Cheating Death & Streetball

For my departed friend, John Whitson

The death that’s been in my mind is blocking my writing. I don’t get “writer’s block” in the common sense of not knowing what to write about, but when I get it, it’s because a pervasive thought is literally blocking the rest of the flow through the creative pipe. So I have to write about this. Or write nothing. But I’m struggling with how to make this relevant to anyone who didn’t know him. When I’m writing about a book I like, any reader can go find the same book. Or, if I’m writing about someone famous who inspired me, it’s easy for a reader to relate. But the death of someone that less than one percent of my Substack pals knew is difficult for me, so I’m just going to write some ideas and hope you get something out of it.

My friend, John Whitson, died recently. Cancer. I don’t know the details. I never asked. When he told me the kind of treatments he was getting, the kinds of meds they were giving him, I knew it was serious. And to me, the details of a disease don’t matter, but only the loss. We talked a few times when he was in the hospital, and I knew his life was ending but that he didn’t want to talk about it because he needed someone to discuss Scoot Henderson with and he chose me. I knew how to do this because I did it with my mother 30 years ago when she would call me to complain about her old friends coming to visit

John Whitson. Taken from his Facebook page. If you’re the photographer or know who is, please leave me a comment.

“All they want to talk about is cancer,” she said. “And then they just start crying. I’m too tired to console anyone. I don’t know how much time I have left, and I’m trying to finish the book I’m on.”

You want to help your friends with cancer? Don’t make it about yourself. Even though you want to say my life was better because we were friends and hanging out with you is as fun as being the last two kids awake at a grade-school sleepover and for the love of god don’t say I know you’re dying because someone else I loved died the same way. The gift is they don’t have to think about dying for the next thirty minutes.

“I have been using an old toaster that only toasts one side of the bread for several years. The toaster says it was made in West Germany. It was fine, I’d set a timer and flip the bread over. How much of the emptiness of life have I been missing? I will soon know as I finally bought a new toaster. What will I do with all the extra time?” JW, Facebook March 14, 2024

To strangers, I guess talking about his record label that he started would be the obvious thing. But honestly, I don’t know that much about it. I loved him for his sense of humor that hit me like a blackjack, the way we could talk about NBA basketball for hours, and our shared enthusiasm to see the new Jason Statham movie in the theater. He also had a one-upmanship that I enjoyed: he always knew where to buy a better donut or which corner store made the best sandwich. John also knew he was blessed every day, just to be alive, although he gained this quality the hard way—by cheating death.

Cheating death

John cheated death, in a real-life Final Destination type way. In what was known as the Mt. Hood Disaster, a group from his high school went to climb Mt. Hood. While the traveling was still going well, John got sick, from what he said was bean dip he ate the night before, and headed back down the mountain to a hotel room. A blizzard hit the rest of the gang, and they were not prepared. Seven students and two staff members died on that mountain, and another student lost both his legs after being rescued. We hung out easily over 100 times, and he mentioned this only once, just kind of randomly when we were drinking at the Sacrifice Bar & Grill. I think, had it happened to me, I would bring it up daily—people would know me as “the Mt. Hood guy” just like “the guy with the pet iguana on his shoulder.”

Needless to say, an near-death incident will change your perception of the world. There’s no way to tell for sure, but I credit this experience with the parts of his personality I really enjoyed: saying something really dark or weird, and then cackling with glee. He had a keen eye for observation and a fantastic recall memory—we would be at a party, or a bar, or a wedding, and he would witness social interaction and quote a line of my own poetry that he read 10 years before that perfectly described the drama.

He did name his record label “Holy Mountain” in honor of the incident and after the Jodorowsky film.

“I almost left San Francisco without seeing a single pair of abandoned underpants on the street but someone left some on the SkyTrain for me to see and now my trip is complete” JW, Facebook, June 16, 2024

John was fun, always down to hang out, and up for an adventure. I really enjoyed his presence and I don’t know what to say. But there was one odd experience of my life when he was present: my Hook Mitchell moment.

The Hook Mitchell Moment

John was one of the few people I went to Warriors games with. I want to mention that the games were $10 into the 2000s, when they were a shitty team and played another shitty team. The games were easy to get to on public transit and even when the team was getting destroyed, they had fun players like Earl Boykins to watch.

This picture sucks, it’s from a different era, but it shows the desolate placement of the restaurant in relation to the Coliseum. You could see this from the BART train platform. Next to it is the stairway that leads to a walkway to the venue.

John, our mutual friend Chris, and I were eating before the game at Colosseum Burgers, which was a tiny burger dive outside the Coliseum. Please note these two spellings are different, and I don’t know why. I asked the guys at the burger joint and at the information desk inside the Coliseum and only received blank stares. The food wasn’t “good” but it was part of the experience, and I always looked forward to it, like pizza day in the school cafeteria.

I locked eyes with a black man who got out of his car down the block. I do this—I stare at people while I’m thinking. It’s a neurodivergent thing; let’s move on. It’s gotten me in trouble a number of times, being accused of “mad dogging” as we called it back then. He looked familiar, and I couldn’t shake it, so as my mind went through the files of SF Staters I went to school with in 1989, the thousands of poets I watched in the ‘90s, and random 12 steppers since I got sober, I kept staring. He got about ten feet away and right before he said “WHAT THE FUCK” my mind found his name and I blurted it out.

“Hook Mitchell,” he stopped walking and his face changed. I turned to John and Chris. “This is Hook Mitchell. Payton and Jason Kidd said he’s the best baller ever to come out of Oakland.”

Hook Mitchell. Streetball legend of Oakland. The guy who dunked over cars and on 12 foot rims. The guy who didn’t make it to the NBA because he robbed a video store and went to prison.

The most famous image of Hook.

Kidd and Payton begged for him to be included in the 2000 All Star Game dunk contest. So the league let him try out, somehow. But he showed up so stoned, people said they could smell the weed from the stands, and blew his dunks. Or that’s the story.

And there were other stories, that he was paid by gangsters a gram of coke for every dunk he made in a high school game. Absolutely crazy shit, you know, that is probably better as fiction than fact, but he is a real guy. Fact.

I’m fascinated with street ballers. I’ve read every book I can find on them, watched every documentary that’s happened, and used to read Slam magazine when they wrote about such matters often in the Scoop Jackson era. I played for a few years in Boston, just good enough to stay on the court and to get a real appreciation for players who were genuinely gifted. Every court in America has a story of some guy who “could have played in the league but…” And then there’s talk of drugs, crime, injuries, and chaos.

I was a few years sober then, still writing and publishing but I had fucked up my best opportunities in that world. My peers went down either the bad paths of jails, institutions, and death or adjunct professorship, families, and career jobs in other cities. I belonged in neither world and felt like it was too late to choose anyway. What was left of the poetry scene was dominated by a bunch of Saul Williams knock-offs with no room for a guy who read his poems out of a notebook rather than reciting the same three poems with well-choreographed hand gestures about personal triumph and their grandmother’s hands.

So I felt a kinship with the street ballers. As I do with poker players like Stu Ungar and musicians like Blaze Foley. People who had talent but ruined their lives before they could show it to everyone. I felt like I was doing one cool thing after another, and somehow it turned into making one horrible life choice after another. I felt washed up at 34.

And further into my neurodivergent tendencies, I rattled off every story I knew about Hook Mitchell in a too-loud voice that everyone who was too poor to afford food inside the venue heard as well, and then a crowd started forming around Hook. Kids were asking for autographs and posing for pictures. He had, like any good hustler, a bunch of T-shirts in his car with the above photo on them, and he sold a grip of them.

When I was walking away, I heard him call me over to his car.

“Thanks, man,” he said, and handed me a shirt. I still treasure that shirt.

This was over 20 years ago and while most people say “it seems like yesterday” I swear it feels like a different life. I was struggling, recently bankrupt, newly sober, working days and hitting college at night in my 30s trying to get a degree, dealing with repressed emotions and years of social damage. But there were fun moments that shone like headlights in a tunnel of doom and dread. John Whitson was there for this one and I miss him so much.

“The German word I would like to learn exists is knowing not to brag about having something before you have obtained everything related to the thing you wish to boast about which, ultimately, requires you to be silent” JW, Facebook, Nov 28, 2023