As with many of my stories, this one should have a Trigger Warning! But I’m only going to warn you that this one is longer than most of the others I’ve posted.
In early 2002, Hollywood had become a desolate landscape. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, film and TV productions halted, studios shuttered, and editing gigs dried up. I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive. Luckily for me, hardcore porn producers were still pumping out content.
Sin City called and asked me to edit a feature-length XXX film. I wasn’t sure I wanted that sort of thing on my resume, but times were tough. I thought it over for half a second and decided I had to do it. It paid a lot more than my last editing gig, and it helped when they explained that it was a French “art film,” beautifully shot on 16mm by a gifted auteur director in the Bahamas.
When I told my girlfriend Anna the good news, she was aghast. She hated the idea. She was also pissed that I accepted the job without first discussing it with her. “I don’t know if I can be in a relationship with a pornographer,” she said. “What do I tell my friends? What do I tell my parents?”
“How much of that building is used by the sex club?” I asked Lisa.
“Oh, it’s just the entire second floor, the size of four or five football fields,” she said, laughing. “And there’s an overflow area outdoors in the back.”
Our relationship was doomed from that very moment, but I was trapped. I had to do what I had to do to survive. I needed to keep working to prevent myself from becoming homeless again–that was not a good experience. Anna was a rich girl. She had no idea what it was like to live life on the edge without a safety net.
After she moved back to her mother’s house in Beverly Glen, Anna spent less and less time at my place. When she did come around, we’d end up in a big knockdown, drag-out fight. I knew the end was drawing near.
I got a call one day from my good friend Lisa. She told me she was working as a chef at an exclusive private club in downtown Los Angeles and that she was quitting soon. Her union was offering her work, and she said the chef’s job was mine for the taking. It was a weekend gig, working all day Friday and Saturday, 12 hours each day, 6 pm to 6 am, and it paid $1500 cash.
“You can get your Hot Rod Condoms business back up and running,” she said, trying to entice me some more. “And you’ll have the whole week off, five full days to do whatever you want. It’s the perfect gig for you right now!”
“That does sound perfect,” I told her.
“I haven’t told you the best part, this is a Lifestyle club, a swinger’s club,” she said. “You can get your condoms into this place and promote the hell out of them!”
“Swinger’s club? Like… a sex club?” I asked.
“Oh yes, lots and lots of sex going on down here. You’ll be up to your eyeballs in tits and ass,” she told me. “There are porn stars galore, Hollywood celebrities, fashion models, lawyers, doctors, and tons of industry people too. There’s a bunch of producers and directors, cameramen, and all the rest. I’m sure you can line up some editing jobs through people you meet here.”
“Wow, that’s a lot to take in,” I told her.
“Well, take it or leave it, my friend. I think it’s got your name written all over it.”
“The only problem I have, Lisa, is that I don’t cook. I’m not a chef.”
She laughed. “Neither was I, but I learned fast. Grab yourself some cookbooks, or better yet, I can give you the ones I’ve got. I don’t need them anymore. You’re smart and resourceful like I am. You’ll do just fine, Jon. Believe me, I wouldn’t have told you about it if I didn’t know you could pull it off.”
“Ok, I’ll do it,” I blurted out.
Once again, I made a big decision without consulting my girlfriend. Editing porn was bad enough, but as soon as Anna found out I was going to be the chef at a sex club, she was gone. We never talked again.
I felt terrible about it ending the way it did, but I don’t regret it. I was in survival mode. I knew what I had to do. Turning down a job that would pay my bills and give me money to burn was not an option. There was also the added incentive of breathing new life into my then-dormant condom business. I had to do it.
Room after room was set up with beds, couches, and padded platforms. Some had bondage apparatuses, some had slings hanging from the rafters, and others had rows of custom-made bunk beds. There was a cavernous multi-level maze you could crawl around in.
I took over as the new chef that Friday, and Lisa was there to get me up to speed. I met her mid-afternoon in the parking lot of an old industrial building near the train yards. The building was massive—far larger than I expected.
“How much of that building is used by the sex club?” I asked Lisa.
“Oh, it’s just the entire second floor, the size of four or five football fields,” she said, laughing. “And there’s an overflow area outdoors in the back.”
“Wait, how many people will I be cooking for?”
She told me, “About a hundred and fifty tonight and then about two hundred Saturday night.”
“Woah! That’s crazy!”
“Don’t worry; most of them aren’t here to eat dinner,” she assured me. “Only a dozen couples or so will sit down and eat a full three-course meal. Those are the ones you have to worry about. Those are the ones you’ve got to keep happy. They pay a hefty fee to be club members, and they want to get their money’s worth.”
We drove to the old Produce District and filled the back seat of Lisa’s car with half a dozen boxes of fruits and veggies. Then, we stopped at a wholesale grocery and meat market for the rest of the items on our arms-length shopping list. We put everything on a company card and headed back to the club.
When we pulled up to the loading dock, the club owner was just getting to work.
“I’m Bill Baldwin,” he said, holding out his massive right hand, “What’s your name again? Lisa told me earlier, but it’s slipping my mind right now.”
“I’m Jon, Jon Kinyon, glad to meet you.”
“Lisa told you everything, I take it?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. And now she’s showing me the ropes.”
“Great, great, that’s what I want to hear,” he said with a big grin. “I’ll see you later tonight and tell you the rules.”
A part of me was screaming inside of my head, “Fuck the boss! Fuck the job! Get out there and get your freak on! What the fuck are you waiting for?!”
It took half an hour to haul all of the food from the vehicle up a freight elevator at the back of the building to the kitchen on the other side of the building. We threw two twelve-pound roasts in the oven and spent the next four hours preparing the rest of the spread.
“You can switch up the menu all you want and try new things, but this is the amount of food they expect,” Lisa instructed. “But no fish, no beans, and no broccoli. You know, nothing that will give you bad breath or make you fart. That’s just not conducive to a long night of hot sex with strangers.”
We wheeled everything we had prepared, appetizers, desserts, and main courses, on food carts to the dining area all the way to the back of the building. It was quite a trek. I was told that we were allowed to take a shortcut through the main play area to save time. That was when I caught my first glimpse of what a well-appointed sex club looks like.
Room after room was set up with plush beds, couches, and padded platforms. Some had bondage apparatuses, some had slings hanging from the rafters, and others had rows of custom-made bunk beds covered in faux leather. There was a cavernous multi-level maze you could crawl around in, which was completely covered in thick carpeting–it was like a gigantic cat tree made for people.
After we put all the food out in the serving area, Lisa took me on an extended tour of the club. She explained that it functioned as a film studio during the week. Both porn and regular production companies booked the place to shoot. There were areas of the club that would be struck and rebuilt, and there were also permanent sets, all of which the club members had full access to.
There was the large dining room, a twelve-stool bar, a disco with mirror balls and a multi-colored illuminated dance floor, a stage with stripper poles, a fancy pool hall, a 1970s retro living room with deep shag carpet and quadraphonic stereo system, a row of very convincing jail cells, showers with locker rooms, a doctor’s office, an operating room, a lingerie shop, a high school classroom, and the centerpiece: a large harem-orgy-room with sheer red curtains enclosing an inner sanctum filled with luxurious red and gold couches and piles of pillows.
Lisa stopped and pointed out that there were bowls full of condoms set out in every room. “I’m telling you, you’ve gotta get your condoms in here,” she said. “And then, you can get them into other swinger clubs all around the country. This is your big break.”
I had to agree. A large, sexually active demographic that was in the habit of actually using condoms was a perfect target market for my brand and one that the major corporate-owned brands would steer clear of.
You wouldn’t have known it, but Lisa told me there were a dozen club employees who lived in and around the film sets and playrooms. She said I hadn’t met any of them yet because they all tended to sleep in late.
Sure enough, around 7 pm, people began coming out of the woodwork, quite literally. Hidden panels in the hallways began to spring open, and members of the live-in work crew stepped out into the shadows. Invariably, they wound up in the kitchen, where one of the large refrigerators and several cupboards were set aside for them. “Staff Only” signs marked their territory.
I met the security detail, handymen, cleaning crew, gofers, and the star of the show, DJ Scotty B. The banter in the kitchen was friendly, with lots of goofing around and laughter. They all seemed like normal, everyday people, which was a relief. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised.
At 7:45 pm, I donned a traditional chef’s outfit that I was required to wear: a white double-breasted jacket, black-and-white houndstooth-patterned pants, a white apron, and a tall stovepipe hat. For the first hour or so, I was expected to stand at the ready to slice the roast and serve up steaks and other meat dishes for patrons on demand. The boss was big on presentation and courteous service. He wanted it to feel like a high-class supper club.
The doors opened at 8 pm, and club members slowly began to trickle in. Some couples dressed in club wear, others in more formal attire, but most strutted around in varying states of undress. Ladies came in topless or wearing risqué lingerie, and guys wore fancy Hugh Hefner-style pajamas, or speedos, or nothing at all. The entire crowd was amazingly fit, and the women were stunning–it was Tinsel Town, after all–and the handful of couples in their 70s and 80s were attractive in their own right.
Lisa had no intention of working the entire shift, so she cut out as soon as I started serving. I thanked her for everything, gave her a hug, and bid her adieu.
L.A. Social Club was “couples only”–no single males allowed. Women were allowed to fly solo or in pairs or groups. I learned that some men would hire prostitutes to get inside and take advantage of the partner-swapping. That was strictly forbidden but nearly impossible to stop. Suspected perps were pulled aside and interrogated by security. Guilty parties would be unceremoniously ejected if found to be pulling that scam.
Another strict rule was no mingling of staff and club members. If a male staff member was ever caught stepping one foot into a play area or touching a club member, they’d be swiftly removed from the premises and kicked to the curb. If they happened to be living there, they could come back in the morning to dig their stuff out of the dumpster in the back of the parking lot.
Because my job required excessive walking back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room, I was allowed to take the shortcut through the main play area even when the club was in full swing (pun intended). However, I was not allowed to participate in any of the action.
“No exceptions,” Bill, the boss man, told me. “Don’t stop and ogle either. Keep moving, keep it professional. Understand?”
I nodded my head, “Yes, I’ve got it. Don’t worry about me.”
That turned out to be a tough promise to keep. The chef’s outfit proved irresistible to some of the hot and bothered vixens prowling the darkened hallways. At times, I was stalked, groped, cornered, and fondled. I had more than one naked woman drop to her knees and try to pull my pants down.
The head of security worked the main play area, keeping a steely eye on the harem room, and he swooped in several times to break things up between me and an overzealous customer. I was not responding or encouraging the action in any way. I needed the job too badly to screw it up.
There was a young female couple, a dark-skinned Polynesian, who was a bonafide Hawaiian Tropic bikini model, and her fairly well-known porn star girlfriend, who would situate themselves in a corner and start kissing and caressing each other while giving me smoldering come-hither looks as I passed by them. It was pure torture watching them get off on teasing me.
By the third weekend, being surrounded by people going at it in every possible position, setting, and arrangement didn’t seem all that shocking. At first, though, it was very intimidating. I felt uncomfortable. I felt like a prude. I always thought that I had enjoyed some raucous adventures over the years, but it was all standard fare, really: One-night stands and threesomes… ho-hum. Parked cars and ladies’ dressing rooms… boring. None of that could compete with having sex in front of a live audience.
During my breaks, I started hanging out in the D.J. booth with Scotty B. He’d let me mix a few songs while he took a smoke break or went to take a leak. More often than not, those two females who loved to torture me would show up at the window, make a request, and then start going at it. They were driving me mad. By the fourth weekend, they were grabbing random dudes, giving them blowjobs, and fucking them on the dance floor, all the while eyeing me and motioning to me to join in. But that was not going to happen.
I wish I was that bold, but I am not. I had to admit to myself that I was somewhat old-fashioned, bland, and vanilla. I felt like there was something wrong with me. Why wasn’t I tempted to try it out? I told myself that any red-blooded male would have jumped on those two hotties right there on the dance floor, then taken them inside one of the jail cells or up to the top of the human-cat tree. A part of me was screaming inside of my head, “Fuck the boss! Fuck the job! Get out there and get your freak on! What the fuck are you waiting for?!”
And then I met Jacqueline, the boss’s daughter. She appeared in the kitchen one night when I was cleaning up. Jacquie had been working the door the entire time, but I had never run into her. The first thing she did was crack a joke about the chef’s get-up. “Oh yeah, you’re gonna get lots of action dressed like that, buddy,” she said and ran off. I had to laugh. The sarcastic way she said it, the timing and the delivery really got me. I became even more determined than ever not to fuck up on the job. I needed to find out more about that young lady.
I started to come up with excuses to visit Jacquie at the front office. I’d hang out and flirt with her. She, in turn, began showing up in the kitchen and doing the same with me. As luck would have it, she had just split up with her longtime boyfriend. We were both free of entanglements and very forward about our obvious mutual attraction, so things escalated quickly.
She told me she was not into the Lifestyle, that she had never been a swinger, and she made me promise not to fool around at the club. That was an easy promise because I had already resisted intense temptation for a much lesser cause, namely, keeping my job.
Before long, I was practically living at her place. She was renting a sweet little house up on a hill, which was much nicer than my place. Her rooftop terrace had a nice view, and we spent a lot of time out there listening to music, chilling out, and working on art projects. It had been a long time since I dated someone artistic, and I loved every minute of it. I hadn’t felt so inspired in years.
It didn’t take long for Hot Rod Condoms to become an official sponsor of the LA fuck club. I approached Bill’s wife, Linda, and told her that I could hook her up with thousands of free condoms, and that’s all it took. I felt that I didn’t need to tell her I owned the company; I was getting enough attention as the chef, and I thought it would be best to fly under the radar. I could have easily played it up and become somewhat of a celebrity, but that’s not my style.
Not long after Jacquie and I started dating, a new hostess was hired to help work the front door. Paige was a drop-dead gorgeous blonde with striking blue eyes, easily one of the prettiest girls I’d seen in years. She responded to an ad in the Los Angeles Times, and Bill hired her on the spot. Along with having one of the better-paying gigs at the club, she got free room and board. She was ecstatic.
Paige took an immediate liking to me. Every night, while I was setting up in the dining area, she’d mix me drinks at the bar and eagerly look for a chance to refill my glass. She helped me put food out on display and helped clean up at the end of the night. None of that was part of her job. She finally confessed that she was strongly attracted to me and that she dated a chef not long before moving to L.A. She found me irresistible in my outfit. I was in big trouble. Especially once she started dancing around seductively and blowing me kisses.
Paige eased off some when I told her that Jacquie and I were dating and that I was really into her. But Paige never stopped stoking the flame between us. As I recall, the two of them didn’t like each other at first, but months later, they became the best of friends. The three of us would hang out often and talk all night, each of us having so many stories to tell.
Paige’s real name was Casey. She was on the run from her ex-boyfriend in Chicago, who had threatened to kill her. She said he owned several bars and was tied to the mob. Casey also told us that he was attempting to force her into prostitution, and that was the reason she fled to L.A. and assumed an alias. Her fear was palpable, and the terror that would rise in her eyes whenever she mentioned him was undeniably authentic. I was convinced that he was her pimp and that he had turned her out.
Paige’s real name was Casey. She was on the run from her ex-boyfriend in Chicago, who had threatened to kill her. She said he owned several bars and was tied to the mob. Casey also told us that he was attempting to force her into prostitution, and that was the reason she fled to L.A. and assumed an alias.
Her family story was even more unnerving and beyond tragic. Her father was murdered when she was eight. Then, her mother was murdered by her stepfather when she was 17. And finally, her older sister was murdered by her boyfriend two years after that. Casey moved to Chicago with a girlfriend to escape the bad juju of her hometown of Hartford, Connecticut. She was determined to start a new life, but that didn’t turn out so well.
Casey often spoke of having a death wish and wanting to be with her family. She would get frustrated over very insignificant things and shout out, “I just want to die! Can’t I just be dead?! Why am I even here?!”
No matter how hard we tried to console her, offer her advice, or encourage her to talk through it with us, she clung to her despair. I felt it was best to try to keep her mind off of her past and focus on helping her turn her life around. That proved to be tough because she had a thing for cocaine, like most 20-somethings I knew, and then she began to smoke crack. My heart was breaking for her daily.
Casey was fascinated by the crazy scene at the club. During the first few weeks she worked there, she would grab me by the arm and have me escort her through the play areas. She was afraid to go alone. Then she began escorting me. She’d voyeuristically peek into various rooms and peer through the sheer drapes of the harem room to watch the orgy. “What the hell?” she’d whisper while pointing and giggling. “Can you believe this shit, Jonny? These people are nuts.”
A few months later, I noticed that Casey had gradually changed. She was not her usual, upbeat and happy self. I went to visit her in her room one night, and she didn’t bother to hide her crystal meth bubbler pipe. She loaded it up and took a massive hit off of it. “Ok, ready for work!” she said as she struggled to her feet. I was crushed. I felt useless and hopeless. I had been around enough budding addicts to know that talking about it wasn’t going to do any good.
Jacquie moved out of her house and into my place. During the day, she helped me with the condom business, and I was able to get my condoms into several other Lifestyle clubs. A couple of large orders came in, one of them from a distributor in Greece that had ordered 10,000 boxes of condoms. It was encouraging but also a pain in the ass. I had to special order custom stickers to be applied to the back of the packaging to meet the country’s import requirements. It took Jacquie and me a week to fulfill that order.
Back at the club, I was in for more unpleasant surprises. Jacquie had started smoking meth with Casey, so she wasn’t going to be of any help in getting Casey to stop, and now I had to worry about her too. Worse yet, Casey had gone from being curiously entertained in the hallways of the play area to stripping down naked and going from room to room. I’d see dudes banging her left and right as I wheeled my food carts through the hallways. I was gutted.
We had become very close, and I knew she was acting out. She was in the process of giving up. And then things went from very bad to incredibly worse. Casey jumped from smoking meth to smoking heroin, then to shooting heroin, and finally to moving in with her heroin dealer. It happened so fast, all I could do was marvel at the speed of it.
It’s been long understood that when people move to Los Angeles, one of three things happens quickly: 1) You survive. 2) You run back home. 3) You’re eaten alive. This poor girl was being chewed up and spit out in record time, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Bill, the owner, came to me one night and told me that he was extremely impressed with my work ethic and that I was the best chef he had ever hired. He said that my roast beef was consistently great, the best he’d ever eaten, and that he never heard a single complaint about the food or of me trying to mess around in the play areas. He said he was going to make an exception to his hard-and-fast rule against fraternizing with customers. I could play around if I wanted to.
It’s been long understood that when people move to Los Angeles, one of three things happens quickly: 1) You survive. 2) You run back home. 3) You’re eaten alive. This poor girl was being chewed up and spit out in record time, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
His timing was impeccable. Not only was my relationship with his daughter failing due to her growing addiction to meth, I began to question if she was being as faithful to me as I had been to her. I had picked up on a few clues that I chose to ignore, but deep down, I knew the truth. I was also in a bad place emotionally, watching Casey’s life slowly ebbing away. Now, it was my turn to act out.
I decided to take up the first offer that came my way. A lady about 10 years older than me took me by the hand and led me to the human-cat tree. We climbed nearly to the top and proceeded to make out. I was still wearing my chef’s outfit and looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. I also didn’t care or feel any shame after I had sex with a complete stranger I had never even seen before. It seemed like it was fated to happen.
Word must have gotten around because the very next night, that female couple that had been tormenting me from day one tracked me down and pulled me into an area of the club I actually hadn’t seen before. There was a hidden stairwell that went down to a room on the first floor of the building. The room was amazing. It was furnished and decorated entirely in blue and was lit with soft blue and white lighting. We were all alone, and it was deathly quiet. The two of them started going at each other as soon as the door shut behind us. The sound of their kissing was amplified in the stillness of the air.
They pulled me close, and the rest of the night was something I’ll never forget.
Not more than a day or two later, Anthony, a minor Hollywood celebrity I knew through mutual friends, contacted me about a job he thought I might be interested in. “It’s at one of the biggest children’s television networks in the world. It's a foot-in-the-door kind of deal,” he said. “Would you be interested?”
I responded, “Hell yes, I am.”
“I know you’re a seasoned editor, but you told me you worked as a Tape Operator before. Well, that’s the gig. It’s a Video Tape Operator job at Nickelodeon.”
“Hook me up with an interview. I’m definitely interested.”
“You won’t be able to move into editing for a couple of years; you okay with that?”
“Yes, I am,” I told him. “I actually like working as a Tape Op. I tried to get into Miramax that way, but it never worked out. It’s the perfect path for moving into an editor position. I’m down, man. Sign me up.”
With that, he set me up with an interview within days. I met with David Ewing, the head of Post Production, who introduced himself and quickly got down to business. “We’re looking for a Tape Op, and Tony tells me you’re my guy,” he said as he slapped his hand down on my resume. “I see a lot of editing experience here, Jon. Are you willing to put in two or three years in that position before trying to move into editing?”
“Yes, I am; that’s not a problem,” I assured him.
“I don’t want to have to fill this job again next week.”
“I get it, I understand. I can definitely give you two or three years.”
“Ok, now let me ask you bluntly: Why should I hire you and not someone else?”
I stared him straight in the eye and answered, “You won’t have to train me. You won’t have to show me how to operate any of the equipment. I can hit the ground running on day one, and the guy I’m replacing won’t have to help get me up to speed. I can figure it all out on my own.”
“That’s a bold statement,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.”
As expected, I got the job. And as promised, the guy they moved up into an editing position at the network didn’t have to show me anything more than where the light switches were located.
I was relieved to finally have a job at a big company. No more hustling. No more freelance gigs. No more feeding the kinky freaks at the sex club. If I had to yell, “Hey dude, keep your dick out of the mashed potatoes!” one more time, I was going to have to kill somebody. Even though I got a good laugh every time I did it.
The night before I started my first day at Nickelodeon, my girlfriend Jacquie called me on my cell phone and woke me up at three in the morning. She told me earlier in the day that she would be spending the night at her dad’s place, so I wasn’t expecting her to show up or call.
“Can you come and pick me up, Jonny?” she asked me. “I was just thrown out of a moving car.”
“What? Are you ok? Who the hell threw you out of a car?”
“My ex, Justin, did,” she told me reluctantly.
“Why are you hanging out with him?” I asked her. “I thought you were staying at your dad’s or at the club?”
It was too much for me to deal with just a few short hours before starting one of the most important job positions I’ve ever been offered. After Jacquie assured me she wasn’t in immediate danger, I decided that things had to end between us. I had already quit the job at the sex club on short notice, and now it was time to end my relationship on even shorter notice.
“Jacquie, I can’t come save you right now,” I told her.
There was dead silence on the other end of the phone.
I explained why I wasn’t going to pick her up, “I’m sorry, but I don’t need this kind of drama in my life right now. I’m starting an important job in the morning, and I can’t be dealing with crazy shit like this anymore. We’re going to have to break up.”
“I understand. I’m sorry, babe,” she told me.
“I’m sorry, too.”
“I love you, Jonny.”
“I love you, too.”
Jacquie came and picked up her things a day or two later, and we didn’t talk again for some time. But somehow, I knew that we’d remain friends.
I kept in touch with Casey over the next several years. We had a very tight bond. She was living in Hollywood with the heroin dealer, and they had a baby daughter. I’d get calls from her whenever they were having a fight, or she wanted to talk to someone. Often, she needed a shoulder to cry on when she was missing her mom and sister. We’d meet up for coffee or grab something to eat. Other times, we’d drive around in my car or hang out at my place and talk.
I hadn’t heard from her for a while and figured she was doing okay, but then I happened to visit her Myspace page. There were posts from her friends saying, “RIP Casey” and “RIP Paige”—it had actually happened—she had died young like she always said she would.
I found a newspaper article which told the story of how she died on September 12, 2008. I hadn’t fully prepared myself for what I might read. I assumed it had been an accidental overdose or, worse, a suicide, but I was wrong.
Casey had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend and was driving recklessly in the early morning hours. She crashed her car near the Barham Blvd. exit on I-5, got out in a daze, and wandered into the lanes of traffic. She was struck by five cars, but only the last one stopped. The driver carried her to the side of the road, where she died in his arms.
Barham was the exit she would take when visiting my place in Burbank. I can’t help but believe she was on her way over.
For the next several years, I avoided the intersection of Barham and I-5 as much as possible. Just the thought of what had happened there brought me to tears.
R.I.P. Casey.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read." - Amazon review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking." - Amazon review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!" - Amazon review
Wow, so sad. Keep on writing Jon.