O/T Hard to believe 04/05 Part 1
AGC Queen
DAVID GREEN
The fact that he's homeless and lives in the woods doesn't lower his standards.
``I may be homeless,'' the 46-year-old former nurse said, ``but I'm the most
stylish homeless person you'll ever meet.''
If you doubt that, just check out the shack Goode rigged up in the woods in
Fort Lauderdale. Framed oil paintings, potted palms, bowls of fruit -- it's so
ornate, it's hard to believe he's a squatter.
But he is. Goode and a half-dozen others have been camping in the thickets off
Northwest 18th Avenue near Sunrise Boulevard.
After nearby businesses complained, the city moved to clear the encampment
Monday. That means Goode must vacate his palace of scraps.
``I've put up 29 of these,'' he says, sweeping his hand grandly across his
porch. ``I've been put out of every one. And I've been put out of every one
with a smile.''
Police smiled too. Astounded by the ingenuity of Goode's creation, they grew
protective, granting him a week to dispose of his furnishings and making sure
there was space for him -- and the half-dozen others they asked to leave -- at
a local shelter.
``Chester, this is nicer than where I live,'' one police officer said, clapping
him on the back.
Goode didn't always dwell on the margins of society. The 46-year-old Kentucky
native worked for nine years as a forklift operator, then for 12 as a nurse,
sleeping indoors for most of that time.
But over the last decade, he's spent an increasing amount of time as an urban
camper.
``I don't like noise,'' he announces, waving theatrically with a half-smoked
cigarette he removed from a pouch. ``Boom-boxes, teenage children. I just can't
handle them.''
So he began setting up in woods, under freeways, beside railroad tracks -- in
secluded spots across Broward County.
Plucking some furnishings from the trash, others from secondhand stores, still
others given to him as gifts, Goode set to work creating his ``homeless man's
scrap houses.''
First he nailed up a wood frame. Then he laid a floor of construction pallets
across a foundation of milk crates. Then he filled in the walls with cardboard
boxes and draped them in black fabric -- which he hung with framed
Impressionist-style oil paintings.
He stretched leak-proof tarps across the roof.
He installed a patio made out of pallets, arranging potted palms and marigolds
along the railing. Inside, he built a separate bedroom, a living room -- even a
bathroom in back.
Fluted vases and decorative baskets adorn the shelves.
A crystal decanter -- which Goode spotted along with a half-dozen glasses in
the trash on Sistrunk Boulevard -- glitters on a sideboard. He keeps it filled
with brown soda to create the appearance of Cognac.
On his night-table he placed a faux-antique phone. It's not plugged in.
Goode's king-sized bed literally fell in his lap.
``This truck was coming down the street, and the bed just fell off the back of
that truck,'' he recalls. ``After I saw that bed fall down, I said, `You can
just keep on driving, because that's the bed for me.' ''
If the city hadn't asked him to leave because he was violating a laundry list
of ordinances, he would have continued adding on.
``This is the smallest one I've ever lived in. And it's the ugliest. I hate
small places.''
It may be ugly to Goode, but the castle he made out of castoffs has awed
everyone who's beheld it.
One homeless neighbor offered to pay Goode to build him a similar abode. City
workers took pictures Monday for their scrap books.
``I may be homeless, but I'm not lazy,'' Goode explained. ``And if I come to
your house, and it's dirty, I'll tell you straight up. Because if I can do
this, I know you can do better than that.''
* * *
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/03/
30/MN38973.DTL
Maria Alicia Gaura, Chronicle Staff Writer
Some bed and breakfast inns offer local wine and cheese, some specialize in
ceramic bunnies. But the Compassion Flower Inn, soon to open in Santa Cruz, may
be the first to offer a private garden patio, complete with clothing-optional
hot tub, to visiting pot smokers.
Cigarette smokers, however, are banished to the front porch.
Owners Andrea Tischler and Maria Mallek-Tischler have customized the
five-bedroom Gothic Revival Victorian with marijuana-inspired flourishes. The
soap and lotion are hemp-based, and the proprietors are scrambling to find
hemp-fiber sheets and towels before opening day.
But guests hoping to find a complimentary joint on the pillow, along with an
evening mint, are out of luck.
Pot-smoking privileges at the Compassion Flower Inn are reserved for those with
a doctor's note, and even certified medical marijuana patients are required to
bring their own stash.
``We are going to be the first `bed, bud and breakfast' in the country,'' said
Mallek-Tischler, ``but we do not provide the bud.''
Instead, the Tischlers hope to create a friendly environment for those who use
marijuana to alleviate conditions ranging from glaucoma to chemotherapy
reactions and seizures. Not that
there are restrictions on prospective guests.
``We welcome anyone who wants to stay, queer or straight, medical marijuana
user or not,'' Tischler said. ``We'll take all kinds who have open minds. And
as we like to say, you might even remember your stay!''
Plans for the Compassion Flower Inn have created barely a ripple in tolerant
Santa Cruz, where the scent of marijuana in public places is not uncommon and
local police decline to arrest medical marijuana users.
On Tuesday, the City Council gave preliminary approval to an ordinance that
will allow residents being treated by a doctor for any one of a variety of
ailments to grow and use marijuana -- as long as it is organic. No
prescriptions or physician's recommendations will be needed.
Not surprisingly, the Tischlers have a 15-year history of activism in the cause
of medical marijuana, dating from their days in San Francisco.
``We began by baking marijuana brownies and cookies for AIDS patients in the
ward at San Francisco General Hospital,'' Tischler said. ``We had so many
friends who died of AIDS in the mid-1980s.''
After moving to the Santa Cruz area in 1988, Tischler took on the persona of
Nurse Mary Jane and began appearing in local parades, at political events and
public hearings. Resplendent in short white uniform, marijuana-leaf necklace
and little white cap, Nurse Mary Jane became a lobbyist for the medical
marijuana cause.
In a less flamboyant manner, the pair also helped found the now-defunct Santa
Cruz Cannabis Buyers Club in the early '90s, and worked to put Proposition 215
-- the statewide medical marijuana initiative -- on the ballot in 1996.
The couple's idea for the Compassion Flower Inn developed after they bought a
dilapidated Victorian house on Laurel Street in Santa Cruz, one of numerous old
houses the couple have acquired and renovated over the years.
Built in the 1860s, the house was the former residence of Edgar Spalsbury, a
constable, judge and Civil War veteran whose remarkable diary outlines his
frequent use of chloral, laudanum, morphine and tincture of opium to treat a
seemingly endless variety of aches and pains. In an introduction to a published
version of Spalsbury's diary, historian Viola Washburn said: ``If he were
taking this medicine today, we would call him an addict. But such are the ways
of homeopathic medicines.''
Washburn also wrote that Spalsbury lived a long and productive life despite his
drug use.
``We thought it would be interesting to continue in the same shoes, in a sense,
this theme of medicinal drug use and home healing,'' Mallek-Tischler said.
A marijuana-friendly coffee shop was first envisioned, but the cost of permits
and renovations killed that idea. The Tischlers' architect then suggested a bed
and breakfast inn, which would present fewer bureaucratic hurdles. The idea
took root.
During the past three years, the Tischlers have peeled away more than a
century's worth of caked-on paint and dirt to reveal a wealth of Victorian
detail. Mallek-Tischler, a German-born artist, has turned her hand from
creating darkly mysterious paintings to faux marbling and the intricacies of
Victoriana.
The walls glow with gold leaf and arabesque, pinstriping and frill, enhanced by
marijuana-leaf stencils. The furniture is tufted velvet and brocade, with
needlepoint cushions and frail-legged tables. But the Tischlers offer a heaping
dose of New Age brightness to leaven the Victorian weight.
In an airy vaulted room overlooking the smoking patio and hot tub, resident
guru Jay Barush presides over drum circles, massage, an altar decorated with
crystals, and the Church of the Obvious.
``He doesn't want us to call him the resident guru, but he is,'' Tischler
insisted as Barush rolled his eyes good-naturedly. ``The idea is that we
shouldn't follow man-made laws, but the laws of nature, which are obvious.''
Barush hopes the Church of the Obvious will become a gathering place for the
spiritual and civic-minded of the community.
``It's like my living room, a meeting room where people will gather,'' Barush
said. ``We don't have a preconceived vision for it. It will be whatever it is
at the moment.''
Because this is California, no smoking of any kind will be allowed inside the
inn, and pot smokers will be segregated from the tobacco smokers.
``Nobody should breathe any kind of smoke that they don't want to,''
Mallek-Tischler said. ``We are very conscious of the concern over secondhand
smoke.''
Opening day for the Compassion Flower Inn is set for April 20, or 4-20, a
number that over the years has acquired peculiar significance for the stoner
set, although no one can quite explain why. Die-hard pot smokers like to light
up at 4:20 p.m., and April 20 is a popular date for pot-themed parties.
And after the grand opening?
``Well, then I guess we have to see how good we are at running a hotel,''
Mallek-Tischler said. ``It's going to be something.''
Send email to: PUSSS...@aol.com
Michele317
standards.
``I may be homeless,'' the 46-year-old former nurse said, ``but I'm the most
stylish homeless person you'll ever meet.'' >>
oh, no no no! the most stylish homeless person is a woman who wanders near penn
station, nyc, wearing 2 massive brown trash bags, an easter bonnety-hat and
lots of rouge.