Compassion comes easy to this clown
C.W. Nevius
Saturday, May 20, 2006


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If there are any important points to be made -- and there are -- about Berkeley's hippie icon Wavy Gravy at his 70th birthday celebration tonight, they should be made quickly before things, as they often do with Gravy, careen in unexpected directions.

Take, for example, Al Gore.

Gravy, who never tires of pointing out he is referred to as "Mr. Gravy'' in the New York Times, met Gore not long after Google announced it was giving $2 million to the Seva Foundation, the philanthropic organization Gravy, Larry Brilliant and others founded to provide eye surgery in India, Tibet and Nepal.

Seva, founded 27 years ago, performs some 80,000 sight-saving surgeries annually, treats diabetes in American Indian communities and promotes sustainable agriculture in Chiapas, Mexico. But that's not the point.

Gravy says Gore was charming.

Charming?

"Somebody apparently took the stick out of his butt,'' Gravy says. "He was great. Of course, I knew his wife, Tipper, from Farm Aid, when she sat in and played drums with Willie Nelson. Al even patted my fish.''

Fish?

That would be the rubber trout Gravy hauls around on a leash. He's got a fake bass too, but when I visited his room in the Hog Farm collective house in Berkeley, he was having troubling finding it.

"But here's my whoopee cushion suit!'' he crowed triumphantly.

The point -- and Gravy has one in there somewhere -- is that this has been a remarkable run, from making announcements atop the stage at Woodstock to having Ben & Jerry's name a flavor of ice cream after him.

It was tasty, too.

With no visible means of support to speak of -- Gravy calls himself "an activist, clown and former frozen dessert'' -- he's not only lived a life in full, but filled it with an extraordinary zest and good deeds.

His main job is director of Camp Winnarainbow in Mendocino County, where the lake is named Veronica (he'll wait while you make the connection) and the raft is named George (go ahead ... he'll wait). It's a "circus and performing-arts" camp for kids, and he paid for it with proceeds from his ice cream and the Grateful Dead's Rex Foundation.

Oh, did we mention the Dead?

Guitarist Bob Weir and drummer Mickey Hart will be at the celebration at the Berkeley Community Theater tonight, along with Steve Earle and "surprise guests.'' No telling if Jefferson Starship guitarist Paul Kantner will attend, but he will be represented by the red foam-rubber noses that are sure to appear. It seems Kantner's wife worked a deal to get 500 of them.

That reminds Gravy of a story. He's full of stories.

"We were flying to this big show in London, and my carry-on bag spilled open and all these noses go rolling down the aisle.''

And then there's the time he was poetry director at the Gaslight in Greenwich Village.

"I convinced the owner to bring on a kid named Bob Dylan."

Dylan, by the way, wrote "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" on Gravy's typewriter. So says Gravy, who says Salvador Dali stopped by and "made a salad.''

Is it any wonder that documentarian Michelle Esrick is on the Gravy train? Her film, "Saint Misbehavin': The Life and Time of Wavy Gravy,'' is due in 2007. Good luck. Editing his life into feature-film length won't be easy.

The best advice for Esrick, or anyone trying to figure out Wavy Gravy, is to simply heed the Camp Winnarainbow battle cry, "Toward the fun!''

Somehow this shambling, offbeat character, whom the writer and satirist Paul Krassner calls "the illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Mother Teresa,'' has, like a real-life Forrest Gump, witnessed many of the cultural milestones of his generation and met nearly everyone worth meeting.

It has been a remarkable series of happy coincidences, hasn't it?

"Noooo!'' Gravy shouts. "A coincidence is just a miracle that God does not take credit for. It's synchronicity. Sometimes the parking place appears or the phone rings, and sometimes you struggle.''

Argue with that logic at your peril.

Those of Gravy's generation, some of whom might have been called Moonflower or Freedom and heard Gravy hold forth from the stage at Woodstock, are probably straight-arrow parents and grandparents now. But Gravy, whose real name is Hugh Romney, is still signing his checks "Wavy Gravy'' and leading a trout on a leash.

Go ahead. Laugh. Tell him the whole hippie ideal was a dream or a joke and it's time to grow up.

It might have been a joke, he'll tell you. But it wasn't a dream.

And he'll never grow up.

Gravy's still living in a commune, still cheering up kids with cancer and still having a wonderful time just being Wavy Gravy.

Ask him about it. He's happy to talk. He'll even tell you how he got his name, which apparently means gravy with a little meat in it. He must have told the story 10,000 times in the last year. It's part of the routine, like opening his phone conversations with "You've got Gravy in your ear!"

He was making announcements at a concert when blues legend B.B. King walked up to him and asked, "Are you Wavy Gravy?'' Not knowing what else to say, he said yes. King nodded and told him to stand next to the speakers.

"And then Johnny Winter came out,'' Gravy says, "and they played until sunrise.''

Celebration
Wavy Gravy's 70th birthday party celebration begins at 7 p.m. today at the Berkeley Community Theater, 1930 Allston Way, Berkeley. Tickets are available through www.ticketmaster.com for $35 and $50. Proceeds benefit the Seva Foundation.

C.W. Nevius' column appears Thursdays and Saturdays in the Bay Area section. His blog C.W. Nevius.blog can be found at SFGate.com. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.