaning between his toes while he reads a pamphlet on Israel—and at this very moment a great white hellbomb is heading straight for his bed, zipping across Oklahoma with a bag of gin, muttering lewd epigrams, and armed only with my information that Bone is a dead-game sport. Ah, Robert, if you only knew.…
Maxine’s steak-and-roast-beef diet fattened me up for a while, but the loin-call is thinning me down in a hurry. My hair is three times as long as you ever saw it, my moral strictures have turned to jelly, and my financial condition is every bit as bad as it was this time last year. Progress is my most important product.
This past year has been a holocaust. Counting on my fingers, I see that I spent six months in Puerto Rico, one in the Virgin Islands, one in Bermuda, two in New York, one in San Francisco, and two in Big Sur—in that order. This makes Kerouac look like a piker. In the entire 12 months I have written three decent short stories, one brochure (by long odds, the most profitable—$25 a day), a weird collection of journalism, and countless letters. The rest of the time I worried about either movement, money or police.
Now I am getting tired—and hungry—and I would give a nut to be able to step over to the icebox and find a bowl of tuna fish, a jar of hot peppers and a bottle of Ballantine ale. But no more. No, all I have now are the dregs of a bottle of wine ($1.14 a gallon), a wad of salami, and a shaky credit with the mailman—who also brings groceries. Somehow, we are having a 20 lb. turkey for Christmas. A crazed Tzarist writer, 60 years old and lecherous as a young bull, has come up with a monster turkey—and every winehead in Big Sur will be here to pick it clean. All week long we had the terrible public gluts, with bearded thieves hustling out of barns and shacks to share in the abundance brought in by the Big Momma from Sandusky. Every day I drove up to the mailbox in a sleek white convertible—top down and bare-chested, of course—and greeted the postman with a wide, opulent smile. Now, my credit is like Fort Knox—although he keeps asking why I don’t drive my car anymore. I tell him I need the exercise.
I presume, of course, that you’re picking up on my stuff in the Trib. Another one came out recently, and now they want something on Big Sur. If they paid anything, I might hustle for them. But they don’t. Also selling an occasional story to the Courier-Journal, but the combined total is not even enough to keep me in wine. The Big Money is just around the corner, of course, and it won’t be long before I get my hands on it. And then, by jesus, a Crotchdance of such heinous proportions as to whiten the hair of every Rotarian from Newark to Muscle Beach. […]
Unless the Big Money comes in by January 1, we’ll head back to San Francisco & probably put Sandy to work. Suppose we’ll get an apt., so come on out for a visit if you think you can stand the gaff. I keep applying for jobs and people keep running me out of offices because of my hair and my pipe-thing. Clancy is out here, doing six months in the Army just up the coast in Monterey, and once in a while he comes down for a bit of wine and a Sheep’s Head [ale].
That’s just about the score on this end. What the hell are you doing? Maxine didn’t seem to know & I can only guess. I predict
firestorms before summer, followed by a massive shitrain to finish us off. Until then, I shall prevail.
Pompously,
Hunter
Hunter and Sandy at their Big Sur home. (PHOTO BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Thompson at Big Sur. (PHOTO BY JO HUDSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Thompson’s favorite portrait of his friend Paul Semonin. (PHOTO BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Thompson became known as “The Outlaw of Big Sur.” (COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Joan Baez was Thompson’s Big Sur neighbor. (PHOTO BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
1. Rhodes was a high-quality men’s store in Louisville.
2. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella The Gambler.
3. By “Hubbard Cure” Thompson is referring to his Cuddebackville landlord, Fred Hubbard, who had stolen a wheel from his Jaguar in lieu of rent.
4. Thompson had a free-lance assignment from the Louisville Courier-Journal to cover Mardi Gras in Charlotte Amalie, capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
5. Fred Hazlett was an executive at the Puerto Rico News Service. He got Thompson a lot of freelance ad modeling assignments.
6. Hosford’s new wife.
7. Carl Solomon was a Beat poet who had been committed to New York’s Rockland Hospital for psychiatric observation. Allen Ginsberg dedicated his signature poem, “Howl,” to him.
8. Sala and Klemmens were layout editor and sports editor, respectively, of the San Juan Star. Thompson’s reference to Sala, Klemmens, and Kazin being in the hospital is a joke. They were not hospitalized.
9. “They Hoped to Reach Spain but Are Stranded in Bermuda: Trip of Americans Who Left Virgin Islands Three Weeks Ago,” Royal Gazette Weekly (Bermuda), July 10, 1960.