adam parfrey facebook messages 2017-2018
Farewell then, Adam Parfrey. The details of your death are still being worked out. One hears variously that you died of a stroke or that you died of complications of a stroke.
Photo: Caffé Gelato Vero, San Diego, September 1991
I heard you had a stroke just before you were to come to the Françoise Hardy book launch in Manhattan on May 3, then I heard you had a stroke just before you died on the 10th, and elsewhere I’ve read you had a stroke on April 20. I first heard/reported that you’d died in Port Townsend, but lately the story is that you died in Seattle. Someone suggested that you died of sadness after your dog, Loki, died, but I find this a stretch since you seemed in good shape when I spoke to you a month ago.
You will be happy to know that your death occasioned an opportunity for some friends of yours to meet for the first time. (One at the NYT contacted me out of the blue.) You and I seldom spoke between 2009 and 2017. At one point I think you blocked me on Facebook. But we were still connected on another FB account. Last year, out of the blue, you messaged me, “How many Facebook aliases do you have?” You weaseled out an excuse that you were topped-up in FB friends and followers and had a backlog of 5,000 friend requests, but I felt that you were hoping to deep-six all your connections to me at once. Anyway, I checked the original account we were connected on, and you were nowhere to be seen. Apparently you’d blocked me years before. I wonder why.
When we last spoke, on phone and in Facebook messaging, you were trying to gather up steamy information on mutual acquaintances (and even on me!) for a proposed memoir.
You’re friends on Facebook
Works at Process Media and Feral House
Studied at UCSC
09/28/2017 12:09PM
You are now connected on Messenger.
[September 2017]
XXX, how many pseudonyms do you have on FB? And what are they?
09/28/2017 3:00PM
I really wouldn’t know, have forgotten most over the years.
I am alerted by FB that I can no longer have friends, that I have too many of them. It would be helpful if you could get me the names or your aliases.
Wow, 5000 friends? I’ll see if I can find some dormant accounts to free up.
and a thousand further friend requests, too
Uh huh. I shall look into this. I recall being connected with you only on this and maybe one other old acct going back to 2008 or so, however.
My error. Friends with you on this, but not on the older account.
I’m friends with you on another account
Then you’re not appearing for some reason.
What I do when pressing up against some social-media limit is, go through the Friends list and delete anyone i don’t recognize and who hasn’t posted lately. I have people in Friends who have actually been DEAD for 5 years.
10/01/2017 9:01AM
This could be right up your street. Tried to send it to you on my other account, but that of course was the one where you had BLOCKED ME. http://www.gallerynews.com/current/hugh-hefner-world-art/
Hugh Hefner and the World of Art – gallerynews.com
The death of Hugh Hefner at age 91 hurled us headlong back into recollections of the 1960s and what Playboy was supposed to be about. If you weren’t a Playboy reader in those days—and few of us alive today were, let’s face it, since that implies you were then a male between 25 and 50 years …
gallerynews.com
APR 1ST [2018], 5:02PM
Greetings, XXXX. Contacting you at this time because I’m working on a memoir now that I have reached the advance age of 60. I was thinking of Keith Stimely today. Was he the reason you and I became friends? I’ll be writing about Keith in the book, so wanted to get things right about him. Did he appear in that California Reich movie, as he claimed? How did he get connected to IHR and become an editor with the journal there? How close was he to getting a book deal for his Yockey research. I know of that other book that ransacked his material. Do you recall what Keith had to say about me? Near the end of his life he made the claim that he was working for me, though he never did except for flyers he circulated without my permission. Didn’t he pass of AIDS? He denied having it when I asked him about it. In advance, thanks much for any help you can provide… My memory is failing me, but what’s the full name of that woman we were both seeing in San Diego? Laura something?
APR 1ST, 6:44PM
Yes, we can discuss this. Thumbnail summary: You and I nearly crossed paths in Manhattan and Hoboken. When I was going with Keith in ’88, you’d been in Portland but recently moved to Baja Melrose. The Blue Boys hoax and your piece in Hustler appeared about this time. Yes, he died of AIDS, had just been diagnosed in mid-1988. We used protection of course. After me he moved onto this older woman with the Sylvia Beach guest house on the coast in Oregon. Gudrun. When I was moving to SD he put me in touch with you. I visited you, completed the move, dropped out of law school, you hooked me up with the Reader. I was going through my lesbian period, had affair with Mary Lang (still in SD area, I see), then Laura Shepherd on the rebound. I don’t know about Keith appearing in that doco, but it sounds familiar. I know nothing about him circulating flyers or saying he worked for you. I should have been closer to him then, but I had my own crises. A little later you put me in touch with Kevin Coogan for his Yockey book. For better or worse I was not cited in the book’s acknowledgements. Keith had a high regard for you, and never said anything unfavorable. Somewhere in those last years, Keith met up with Greg Johnson at Powell’s in Portland. They were browsing the same section and struck up a conversation. This was probably about 1991.
My mobile is 929-2X8-40X4 if you want to talk. I’ve got a Skype somewhere too.
Thanks much… Mary Lang! There’s another Mary Lang I know who’s married to Poison Idea vocalist Jerry Lang.
Seems like Coogan wanted to avoid being tied in too closely to Keith
I had a couple stints in Portland
APR 1ST, 9:02PM
Mary Lang is now Mary Boles Allen, and sister Laura is now Laura Neal. I see Cynthia Heimel died. Bad years toward the end. She was a Facebook friend but I can’t say I knew her.
I recall that Opincar was big on Heimel.
Didn’t Mary marry some architect?
what does Laura Neal do?
Abe and Cynthia married in 1996, but it didn’t last long. Cynthia’s first marriage was also short-lived. I suppose Cynthia and I crossed paths at SoHo Weekly News but I became aware of her via Mary Peacock’s section at the Village Voice.
what a marriage that must have been
Mary’s previous marriage, I suppose, was to a Boles, and that must have been the architect. Last I heard she was working as a secretary at Point Loma Nazarene College and engaging in amateur opera. I don’t know what Laura’s been doing but she had an Industry job when she was married to Matz and I would guess she still does.
all these married names confuse me… I remember Mary begging me to be her boyfriend… didn’t sound good to me
My own ex, Laura, is now living in Vancouver, Washington. She has visited east a couple of times, and I saw her a couple times in Seattle and Portland. I get out that way every year or so, for xc meets or conferences.
I’m now trying to find a dead squirrel that the new kitty dragged into the house
Very slowly the SD Reader is putting its archives on readable format. I came across a fantasy that you headlined ‘Pulp Novel’ in 1992. A friend has encouraged me to write the rest of it.
Isn’t Vancouver the speed dealing capitol of the country?
I wish you would improve my Reader pieces
I can well believe, though Laura would not be engaged in drugs. Your HelLA was always just the right length.
Don’t know what became of Opincar.
Opincar is a heroin addict in Tijuana
No seriously.
After Judith Moore and Heimel passed, he has no reason to live
He was straight poison, but even an ill wind sometimes blows some good.
you and me ought to find him and convince to survive
I noticed the Reader moved offices from India St to Golden Hill.
what? they’re out of that building now?
did the boss get his way banning abortion?
Wonder if Holman is still at the helm. I guess development pushed the Reader out of Little Italy. That was an area long awaiting urban renewal. Though I did love the Prince of Wales pub.
I awaited a plane crashing into the Reader building
Holman now runs Comicon
Remember having tea with Tom Metzger across the street? About May 1993, just before I got the heave-ho.
what heave-ho?
I really liked Tom Metzger, TV repairman
I got exited in 1993. This was Moore’s doing, because my presence made Opincar and Lang uncomfortable. They continued to play dirty tricks afterwards. Came across my Reader business card recently. Cultural attachée. I’ve used that title since.
business card and all!
The sole surviving bc. In a stack of cards of me as Divisional Manager for a telecoms concern in London.
part of the UK, I hear
The uck. Can’t stand that. ‘Oh you’re from the UK? Where? Londonderry? Aberdeen?’
in respect to the Reader, I’m glad I quit the job when I did… I was very tired of it
Aberdeen is in Washington state… Kurt Cobain homeland
Some real weirdoes at Reader. Colin Flaherty was wise not to hang his hat there. He’s had an interesting afterlife.
was he a columnist?
my memory eludes me
when did Moore die? In the 90s?
Wrote feature and news stories. Mainly a PR star married to, then divorced from, Congressman Lionel van Deerlin’s daughter. After the reader he ran clients out of his home office then landed a rich developer who gave him a house in Orange County. The client went belly-up, and Colin went back home to Wilmington DE to pitch in on his brother’s radio show and write books about black violence.
I did a lot of freelance work for Colin back in the day.
knew nothing of him
White Girl Bleed a Lot
Judith Moore died in 2005 or 6. Colon cancer, I think.
I found it funny when one of the Penn brothers started to date some right-wing congressman’s daughter
didn’t know
Did the Reader go dark for a year?
Don’t know…didn’t hear. What did you hear? When?
out of touch with those guys… not enough interest to spur association once again
I found it curious to be associated in some ways with Holman…. strange
Colin always called Judith Moore the Sausage Lady because of a nauseating story she wrote about visiting a sausage factory.
I don’t know that story
I guess she couldn’t arrange a Man Bites Dog story.
but she could write a Nazi bites Jew saga
If so, I missed that one. She was a small-time writer from an East Bay weekly whom Abe brought aboard because of their shared interest in the outré. Holman bought a condo in Coronado for her to live in during her extended stints as Reader managing editor. She didn’t drive, never had a license. Not that that is unusual.
that is unusual for a writer in CA
what sort of outre? bad bakeries?
Rad Bradbury didn’t drive and was strident on the issue. Bizarre. Half the weirdoes that Moore & co. brought in didn’t drive. Remember the shopping-cart man who did a two-part cover feature on living among the homeless? Opincar and Moore liked twisted people with depressing tales. Your cripple-sex piece about the people in Lemon Grove was right on target.
Ray*
It was supposed to be a cover story, but Holman almost refused to run it at all
I’m sure Moore liked it.
Now as to Lawrence Osborne…he skedaddled quickly. Think he bunks mainly in Brooklyn now.
I don’t recall which stories, but Moore told me she disliked the last few I wrote
Osborne was a Mary Lang fuck, was he not?
Osborne was definitely one of Mary’s quarries, but I don’t know the details. He came over to visit one night when I was at her place.
he writes travel books these days… a lot about Thailand
When/how did you exit the Reader?
I have Osborne’s latest. I was at Penguin Random House for a little while, took freebie copies of things.
I was still in Portland and found it increasingly difficult to do HelL.A.s
I stopped writing features, so the money was increasingly minimal… I heard rumors that my writing was increasingly disliked by Moore and Holman… My association with you was not looked on well.
I nearly moved to LA after Seattle in 97-98. Then I got invited to revisit New York, came, and got married, and have seldom left except for trips.
still in NY then? Brooklyn?
Manhattan. Near Trump Tower.
Remember when Lower East Side was trashy?
I lived on Ludlow St a few blocks below Houston
Very chic now, rather beautiful, just the thing for pedestrian culture.
also on 3rd between C & D
Know the area well. I was leading a young friend through there a week ago.
across the street from cooped up women being kept legal and unmolested
They slowly figured out that dressing up the waterfront was the way to go. Hudson River Park is beautiful. They also have a running/biking path down the East River. And ferries to Brooklyn.
I go to publishing distributor meetings down in those parts
I’m flying to NYC May 2 for a few days, including a big party for the Francoise Hardy book I just published, if you want to attend
can you read that?
APR 1ST, 11:35PM
yes
if you’re interested I can get you a pass or two
That would be nice. I have no plans to be away. Thank you.
One or two passes?
If you could get two, I’d bring my husband.
ok
they’ll be under your name
Maiden name? OK.
what name would you like it to be listed under?
Best just to leave it as xxx xxxx. As anonymous as anything.
APR 7TH, 1:21PM
An unflattering pic of Keith and me in 1985. Though Doug Christie and Trish Katson look okay.
Is Keith on the far left there? Hard to tell. You don’t look bad at all!
That is Keith on the far left and we’re both mugging to the point of unrecognizability. I’ll send some more characteristic ones.
that would be great if you could
A face in the crowd, early Sept 1988, Portland OR.
Haranguing the crowd in Portland, Sept 1988. ‘We need more hats for the poor!’
what are these events?
We went to a Dukakis speech to heckle and spread flyers. Dukakis left and Keith scooted in.
We were a a friend’s place for my birthday in Sisters OR or someplace near there. This is Keith at the farm.
Nov 1988 in Keith’s apartment. I’ve just showered, have wet hair, but it’s around midnight and we’re going out for dinner at Hung Far Low. Check out the Apple equipment and software books. A blast from the past.
food was terrible at Hung Far Low… great pix, thanks
APR 7TH, 3:42PM
Mediocre Cantonese, like the China Dragon on University Ave in Hillcrest in SD (where I sat with Peter Navarro and others in ’92 after Peter won the mayoral nomination…Peter is still working his way to the big time).
Don’t know the guy
Mediocre is right
The Brasserie Montmartre wasn’t doing food after midnight, and Hung Far Low was the only place you could walk to from Keith’s place.
Peter Navarro: not quite famous, but getting there. http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/381803-navarro-tries-to-calm-farmers-fears-in-tariffs
Navarro tries to calm farmers’ fears in tariffs battle
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Thursday tried to quell rising concerns among U.S. farmers by vowing that the Trump administration will protect them from harm in the global tariffs fight.
thehill.com
I liked the Brasserie
Who would ever want the Trump apologist position?
Forget your Trump issues, it’s good to have Navarro in anyone’s administration. He has a good head for tariffs and no one owns him.
No one understands tariffs
Mark Weber liked the Brasserie too, but we never crossed paths there. I think it was the first place K took me in Portland. Otherwise it was Hamburger Mary’s and Hung Far Low. We slept much of the day because he was a manic nightowl, running off to Kinko’s too print up his pasteups.
Kinko’s was still a novelty; I’d been to the original one in Isla Vista years before, then they were suddenly everywhere, the way Starbucks would be a few years later.
I had laid out books on a Mac via impossible software… Keith was impressed
Not Microsoft
Ventura Publisher? That’s what they used at IHR. Aldus Pagemaker was the desktop-publisher entry for early Macs. Then Quark of course. They used that at the SD Reader, when they were in their in-between techno stage where they were composing text and graphics with Quark and Photoshop but then pasting it up on light tables for photo offset.
Not Ventura, as I avoided PC software… I forget its name but it was solely available on MacWorld classifieds
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