The Temporary Tatoo Salesman

"Whatever the quality of the music generated at Bill Graham's Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, its great fibreglass canopy is the biggest and most beautiful tent in the World."

Alen Temko'

Architecture Critic to San Francisco Chronicle,

Aug.4th 1986.



Sometime in the summer of 1993 I was employed to sell 'TemporaryTattoos' at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View which is locatedoff Highway 101 Southwest of San Francisco. The business belonged to my friend Joshua who sells these tattoos along with trinkets bought from Thailand. It was not an everyday job and happens only when there was a concert on at the theatre. Josh and his girlfriend used to live on the corner of Haight and Ashbury and i was living on Second Avenue not too far from the Golden Gate Park. Josh and i met at Green Gulch Farm where he used to visit almost every weekend to do some sitting meditation with the Zen community there somketime in the eighties. I was a resident of the Farm at the time and we got to like eachother's company. When I was thrown out of the Zen center (for being a disruptor), I had nowhere to go or stay in San Francisco and Josh took me into his kitchen practically, cause that was the only space available for me to sleep. I slept under his dining table most of the time I was there during those transition I almost became a bonafide homeless living on the streets of San Francisco but for Joshua's hospitality.