Nice Story

Earlier I mentioned meeting an elderly woman who had known many Berkeley characters when she had lived here. One of those, whom I will call Jim Jeffreys, had owned a café I frequent as well as a noted Berkeley bar. I said I knew who Jim was. He used to be at the cafe most mornings, scowling at customers who dropped napkins on the floor, but that I had not seen him for some time. “If you do,” she said, “tell him ‘Oysters’ said hello.”

The next time I was at that café, I asked Rosario (not his real name either), the long time chief barista, if the owner still came in. “Jim Jefferys?” he said. “He died…” He counted. “Three years ago.”

“Oh.” I nodded. “Who owns the café now?”

“Jim had a partner,” Rosario said.

“The guy he used to play chess with?”

“Yes. And, Jim Johnson, before he died, he gave his part to me.”

“You’re the owner?” I said.

He shook his head.

“That’s why you’re here six, seven days a week.” I had seen Rosario clean the windows. I had seen him sweep the sidewalk. I shook his hand. “Congratulations.”

“I still don’t feel like owner,” Rosario said. “Most people, I don’t say I am owner.”

“That is so nice,” I said. “What I sweet thing.”

“Jim Jeffers tell me, before he die, ‘Rosario, now you don’t work so hard.’ But I have five children, two in college.” He smiled, maybe thinking into a future.

He returned to the espresso machine. Another latte. Another mocha. But I felt better about a number of things.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 26

I’ll get to the Launch Party tomorrow.

But first…

Leading into The Event, I’d already sold four “Schiz”‘s and three “Cheesesteak”s. One “Schiz” went to a writer-pal and one to a woman at the French who wanted it before the reading. One “Chees3esteak” went to a therapist-friend of Adele’s, who came upon my display at Berkeley Espresso, and one to a fellow in my locker room aisle with whom I frequently talk politics (we disagree) and the Warriors (we don’t) but who hadn’t known I wrote. (I can be a private fellow — as well as, it seems, an exhibitionist).

One “Schiz” went to a middle-aged fellow at the French, whom I’d seen frequently but with whom I’d never spoken. (I guess my presence wore him down or his curiosity got the better of him.) Anyway, he turned out to be an architect, who quit the business because he got tired dealing with the city in order to study and write e-books about physics. Both other books went to a woman about my age, who lives in the Gold Country but was in town, staying at the hotel of which the French is part. She had lived in Berkeley many years and had known many of its more colorful characters, including an alcoholic cartoonist I had only heard about. I’m hoping to hear from her again

The most rewarding part of this experience has been the people I’ve met, whom I otherwise wouldn’t have, as well as deepening relationships that I already had.

Buy Bob’s Books: www.theboblevin.com

Silver Lining

Our friend M. e-mailed this morning that she had been so upset last night by the election that she read “The Schiz,” which raised her spirits.

Riased her spirits???

Now M. has a PhD in English and American Literature from a prestigious university, but “The Schiz” is a dark comedy, about lawyers, doctors, patients, and clients, which, for crying out loud, I have prided myself for years on my former agent’s having called it “repellant, depressing, morbid, and grim.”

Has it lost its edge?

On the other hand, in its Afterword, I do refer to the president-elect as “a walking cesspool,” so maybe I have at last connected with (half of) the nation’s psyche.

So perk yourself up. THE SCHIZ available from www.theboblevin.com, Amazon, and (for $30) from Spruce Hill Press, POB 9492, Berkeley 94709

Joan

Sunday night Adele and I heard Joan Baez at the (nearly) sold-out Fox Theater, a restored to full ornateness movie “palace” in downtown Oakland, where she was appearing to benefit the Innocence Project.

Adele first heard Baez the spring of 1960 when, long-haired and barefoot, she had played for mid-double-digit dollars at Brandeis, and some jocks, who would have preferred Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, threw beer cans at her. I first saw Baez in 1965 when she came to Philly with Bob Dylan, who was show-casing his not yet recorded “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Gates of Eden,” and “It’s All Right, Ma.” Adele does not remember who she was with, but I was with a law school classmate to whom I stopped speaking when, a few years later, he led the prosecution for possession with intent to sell of someone who was close to me.

Adele and I first saw Joan Baez together in 1968. We were leaving Coffee Cantata, a Union Street café so hip that Steve McQueen wooed Jacqueline Bisset there in “Bullitt,” when a woman with (apparently) newly shorn hair emerged from a nearby beauty salon to the accompaniment of an over-excited male cosmetologist exclaimed, “Yes! It really is Joan Baez.” We did not hear her sing live for another decade. It was at San Francisco’s cavernous Civic Auditoreum, on an occasion whose details neither of us recall.

Anyway, from the last row of the Fox’s mezzanine, Baez looked and sounded fine and seemed in good humor. She accompanied herself on guitar and, on most numbers, was backed by her son, an unobtrusive percussionist, and a fellow who skillfully played a variety of stringed instruments. On several numbers, a young woman — a belter — added a second voice and extra energy and, once, Baez’s daughter-in-law exuberantly danced.

Baez sang “Silver Dagger” and “Diamonds and Rust.” She sang four songs by Bob Dylan and one each by Woody Guthrie, Kris Kristofferson, Paul Simon, Richard Thompson, and Tom Waits and one she had learned from Pete Seeger. She sang against war and slavery and prisons and the exploitation of migrant workers. A couple times (to applause) she mocked Dylan and I thought, C’mon, Joan. It’s been 50 years.

To me, Baez is not a dynamic performer. Her actual singing does not move me nearly as much as her presence, her enduring moral consistency and courage, and the worthiness of the causes to which she has devoted her life and career. (Adele disagrees with me. She believes Baez’s voice “exquisite” and her singing “crystal clear, deeply felt in content and straightforward in delivery.” I suspect Adele is right.)

I wondered what Baez would say about the election but as of the middle of her second encore, when we left, if was nothing. She did wear a “Nasty Woman” t-shirt and her accompaniests wore those that said “Bad Hombres”; but maybe she was for Jill Stein or maybe she meant it when, midway through the show, she said, “No one should run for office who hasn’t spent at least two days in jail.”

She herself has spent over 30, but I am not so sure how well she would work with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

Adventures in Publishing: Week 25 (con.)

The cakes (four) have been ordered for “The Schiz”s launch party. (Nov. 10, 7-9 p.m., 1538 Shattuck.) The cups and plates, forks and napkins are in the trunk of the Honda. (Adele, attendees will be happy to know, was a positive influence, persuading me that aesthetics and quality should influence my purchases, not just cheapness.) The wine is yet to come.

I figure I have invited a hundred people. I also put up two posters and alerted Facebook friends and at least two of those have alerted theirs. (I also told all the NorCal cartoonists who contributed to the book that, if they came, I’d find room for them to sell their books. No responses there yet.) I didn’t ask for RSVPs, but based on those who provided one, the crowd should break 60, which, while maybe not allowing room to turn around, should afford space for folks to reach into their wallets.

Incidentally, I’ve recently met two of the “Sorry, but…” sayers for lunch, and, in anticipation of their “But where can I get a copy…,” I’d come with one I my pocket, along with my Square plug-in allowing me to take credit cards. But the question was not asked, and, unpushy fellow that I am, the answer was never given.

Adventures in Publishing (Week 25)

The missing four cartons (see last week’s report) arrived.

Sold seven copies of “The Schiz.” One went, via www.theboblevin.com, to a stranger. Two went to couples at Berkeley Espresso. Two went to friends from high school (and two more announced an intent to buy one). Two went to fellows at the health club, one a lifelong friend and one a newer acquaintance. (I also sold, breaking my cherry at Amazon, a “Cheesesteak” to a woman I had gone to Hebrew and law school, but with whom I’d had no contact in a decade; and I swapped one to a poet I’d originally met playing pick-up basketball for a recent collection of his work.)

I also had my first reader response to “The Schiz.” (Believe me, given its history, I’d been anxiously waiting — and wasn’t sure I’d hear any.) It came from a woman at the club — and no sure thing at that. (I still carry, like a burr in my fur, her comment, in an otherwise favorable newspaper review 20 years ago of “Fully Armed,” that it was “annoyingly self-referential.”) She told Adele, before leaving the locker room for a swim, she was really enjoying the book. She loved the characters’ names, and — BINGO!!! — it reminded her of Nathanael West.

Worried Man Blues

I contributed to First of the Month’s pre-election issue http://www.firstofthemonth.org/choosy-beggars-election-2016/
My piece begins:

My brain has this toiletbowl-like refill-capability worrywise. So after the second debate had flushed away my Trump-sized turds of anxiety about this election’s outcome, I was not surprised when a replacement flowed back in.
It did not help that I had recently read Dan Ephron’s “Killing a King,” an account of the 1995 murder of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by the 25-year-old ultranationalist and Orthodox fundamentalist, Yigal Amir.

Adventures in Marketing (Week 24)

“The Shiz” arrived from the printer’s on Monday, as scheduled. Well, mostly. It turned out I was light 180 copies. Luckily, I thought, this was not the sort of shipment likely to have lured highwaymen. I felt confident since, one morning, shortly after purchasing what-has- proved-to-be a more-than lifetime supply of my first novel when my publisher was threatening to shred them and storing them in my garage, I received a call from a construction worker that he had arrived at his job site and found the contents of an opened carton strewn about. The thief had kept our rake however.

Anyway, I posted announcements of my launch party at the café and health club and passed some out hand-to-hand. I sent invitations to friends who lived locally and announcements of the book to others. (I did not request RSVPs, but from those who’ve given them, attendance looks good.) I sent copies of the book to the artists who contributed and invited those in NorCal to come and sell their own work.

Actual sales to date remain in single figures. Publishing something is always a lesson in humility, a reliable reminder that you are not as important to other people as you think you are. The most instructive lesson has been that, aside from one cousin, no one I knew before I turned 25, though we’ve kept in touch e-mail, Xmas card, and/or phone (and most of whom I gave a free “Cheesesteak”) has bought a “Schiz.” But I am without rancor. (Well, hardly any.)

Reaction-wise, the book’s look has been praised and its back cover blurbs described as hilarious.

COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: “The Schiz” can be ordered for $30, and “Cheesesteak” for $20 from Spruce Hill Press, POB 9492, Berkeley 94709. Those and my other books can be ordered through Pay Pal at www.theboblevin.com.

Marketing Report: Week 23

For those of you who weren’t followers of my blog, explanation may be in order. Some months ago, when I self-published semi-memoir “Cheesesteak,” I began issuing this account of my journey toward media-baronhood. Hence…

Just when I seemed destined for a second consecutive “Zero copies sold…,” my announcement of the looming (next week) availability of my black comedy “The Schiz” resulted in a burst of activity(three “Schiz” sales within six hours, plus an accompanying order of “Fully Armed,” my 1995 bio-fic about Jimmy Don Polk.) (The buyers were a cousin and two comics world pals.)

I’ve also finalized plans for “The Schiz”‘s launch party, securing the services of a preferred barista, photocopying the Milo George-designed flyer for distribution, cost-comparing the price for paper plates, cups, plastic forks, and napkins (Did Lord Beaverbrook really start like this?), and extending invitations. I didn’t ask for RSVPs, but polling data extrapolated from those who replied indicates the turnout will be good.

SENS Bistro. 1538 Shattuck. Berkeley.
Nov. 10. 7 – 9:00 p.m.
Cheesesteak $20; The Schiz $30 from Spruce Hill Press, POB 9492 Berkeley 94709
OR, via Pay Pal at www.theboblevin.com

Marketing Report: Week 22

No books sold.

This despite my netting two five-star reviews for “Cheesesteak” at Amazon. (Confession: Having finally mastered getting listed, I solicited 40 friends, so a five-percent return rate is not that great. Another fellow says he would have reviewed me, but he couldn’t master the technology.)

And this despite my having made a capitol investment, acquiring two handsome wood stands to display examples of my wares vertically, alongside my “Buy Bob’s Books!” sign while I sit in the café. So far they have not drawn a fleeting glance.

The process has not been without reward however. “Csteak” has drawn me into correspondence with a fellow formed at Fels Junior High, who matured in and around the South Street Renaissance. Our topics of memory land-discussions to date have included Howie (“One tough jewboy”) Turnoff, an All-Public guard from Northeast with whom I shared one semester at Brandx, and Ira Einhorn, the Powelton Village hippie guru/trunk murderer, whom, my correspondent suggest, was an informer for COINTELPRO. As I said, interesting.

In other news, my “review” of “Falcon & Snowman” led the publisher to ask if I wanted to review anything else of theirs. (I passed for the moment.) And “The Schiz”‘s impending release has led me to approach management of the Sens Bistro (formerly The French Hotel Café) about holding a launch party there. If the price is stomachable, it should be the evening of Nov. 10. No Host (Coffee) Bar. Free cake.

CHEESESTEAK ($20) is available from POB 9492, Berkeley 94709.
See also: www.theboblevin.com.