A WAY TOO SHORT BIOGRAPHY:
David
T. Warren (aka: Flamo LaGrande, R. J. Mololopozy) lived a strange
and unique life. After a tempestuous upbringing in the home of a
prominent building contractor in Hayward, Dave left town with a
traveling carnival. Here he learned the art of eating fire as well
as various sideshow skills including magic. Later, he would apply
his showmanship to selling Kirby vacuums and became tops of his team
of salesmen. Of other door-to-door items he peddled, perhaps the
strangest were Venus' Fly Traps -- carnivorous plants that Dave
touted as "organic insecticide."
At a
crucial junction in his life involving separation from his wife and
children, he moved to San Francisco after the 1972 demolishing of
the seaside amusement park "Playland At the Beach." Upset by the
destruction of this park, Dave formed his one man Playland Research
Center and initiated a series of Playland parties in the rubble of
the park. PRC was dedicated to collecting and archiving photos,
film, personal interviews of and about the classic attraction out at
Ocean Beach that served as a magnet for young and old alike. His
mottos "Do It" and "Have Fun" were painted on a large
wall at Ocean Beach to spread his message to passersby.
In
1978 David, along with Gary Warne, Adrienne Burk and Nancy Prussia
had a wild experience where they clung desperately to a heavy
barricade chain atop the seawall under the Golden Gate Bridge at
Fort Point as thirty foot waves crashed down on top of them. Later,
in the early hours of January 3 over hot chocolate the four friends
decided to start a club where they would encourage members to "live
each day as though it were their last" by creating events and
experiences that would challenge their deep personal fears, expand
their knowledge and understanding of their world and those in it AND
be hella fun. This group became the San Francisco Suicide Club.
Also
in 1978, along with Chris DeMonterrey and Steve Mobia, David
restored and operated the Giant Camera below the Cliff House at
Ocean Beach. Dave considered the camera to be one of the last
vestiges of Playland and so it fit into his grand scheme. This
spectral attraction, one of fewer that half a dozen surviving in the
world, was often attributed to Leonardo DaVinci and became a popular
curiosity at scenic tourist spots during the Victorian era. Though
both the GGNRA and the Cliff House restaurant wanted this bright
yellow building demolished, David worked overtime, cooking up
publicity for this interesting but strange place and it was his
passion (and thousands of signatures gathered at the camera) that
years later finally won for the camera the "official" designation as
a national historic building (which is why it still exists, even
after the remodeling of the Cliff House).
Though
David, and the "Friends of Ocean Beach" fought a hard grassroots
battle to stop condominiums from crowding out the public on the old
Playland property, the developers got much of what they wanted.
However their plans to build right up to the rocky edge of Sutro
Heights Park was halted. The parcel of land where Dave painted his
festive signs is even today free of buildings and this is due to the
struggle that Dave and the "Friends of Ocean Beach" put up to stop
the developers.
The
Suicide Club morphed into the Cacophony Society in the mid 80's,
which in turn birthed the Burning Man Festival as a desert event in
1990. That year, in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, Dave was the first
human to ignite the 40’ wooden figure, inaugurating nearly 20 years
now of desert shenanigans.
David
had a rough time of it the last decade or so. For someone who
inspired people and brought humor and adventure into their lives, he
could never seem to shake the many demons that plagued him and
eventually brought him to his end. Many concerned friends searched
out and/or helped to find David several times from the mid-90's til
2008.) He would lapse in and out of binge drinking and usually end
up on the street , sometimes making it into a group home or
hospital/rehab clinic. Over the years some of us visited him at a
graphics artist retirement home in Oakland, a group home in Oakland,
a nursing home in Hayward as well as a couple of different camping
spots in Castro Valley, Golden Gate Park and Hayward. His son put
him up in an apartment in Sonora for a few months around 2002 but
Dave's weakness for drink always managed to sabotage any gains he
might have made. He lived in Golden Gate Park for various periods
through out the early 00's and with Richard Tuck in El Cerritto for
a while as he worked on the upcoming museum. We always eventually
found him.
About a year ago, we became concerned when Richard was notified
that David's storage space in Santa Rosa was in arrears and about to
default. Over the years, whether David was living indoors or not,
whether his rent checks cleared or not, he ALWAYS paid the rent on
his storage. He placed great importance on the stuff he had stored
though much of it (boxes of empty vodka bottles, hundreds of pounds
of Encyclopedia Britanicas, stacks of wood, etc.) might strike the
casual observer as being of little or no value. Regardless, David
lived homeless many years in order to insure his storage fees were
paid. So when we learned that after 10 years he missed the rent we
were pretty worried that maybe this time we wouldn't find him again.
And, sadly, we didn't.
It all
seems pretty blue but one time a couple of years ago when I had
tracked him to a disheveled camping spot behind a huge boulder in
Carlos Bee Park in Hayward which was his home for several years .
David explained why he was there. It was mid morning on a glorious
day, sunlight was streaming through the thick canopy of pine trees
across the streambed just below his camping spot. The park was
beautiful and seemed much as it must have back before the 49ers
invaded the West. I was pretty upset that David was living in such
straits – sleeping in a soggy pile of blankets and cardboard. Being
morning time, he was sober and, for the time being had regained more
than a bit of his old eloquence and insight. He could see I was
bummed and had started berating him somewhat for not staying sober
and retaining his quite comfortable room in the nursing home on B
Street. He gave me that intense gaze of his, eyebrows raised in mock
sardonic judgement. “Just look at this” he said gesturing grandly
with the old showman's panache'. “ This park, these trees and rocks
and that stream... it's all mine. I sleep where I want. I walk where
I want. NO ONE tells me what to do, where to go, what I can't say,
WHO I SHOULD BE! You should be so lucky, kid!”
That is how David T. Warren should be remembered.
Written by John Law & Steve Mobia