Surviving war w/ Lloyd Francis

The wise Haight Street storyteller Lloyd Francis does not believe Americans are living in their checkmate moment, and that could not surprise me more.

Lloyd be knowin’ thangs.

Jeez, where do I begin with my buddy from The Bay? On the night I had my first legal drink Francis was there, at Livingstone’s bar in Fresno’s Tower District with Pablo Lopez and Antonio Olmos. (My actual first bar had come a half dozen years earlier, at the so-called “Bucket of Blood” in Sandusky, Ohio. The ritual is what matters though.)

In Fresno and eventually San Francisco, Francis became my psychedelics guide. A lot of formative tripping happened under his leadership. He also functioned as a journalism mentor. I’m a critic by nature, and Francis modeled for me leaping into chaos. In our podcast conversation, there’s an interruption to remind Francis that among the first times I saw him really going for it was in a Dead Kennedys concert video.

My man—then still in college—pops out onstage, on his belly and armed with his camera, dead up in the punk-rock fray.

The Legend of Black Mexico is my most ambitious storytelling effort since publishing that memoir in my early 30s. You can keep track of how the work is going through periodic updates.

That boldness brought the Oakland native to cover Earth’s hottest war zones. In 2004, Francis left The City to join the Marines at America’s second battle of Fallujah. The fighting that my friend witnessed was unlike anything he’d seen in the West Bank occupation or the battles of shooting and bombing.

He describes the sights in Iraq as resembling Manson Family murder scenes, stuff no human should ever see. For years, this vivid imagery would not leave his mind.

Yet, the photojournalist maintained the presence of mind to make beautiful pictures.