CEMLURK

This blog will document as friends Logan and Paul explore cemeteries together and separately, and we will share the experiences in photographic and written form.

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Buddy Holly died when he was 22. By the time of his death he had already written and recorded over a hundred songs. Dying in your prime means you’ll never have to hear anyone say "man, his old shit was tight, but his new shit suckeddddd, ” like the Stones or Van Halen.  Although I’m sure Mr. Holly would of preferred to enjoy a long, fruitful life with his family at least he was “batting a thousand” when he kicked the bucket. If my parents had me buried in Lubbock, TX I’d haunt them. Why couldn’t it have been Don McLean on that plane?

"The sky belongs to the stars."

- Logan

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Cemetiere de la Chartreuse by Oskinny1 on Flickr.

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While spending time in Tennessee, my priority is usually record hunting. However, Paul’s influence has not been lost on me, and I couldn’t resist pulling into Spring Hill Cemetery, knowing it was the resting place for the likes of Roy Acuff, Jimmy Martin, Earl Scruggs, and, of course, John Hartford.

My initial interest in John Hartford (December 30, 1937 – June 4, 2001) was rooted in the many dollar bin sightings of his albums I had over the years. At some point I took a chance and scooped his 1968 effort, Housing Project, an off kilter not-quite-country-not-quite-bluegrass-not-quite-folk album that gets a bit goofy and even leans into some psychedelic directions at times. Actually, that pretty much describes much of Hartford’s music career, a massive potpourri of everything Americana. His eclectic approach to music is probably what prevented him from becoming a household name, but his musical genius was recognized by his peers (folks such as Chet Atkins, Kris Kristofferson, and Mickey Newbury) and the music industry, as evidenced by his three Grammy awards.

Hartford started off as a banjo player and was heavily influenced by the playing of Earl Scruggs. He was also influenced by life on the river and seems to have been a kind of Mark Twain type of character, even going as far as earning his steamboat operator’s license. Over the course of his career, Hartford became adept at guitar and fiddle and often appeared live as his own one man band. Hartford’s main claim to fame is his song “Gentle on my Mind”, one of the most covered songs in country music history. Glen Campbell made it into a major hit, and the likes of Elvis Presley and Waylon Jennings also recorded their takes. Fortunately for Hartford, his rights to the song made him thousands of dollars every year and helped bankroll his free spirit lifestyle and musical explorations.

When the Byrds decided they were going to go full dive into making a country album, Sweethearts of the Rodeo, the band came out to Nashville to record and enlisted the services of Hartford. He can be found all over the album, playing guitar, banjo, and fiddle. His playing is pretty integral to the band’s sound.  I can’t imagine his appearance on the record won him any new friends in Nashville. After all, the Byrds were vehemently derided by the city’s establishment for their forays into country music.

John Hartford was never considered one of country music's outlaws, but he was certainly one of Nashville's rebels. And while Hartford was quite untraditional, it was done with a respect for, and a nod to, Nashville traditions. Before he died of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2001, he was a mover and shaker at Opryland and worked hard to keep the spirit of Americana alive through his music, something you can hear in his work for Ken Burns’ Civil War.

The dollar bins aren’t as full of John Hartford as they used to be, and I’m hoping this is indicative of growing interest in his music. His work deserves the extra chance to be solidified into our country’s music lore.

- Mike Mannix (guest writer. Mike is a high school teacher and graduate level record collector, who was recently honored as teacher of the year in West Contra Costa Unified School District and once upon a time ran a record label called Ellington Records.)

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I meet my old friend Thrasher- Miguel Angel Cortes- at the end of el Chopo, Mexico City’s youth market. A punk band is playing, and remnants of this market's "tianguis" beginnings can be seen here. Against a backdrop of electrical lines, vendors sell Anarchist zines, DVDs, patches. People carry books and records to sell or trade. Thrasher helped start this market in the 80’s, and it has gone through many transformations since its informal barter and trade exchanges, to the Doc Martens, imitation Joy Division hoodies, and skateboards sold under the tents today. It is unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere, but as Thrasher tells me, it’s boring today, so we decide to go to the closest cemetery. He brings a few people from el Chopo and we walk in the rain.

  Thrasher takes us to the cemetery for famous people, La Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres. He used to come here when he was 15, sit and read Lovecraft at night. It was quiet then, but it's even more desolate now. The government built this cemetery in 1872 as a museum for people who have made significant cultural, scientific, military or civic contributions to Mexico. But then, Thrasher told me, the neighborhood got dangerous, drug addicts and homeless people scared the tourists, so now it's empty. The only other people at the cemetery are guards and some junkies outside the gates. Few people visit, and some of the most famous people from Mexico’s history go unnoticed, like Benito Juarez.

  Benito Juarez was important during the U.S.- Mexican War, in the mid-1800’s. He was Zapotec from peasant origins and became the president of Mexico for 5 terms- but a time interrupted by war, fleeing cities, fighting Napolean, resisting and then expelling the French occupation. Considered father of Mexico’s liberal modern civil society and as a progressive reformer, he is remembered for his fight for democracy, equal rights for indigenous populations, antipathy towards religion and the Catholic church in particular, and being market-driven, a freemason and remarkably short. We sit around his tomb for a while, and then decide to go get some food.

  The cemetery is just up the street from Centro, cars and people, and the sounds of the city are blaring just outside of the empty square. The cemetery feels out of time and space, it definitely is a place to rest.

- Nina (guest writer. Nina played in a band called Rings, organized for Occupy Wall Street, and is working on a film about jainism. Author not pictured.)

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"One of the main reasons I came back to Mexico is because I've found freedom and democracy here, something I never found in the United States. I was branded a Negro in the States and had to act accordingly. Everything I did, including playing ball, was regulated by my color. They wouldn’t even give me a chance in the big leagues because I was a Negro, yet they accepted every other nationality under the sun."

                    - Willie "El Diablo" Wells to Wendell Smith, 1944

Willie Wells was nicknamed "El Diablo" for his relentless play, but his relentlessness wasn't limited to play on the diamond; he spent his entire career doggedly pursuing the pay and respect he deserved. The Devil chased the game all around North America, eventually earning him a unique Triple Crown of sorts - Wells was eventually inducted into the Mexican, Cuban and American baseball halls of fame. Bill James deemed him the 2nd best shortstop to play in the Negro Leagues, and the 86th best player in the history of baseball.

FACTS: Wells played in the Negro Leagues from 1924-1949, winning numerous batting titles and setting the single-season home run record at a time well before shortstops were supposed to hit for much power. He spent his winters in Latin America, starring in the Mexican and Cuban Winter Leagues for 30 seasons. In 1946, Wells found himself snubbed for selection on a Negro all-star team touring Venezuela for a rookie named Jackie Robinson, and the following season, as Jackie transitioned to second base (the Dodgers already had Pee Wee Reese at short), Willie was brought in to tutor him on the art of turning the double play (another nickname for Willie was "Shakespeare of Shortstops"). LEGEND: Wells claimed to be the first to wear a batting helmet, donning a construction helmet to the plate after being hit in the head with a pitch; Wells replaced racist and fellow Texan Rogers Hornsby as the manager of a Mexico ball club, following Hornsby's demand that no black players play for a club that he managed.

El Diablo got his start with the Austin Black Senators (1923-1924), a little-known minor Negro League team that lasted from 1910s-1950s. To celebrate the local history, Austin artist Tim Kerr painted a mural of Willie Wells next door to Wells' boyhood home in South Austin. On a recent visit to Austin, I had the honor of visiting Wells' grave along with Kerr and his wife Beth. Wells was originally buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Austin after his 1989 death before being reinterred in Texas State Cemetery in 2004; he was inducted into Cooperstown in 1997.

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Meredith "Murdock" Hunter barely knew his Native American father, and was raised by his African-American mother Altha May Anderson and his older sister Dixie Ward. Ward's husband died in an electrical accident a month before the Altamont Speedway Free Festival. Hunter immediately assumed a fatherly role with her three young children. On December 6, 1969, Hunter went from Berkeley to Altamont with his white girlfriend Patty Bredahoft, and according to his sister, he brought a gun in case he encountered any racial violence. 

Alan Passaro, then 21, had been arrested for selling weed and for theft five months before Altamont. When he was hired (in the loosest sense of the word) as a member of the security force for the concert, he had only been a Hells Angel for one month. He was also out on bail, awaiting sentencing for the weed and theft charges.

Almost everyone knows what happened on that day. A Hells Angel (Passaro) stabbed a concert-goer (Hunter) to death, ushering in the end of the Age of Aquarius.

Passaro was acquitted of murder in 1971 (and a cold case was closed in 2005, when Alameda County Sheriffs debunked the possibility of a 2nd stabber), but was in and out of prison for the rest of his life, including going in on RICO charges along with Sonny Barger in 1979. In 1985, one year after his release from prison, Passaro was found dead in a reservoir with $10,000 in his pocket. 

After his death, Murdock's schizophrenic mother Altha suffered a nervous breakdown. Though she settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the Rolling Stones for $10,000, Hunter's grave in Vallejo, California remained unmarked. Instead, Altha turned a spare bedroom into a graveyard of sorts for her dead children - she had fake grass and stepping stones, and filled the room with flowers and pictures of her children who had passed away. After years of being surrounded by death (two others died a few years before her), Altha herself passed away in the first decade of the 2000s.

On a balmy Sunday spring afternoon, old friends of mine from the Toronto band Fucked Up had reservations for our annual fancy dinner date - this time at the venerable Thomas Keller's California restaurant The French Laundry. We decided to stop and look for Meredith Hunter's final resting place on our way up to Yountville. I had the plot location for his grave, but that proved to be a dead end as none of the plot names were marked at the cemetery, so the four of us split up and wandered fairly aimlessly, eyes to the ground.

Just as I was about to throw in the towel, Josh (not pictured above) showed me that he had found a video online - Sam Green's documentary short lot 63, grave c - that showed people standing around Meredith Hunter's grave location. At the time of Green's filming, there was no headstone, but from the footage, we were able to find the location. Since the documentary made the round at festivals back in 2006, people were moved to raise funds to get a headstone placed for Hunter. Now that the grave is marked, we can make sure that Meredith Hunter is never forgotten. 

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Iosu Expósito was the guitarist and back-up vocalist in Eskorbuto. The greatest band to come out of the Basque country and the reason I got into Spanish punk. They are one of the most influential bands in the Spanish and Latino punk scene. Their lyrics were crude and political.

When I found out Criaturas would be playing in Pais Vasco I made our driver E-dooh take me to his tomb. When we got there I made sure to leave a Todo Destruido sticker along side all the other graffiti written on the glass of his tomb and pour one out. 

Iosu began a treatment to get off heroin and got really weak because of it. After years of being addicted to heroin he finally got clean but died a year later of a heroin overdose. The anniversary of his 1992 death is at the end of this month, May 31.

Here's a heroin PSA he did while trying to get clean.

- Dru (guest writer. Check out her band Criaturas)

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Fucked Up - "Sun Glass" directed by Andy Capper & Mike Haliechuk

Cemetery footage in this music video was shot in beautiful Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. This cemetery was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, and a number of people of interest are buried there: Mac Dre, the Black Dahlia, Glenn Burke, Bobby Hutton, Marcus Foster, and many more. Also worth noting is that the scenes filmed in a house in this video were shot in a home owned by living legend and Oakland native Rickey Henderson.

Fucked Up will be featured in an upcoming Cemlurk post, so stay tuned.

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Terry Dean Worrell, 40-year resident of Dallas, Texas, died on April 26th at 9:39 p.m., from lung cancer. He died at home, surrounded by his wife, son, and daughter. It was warm outside. Terry hated the cold. Terry was born February 20th, 1942, to Charles William Worrell and Elsie Marie Patton in Austin, Texas. He attended high school in Orange, Texas, and later graduated from McCallum High School in Austin. He went on to Southwest Texas State on a baseball scholarship. He played second base, and from all accounts could turn a double play like nobody's business. Terry was a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, and was in touch with most of his frat brothers until he died. Terry left college to join the Navy and was eventually sent to Philippines, where he played ball during the Vietnam War. He was a payroll officer; E6 petty officer first class and left the Navy with an honorable discharge. He returned to Texas and worked as a bank teller while he completed his degree and graduated from the University of North Texas with a bachelor's degree in communications. Terry worked for Dallas Power & Light until he retired in 1994. He was a cameraman and a video editor in their media department. He loved his job. Terry is survived by wife Meredith Louise Worrell, of Dallas; daughter Kerry Elizabeth Yates, of New York City; and son Logan Dean Worrell, of Austin; brothers Pat Murphy Worrell of Sugarland and Charles William Worrell Jr., of Vermont; along with dozens of nieces and nephews; and of course lifelong artistic collaborator Snidely Whipsnade He loved reading, Texas Rangers baseball, golf, the Everly Brother, and his family. He hated long lines, the cold, bullies, and the month of August. 

-Logan 

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John Muir's grave is in a small random fenced-in area in between some people's backyards in Martinez, California. Somehow the randomness befits such an iconoclast, but mostly in its lack of ceremony - regardless of where the Father of the National Park System's body lies, he continues to have many stories to tell. Those outside of California may only recognize him as the dude on the California quarter, and those within California may only know him as the namesake for the redwood grove on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, but Muir was a one of a kind, a mountain prophet, and he personally changed the American experience.

Muir moved to the States from Scotland before his teen years and in his two years of university, he studied random classes that fit his interest in nature but never allowed him to move past consideration as a first year student. While building wagon wheels to pay the bills in 1867, an accident blinded him - but Muir knew he had too much to see in this world to let something like that slow him down.  With the support of his friend Catharine Merrill, Muir overcame his blindness and then set off on a thousand mile walk across the United States - the real beginning to a life full of exploration and eye opening and boundary pushing.  In Muir's words: "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons."

And so the mountain prophet found his calling. Muir founded the Sierra Club, was responsible for the designation of Yosemite as a National Park, and essentially started the environmental movement in the United States.  Theodore Roosevelt called a night camping with Muir in Yosemite in 1903 "the grandest day of my life."

Muir's grave is notably simple and Muir's character was remarkably complex, and that's a piece of what makes Cemlurking so consistently interesting for me.  A grave is a lasting physical representation of a person, but there are no rules about how a person is represented.  A crazy looking stone doesn't necessarily mean you were a badass, while a simple one doesn't mean you were a bore.  Just as Muir was able to see things around him without vision, it's on us to peel back the first layer, not take things at face value and understand and appreciate what exists all around us. 

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The first concert I attended on my own volition was on July 13th, 1996, the gig was Pantera/White Zombie/EyeHateGod at Coca Cola Starplex in Dallas, Texas.  It was also the first time I took LSD. I was 13 years old. At the time, it was the coolest thing I had ever done. Although I spent most of the gig freaking out in a Port-o-Potty, overall the experience left a big impression with me - whether that's good or not, I do not know. Pantera meant a lot to Dallas - which I know sounds cheesy - but when you grow up in a shitty place full of shitty people, you gotta hold onto the few things that make you proud to be from where you're from. Mine was Pantera.

Dimebag was probably a nice guy, or at least that what you hear about him. I'm sure he dropped the occasional "N BOMB" here and there, but what are you gonna do? He's from McKinney, TX, those people are maniacs. He always reminded me of my awful redneck cousins; sure they used to call me a queer, but they would also give me cigarettes. I had to use a stock photo of his tombstone due to the fact that some jag-off was laying down next to Dimebag's grave blasting "I'm Broken" on his iPad and wouldn't get out of my way. He seemed pretty terrible and was very, very, ugly. CFH 

Not pictured- Eddie Van Halen's bumblebee guitar from Van Halen II (cuz Dimebag's buried with it) 

- Logan

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When Nate Dogg sang, you never wondered if he was soft. I'm not sure if it was his singing about gangsterism and playerism, or that you could quickly envision him singing with those dead eyes (well, stoned eyes probably), but you knew Nate Dogg was living the life.  Like Snoop and Dre, Nate Dogg's voice is instantly recognizable. Warren G and Nate Dogg's song "Regulate" was a huge song of my childhood and I got to enjoy it regularly all season long last year when Josh Donaldson of the Oakland Athletics used it as his walk-up song.

Nathaniel Hale was the King of Hooks (it even says so on his grave marker), and after just 41 years on this earth, he was buried in his city of Long Beach, where he moved from Mississippi in time for high school.  They were a tumultuous four decades, though, as Nate Dogg managed to drop out of high school, serve in the Marines, get arrested for (note: very partial list) robbing a Taco Bell, and for setting his his ex-girlfriend's mom's car on fire, and for stalking, and for dissuading a witness from reporting a crime, and never seemed to ever serve a jail sentence. Oh, and meanwhile during those same four busy decades, he managed to get nominated for four Grammy's and make hit songs with Dr. Dre, Tupac, Ludacris, Eminem, 50 Cent, Mos Def and more. 

SMOKE WEED EVERYDAY

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Drove out to Stockton to visit the Stockton Rural Cemetery. The name alone was pretty intriguing, but I was first drawn to go there to explore because Russ Meyer is buried there. In looking further, I found that a recently deceased Hells Angel was also buried there. On our way to the cemetery, first we unknowingly drove around the cemetery next door - San Joaquin Catholic Cemetery. If you’re not familiar with Stockton, the city made a lot of headlines around when the US economy most recently crashed. About 75 miles inland, Stockton had drawn lots of working class Bay Area residents to purchase a more affordable home than they could get in the metro area. And then in '08, the bottom fell out of their home values. The city went bankrupt (the largest city in U.S. history to do so) and Stockton became the 10th most dangerous city in the country - now the police will practically only come out for an in-progress crime, and crime and gangs took hold more than ever.

In the Catholic cemetery we didn't intend to be in, we found a couple guards hanging in a golf cart - both in their late 20s / early 30s, he had a chill mullet and mustache combo and wore olive green security uniform. His uniform top had an emblem that had a Desert Storm vibe to it - company named Defense Private Security - and he was wearing a gun. She had small dreads under a black beanie and was wearing all black, also with a gun and a flashlight on her belt.  We stopped and talked with the guards a couple times to ask where the graves we were looking for might be located (before we realized we were in the wrong cemetery), but they had no idea where any graves were located.  They explained to us that people partied in this cemetery, sometimes bands would play, families would bring food and grill in the grassy area without graves in the middle of the two main roads going through the cemetery ... they said it got pretty fun.  They seemed kinda disappointed that they had to prevent those things, but it sounded like it happened at all hours.  And then they said there was consistently violence happening within the cemetery - thus their armaments. They were a mellow pair, however, and we entertained them by telling them about Russ Meyer's titty movies.  We confirmed they were both a fan of tits, and left them googling on their phone as we drove away. 

Once we got to Stockton Rural Cemetery (the right cemetery), we felt a bit of a Narnia effect, like we entered into another land. Tree cover provided by palm trees gave the aura of the tropics, and the quirky signage, cool old headstones, and proximity of railroad tracks quickly settled us after the possible mayhem of the graveyard to the right. Despite driving 90 minutes to get out there, I came uncharacteristically unprepared for this lurk, and had no plot locations for any of the three graves I was looking for. We were driving all over the cemetery looking for the grave of a Hells Angel Nomad named Boo Boo. We watched this creatively edited video of his funeral, and using context clues of other a distinctive headstone we saw in the video, we figured out around where Boo Boo was buried.  We got to his tombstone just before the cemetery was scheduled to close their gates for the day, and upon finding Boo Boo's grave, we found a cache of half dozen Hells Angels Nomad graves.

Boo Boo's real name was George Lopez Jr and he was killed on the freeway in San Leandro by an East Bay Paratransit driver named Eddie Hall in a case of road rage on October 22, 2011. As we saw earlier in the Cemlurk blog, Fall of 2011 was a rough time for Bay Area Hells Angels, and I remember in the news, the first assumption was that  many assumed that Lopez's death was connected to the other recent Hells Angels deaths.  But after some investigation, it was clear that this case had nothing to do with the other deaths, but was just some sort of breakdown by a paratransit driver, who dragged Lopez and his bike for a mile. Hall hit another Angel part of the pack Lopez was riding in (on their way to a Saturday night party at the Oakland Hells Angels clubhouse), and you can watch a video of those Angels talking about the incident. George "Boo Boo" Lopez, Jr, of Stockton, a Hells Angel belonging to Nomad California chapter, was buried in Stockton Rural Cemetery on November 11. 

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Have a Drink on Sally... These words are inscribed into a drinking fountain found at the Ferry Building in Sausalito, and they forever memorialize the truly indomitable spirit of Sally Stanford. Let's start out by looking at some numbers: Sally Stanford went by 25 different names, beat 17 arrests, survived 11 heart attacks, was married 7 times, took 6 attempts to get voted into Sausalito's City Council, and adopted 2 children as infants. She was also one of San Francisco's most famous madams and later, the mayor of Sausalito, California.

Sally was born Mabel Janice Busby in 1903, dropped out of school in 3rd grade, did a couple year bid in Oregon when 16, and then began to amass wealth as a bootlegger in Ventura, California during her first few years of adulthood. At age 21, she moved to San Francisco, and ran brothels around the city for the next 25 years - hosting many politicians and of course entertaining numerous entertainers. She recalls fond memories of visits by Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra, but had to give Humphrey Bogart the boot for acting the fool. Stanford was fancy, stylist and unapologetic.  After the United Nations founding conference was held in SF in 1945, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Herb Caen wrote "The United Nations was founded at Sally Stanford’s whorehouse."

After the good ol' days ran their course, Stanford moved across the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito and bought a waterfront restaurant called the Valhalla Inn.  She remained a member of high society, and was loved and celebrated by (a lot of) the community.  She ran the restaurant for years, and as mentioned above, eventually became mayor of Sausalito.  Flags were flown at half mast in town when she died in 1982.  

Oh, a couple things I forgot to mention above - one day she randomly picked the name Stanford after hearing a Stanford Cardinal football game, because she thought it had a nice ring to it. She wrote an autobiography called The Lady of the House in 1966, which was made into a tv movie of the same name in 1978. Read more about her wild life here and here and here. 

Sally is buried in a magical cemetery in San Rafael, CA called Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery along with other notable folks such as Quicksilver Messenger Service's Dino Valenti, Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Lefty Gomez, and Indian classical musician Ali Akbar Kahn. Domestic animals are barred from the cemetery, as all wild animals are protected.  I found deer poop all over the place, and scored a deer antler as well. The staff was very helpful when I called ahead to ask for locations of specific graves, and even put a cute package together for me with maps of the plots I needed to look in. 

- Paul

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Eyebrows should raise when someone is naming a multitude of children after themselves (with George Foreman as a possible exception). Yusef Bey moved his Your Black Muslim Bakery to Oakland, California in 1971, using his storefronts to sell healthy food and promote Black self-reliance, while raping and enslaving his constituents behind closed doors. Over decades, the operation expanded, and Bey maintained political clout and a sense of infallibility in the city of Oakland. By the time I moved to town ten years ago, Bey was dead, but there were bakeries by both the tattoo shops I hung out at, one in the Oakland Coliseum and one in the airport. It blew my mind that you could buy a handmade tofu burger at a major league baseball game, not to mention sold by dudes in bow-ties (and at least one with gold teeth!). Strewn amongst my friends were naysayers, since the founder had been arrested for sexual abuse. But the YBMB headlines had just started. 

Yusef Bey became a Nation of Islam member, and splintered off to form his own group, but not before Elijah Muhammad provided Bey with the suggestion that led to the name for his business. Bey would take in ex-cons to work for him and live in the compound. He would preach to those who lived there, as well as eventually getting a weekly cable access slot to deliver sermons. The local black community knew they could go to the compound for shelter, and members moved in lured by the message of self-empowerment and the promise of security, and like many cults, once they moved in, it was hard to get out. 

Your Black Muslim Bakery provided policing in the community, and even had their own security vehicles (including a school bus) - all painted black and red. The real police mostly let them be and take care of their own matters ... whether it was stomping out drug dealers or stomping down tenants in their apartments. Plenty of first hand accounts speak to the armed and violent tradition of Bey and his YBMB employees.  (Read this article from 2002 here from when Bey awaited trial for lewd conduct with underage girl.)

Yusuf Bey died in 2003 while awaiting the trial, and thus escaped being made accountable for the heinous acts carried out during his tenure, but the stories and memories can't so conveniently die. Kowana Banks began being raped by Bey while living under his roof at the age of 10, and began carrying her first child by him when she was 13.  After years of keeping her secrets, Banks blew the whistle, no longer able to hold in the truth once Bey made advances on their then 18 year old daughter who was born as a product of Bey's rapes of Banks. You can watch Banks tell her story here.

After Bey's death, one of his sons took over running the operation, and YBMB frequently made the news, as a pair of goons (aged 27 and 75 years old) smashed up Oakland liquor stores while being recorded on security camera.  There was the $200k in back taxes owed and the subsequent bankruptcy.  There was the kidnapping and extortion arrest and charges. All the while, very little was written in the press, as the YBMB fear factory threatened and pressured news agencies to skip the scoop. 

One reporter ignored the threats and decided he would write an expose, and thus he drew the attention and ire of Your Black Muslim Bakery. Just shy of 7:30 am on Thursday, August 2, 2007, Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, was executed in broad daylight with multiple shotgun blasts about a block from my current home in downtown Oakland. The next day before dawn, I awoke to the sound of police helicopters, as the SWAT team raided the main location about 3 blocks from my home at the time in North Oakland. A handful of guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition were confiscated in the raid - both live and spent ammunition, and the spent ones included the shotgun shell matching the type used to murder Bailey. A health inspection was given during the same raid, and upon failing Your Black Muslim Bakery's doors were shut forever. 

Bey buried in El Sobrante, CA and Bailey buried in Hayward, CA.

- Paul

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It's commonly assumed that Père Lachaise is one of Paris’ most visited cemeteries - and on so many tourists’ short lists – because of its arguably most famous tenant, Jim Morrison. But in reality, Cimetiere du Père Lachaise has a tombstone for everyone.

For the Francophile there’s the tomb of famous chanteuse Edith Piaf. Literary tourists can take their pick from a who’s-who of headstones paying tribute to American authors such as Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright as well as possibly the country’s most adored English ex-pat, Oscar Wilde. 

If you’re interested in the occult you can visit the grave of the father of French Spiritualism, Allan Kardec, and if you’re in for a more bawdy graveyard experience pop by the effigy of Victor Noir, whose “under belt bump” attracts a steady stream of lady callers (some of whom have no qualms about rubbing said bulge in a superstitious attempts to ward off infertility).

Of all the burial sites to visit along the seemingly endless aisles of Père Lachaise, my favorite by far belongs to Monsieur Parmentier.

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a French pharmacist and chemist, was taken prisoner by the Prussians during the Seven Years War and kept in a prison where he was fed a steady diet of potatoes. Despite the fact that the tuber was considered appropriate only as food for farm animals in his native France, Monsieur Parmentier managed to subsist on the lowly lègume.

In 1763, Parmentier was freed from prison and returned to Paris, where he fought the good fight for the poor potato. It turns out that not only was the vegetable variety seen as subpar produce, it was also generally considered as a cause of leprosy and all-around inedible.

Implementing an ingenious publicity campaign, which including surrounding a potato patch in the King Louis XVI’s garden with armed guards who were instructed to accept bribes or turn a blind eye to attempts to “steal” the spuds, Parmentier managed to make the potato de rigueur in French society. These efforts became particularly valuable when in 1785 France was threatened with famine after a low-yield crop year and the pomme de terre came to save the day. 

Today Parmentier is honored in a variety of ways. An avenue in the 11th arrondissement bears his name (all along the avenue street signs attribute Parmentier with “introducing France to potato culture”) and one of the most amazing statues on earth stands on a platform in his eponymous metro station.

Fervent fans of Parmentier can take their adoration a step farther by bringing a small offering to his grave. Whether it be Russet, Yukon Gold, or Fingerlings, Parmentier pilgrims adorn his well-tended tomb (which is ringed with potato plants cared for by the Parmentier Society) with all sorts of specimens of spud.

It’s a simple, yet fitting tribute to Mr. Parmentier’s enduring gift to French, and potato, culture and it’s a pretty great way to spend a day, if you’ve got a potato to spare. 

- Emily (guest writer. Check her out at http://www.parispaysanne.com)

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A biker gang war was set off in January 2010, Vagos MC members fought Hells Angels MC members in Santa Cruz, California for turf rights to hang at a Starbucks in town. Then in August, 2010 in Chino Valley, Arizona, Vagos members shot at a house owned by the Hells Angels during a party, leading to a firefight with at least 50 rounds shot off, and 27 people arrested.

A year later, Jethro Pettigrew, President of San Jose Hells Angels (also the fifth-ranking member nationally), was down in Sparks, Nevada for Street Vibrations Rally. On Friday September 23, 2011, a fight broke out in John Ascuaga's Nugget casino between Vagos and the Hells Angels. Shots were fired on both sides, and during the fight, Ernesto Gonzalez, ex-president of Vagos Nicaragua chapter (but then San Francisco resident), shot and killed Pettigrew.  You can watch court testimony and surveillance footage of the fight here (for the altercation footage, jump to 3:17).

The next day, in the same town, a Vagos member was shot off his motorcycle, leading the mayor of Sparks to declare a state of emergency in his city.

Pettigrew was buried at Oak Hill Memorial Park on Saturday, October 15, 2011, and there 4,000 or so people attending his funeral plus a heavy police presence due to concerns of continued rival gang threats. A fight broke out among the funeral attendees when Pettigrew's good friend, Steve "Mr. 187" Tausan, sergeant-at-arms for Santa Cruz chapter of Hells Angels, called out a fellow Hells Angels member Steve Ruiz for failing to protect Pettigrew in the fight in Sparks. Tausan and others were beating Ruiz, and from the ground, Ruiz pulled out a gun and shot Tausan. In a matter of minutes, Tausan was put into a car and driven to the hospital (he was DOA), someone else put Ruiz in a car and drove him away from the cemetery, and other attendees destroyed the crime scene, washing blood away with water.

Ruiz was on the run until finally turning himself in to police in February 2012, but in the days following the funeral murder, police suspected that Ruiz may have been put in Pettigrew's grave during the melee, and dug up Pettigrew's grave a couple days after he was buried. Tausan, a former Marine and professional boxer, was buried with combat knife in hand during his October 29, 2011 funeral at the same cemetery as Pettigrew, former football great Jim Brown attended, and Sonny Barger shoveled in the last bit of dirt into the grave. Here's some footage from the funeral and here's a memorial video made for Tausan after his death.

For the Pettigrew killing, Gonzalez was sentenced to life with possibility of parole on October 3, 2013.  Gonzalez was represented in court by David Houston, a prominent defense lawyer in Reno whose past clients have included Hulk Hogan, "Girls Gone Wild" video empire founder Joe Francis and Liberace's ex-lover, Scott Thorson.

- Paul