00042 Diver Dan .jpg by venicepix

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00042 Diver Dan .jpg

This picture is totally out of context, but somewhere, and I'll find it, I've got a picture taken down by the lifeguard tower, carrying a whole bunch of crap.....

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Byron		12-Oct-2014 03:59
V.B.W.L.,,,You're almost right, Mike Kovacs and I lived there and Jed Cunningham was his friend aka Shroomie from Santa monica. Tom woolsey was the landlord, and Tim and Kelly Jackson lived upstairs at one point for a while as did their dad.

Deb		20-Feb-2006 07:29
I remember very well that it didn't feel right if you didn't see him paddling out in early morn with his hat on, he always had something positive to say, he was very smart. I loved talking with him. I remember Lobster John too. He was very cool.

venicepix		26-Sep-2005 17:32
There was more to Dan than met the eye. I've come to think of him as what I might call a Grand Eccentric. He read a lot. At one point I believe he was working at a library in Hawthorne, taking the bus to get there. He mentioned Zen Buddhism to us on several occasions and, of course he didn't just read about it; he lived it. I've often thought that if fortune hadn't smiled on me as it has, that I would be proud to live the life that he did. Back in Venice I thought of him as much older than me, but looking at these two pictures now I realize that may have not been the case. He had bad teeth and thinning hair, but then so did I by my mid forties. I just happened to come into enough money to get my teeth fixed. It's pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that the years in that little apartment on Market were something of a golden age for Dan. To me he seemed to blossom in his unique curmudgeonly manner and a bit of libido surfaced in ways I wouldn't have suspected. He had carved himself a little niche, and what better place for it than Venice in the seventies? Unfortunately, Venice gentrification with it's rising rents hit him hard. Nothing gold can stay.... I'm certainly not qualified to write even the most sketchy bio of Dan. (The only person I know of who might be able to would be Byron.) God knows I've been agonizing for a couple of days over these few totally inadequate paragraphs. My late brother Chris was also a Grand Eccentric and about a year after his death his last partner asked me if I could write a short biography of him to go with some of his stuff that had 'found its way' to the New York Public Library. I quickly realized that nobody knew what was really going on in my brother's life. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Dan left behind journals or even an autobiography, but if he did they may very well have 'found their way' to a dumpster somewhere. My brother had carefully saved materials that he felt would be pertinent should he write about his own life, but what were we, his heirs, to do with volume after volume of meticulously written interpretations of the i ching, all his answer machine tapes from 1991 (it was kind of eerie to hear my own voice on some of them), and a steamer trunk full of white sweat socks? Perhaps the best tribute to Diver Dan, the one that he might appreciate the most is that a grown man, at least twenty years after the fact would bother to write: "I got my first fin from this guy"

Guest		24-Sep-2005 01:05
I got my first fin from this guy . he would have a bunch of mixed matched fins that people lost they would be brand new most of the time , cuz some parent bought a size the kid would have to grow into , lol

Guest		25-Aug-2005 08:22
Diver Dan....some of us used to call him "Father Sea".

vbwl		24-Jun-2005 04:50
Haha.. Yeah this has been great, I can't stop staring at the photos.. It's bringing back tons of memories.. Thanx

venicepix		24-Jun-2005 03:16
Fixed it... I'll try to find a pic of the dark hair....but I'm gettin a little overwhelmed here!

vbwl		23-Jun-2005 21:12
One was Dark hair, one was blonde, they graffiti'd the Jef Ho/Pac-West symbol everywhere! Maybe Karra or someone else knows I made a mistake and put this on the previous page.. My bad.

vbwl		23-Jun-2005 21:03
Diver Dan was my downstairs neighbor, He had a million fins and snorkles that he found at the BW. He would come home with at the least five bucks everyday. He would show me his findings EVERY DAY. Dave do you know who the guys that lived with him were? They taught me everything about Venice and DogTown, POP Etc.. Can't remember their names for years now and it drives me crazy, I was just to young I guess.. I want to say Jef and Shroom? Byron was around them..

Guest		18-Jun-2005 11:47
AKA Peanut Butter

Guest		17-Jun-2005 18:44
that's a beautiful photo....

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