my history of sacramento and the origins of 'bht'

the first time i came to sacramento was in the first week of february of the year 2001. i had been living in olympia and was waiting for my lease to run up before i met steve in sacramento to join him on his bike journey.

i left from olympia with some people that i had worked with at target. yes, i worked at target for about 6 months in the year 2000. here is the excerpt from my old journal from that time:

"Leaving, again, but I guess it always feel s that way. I bought a bike yesterday—for $275. Now, I am in Sacramento…Nick and Mike and Ritchie and I drove all night to be here, now. It is unbelievably beautiful, this city. I bought a sticker from a hemp store in "Old Sacramento" it says "SIMPLIFY". It is honest, it is going on my bucket. Nick isn't too keen to experience, he didn't want to leave the expressway at all. But I got him to drive up Freeport Ave and I saw "Mums" a veggie dive recommended in the book. Steve and I will have to check it out when we are both up here. I say, the sun is shinin' down on me hard, but I still cant wait for warmer weather, for San Francisco, for Berkeley, for Michael Parenti and Jesse Michaels, for 924 Gilman and the Modern Times Bookstore. I came so close last year. This time I am fifty miles away and I cannot wait."

just to catch up on that old post, i still have the buckets and the simplify sticker is still on one of them. i never went to mums and i dont beleive i ever went to see michael parenti or the modern times bookstore. i walked by 924 gilman, but it was wholly unspectacular.

i was only in sacramento for a short time the first time, maybe three hours. the folks i came down with wanted to go to some of the skating things in town and i just wanted to experience it. i was in old sacramento today and it wasnt as great as i thought in 2001. i looked for the store where i bought the sticker, i was going to take a picture and write a story about it and the picture would be left aligned right about now...

i like to think that old sacramento has changed alot in the last 8 years, but it probably hasnt, it was probably always as corporate dominated and i was just naieve at the time. oh well.

so, that was the first time i was in sacramento. then steve and i rode our bikes south for some hundreds of miles (which i am sure i will detail when i get there) to santa barbara. i freaked out after a couple months (maybe) and went to indiana to toughen up for a year and a half. then i moved to portland in september of 2002, and in June of 2003 my life brought me back to sacramento.

as i said, it was june. but let me take you back to portland in may of 2002. i had been living outside in portland for a couple of months before i found a place to live with a guy called roman off of 34th and yamhill or something in the southeast. i had been following portland.indymedia.org for awhile and was going to some of their meeting and trying to be more active in the activist community. i had met some people that were forming an anarchist coalition, which eventually became called ACAN...i totally forget precisely what it stands for, but the words anarchist, community, and network are in there somewhere.

through those folks and the portland imc folks, i became aware of an anti-wto protest in sacramento, that also had to do with fighting genetic engineering. i wasnt entirely certain what it was all about, but i knew i had to be there, mostly to establish more credit. the new activist folks that i hung around with all had fancy activist names that were usually entirely different from their real names, and you would only know that if you ever learned their real names. some of them i still have no idea about. most of them i have figured out. anyway.

i wanted one. an activist name to go along with my burgeoning activist lifestyle and stuff. at the time i wasnt aware that people generally earn or are bestowed nicknames, giving one to yourself doesnt usually pan out. so, i kept on going to meetings and trying to be more active. to me that meant talking to people and taking care of things that needed to be taken care of. that meant picking up slack and following through. i was pretty good at that stuff.

i got in touch with some people in sacramento well before the mobilization, because i wanted to be sure that i had food and housing. i contacted some folks from the sacramento food not bombs because that kind of helper role was precisely what i wanted to be doing, so i tried to get myself in there early. that didnt really pan out, becasue the person i was talking with wasnt very organized, or so i thought. and for housing i starting calling folks that were on the hotline and lined up some housing for myself.

i was going to the imc meetings in portland, because doing media coverage also felt like a nice helper role that i could easily slide into. at some point the folks at one of the meetings were talking about traveling down there and getting housing. i needed a ride and already had lined up housing, so i offered up ready made housing in exchange for a ride. i think that single act got the imc folks starting to trust me and give me some respect.

the convergence center now

june comes around and we are all headed down to sacramento early to set up a media center. before i left, i dont remeber this, but apparently i had fashioned my facial hair to be a mustache that came down my face...sometimes known as a handlebar mustache. we are there a number of days before the protest, just to get things set up. and this is what i like, setting things up, setting up processes and getting things in order, making things efficient and such. i think i fit right in with the early organizers.

as a side note of moderate interest, at this time i was still making hemp necklaces and i had brought some down with me to try to sell. and one of the first things i did when i got out of the car in sacramento was sell some necklaces to lisa fithian. it was the first and last time that i ever sold a hemp necklace. she bought two for $8 each i beleive.

so, i am there and i am getting things done! i am helping set things up at the convergence center, participating in the consensus meetings like a pro, and just doing things. i helped get together a moderatley successful pirate radio station for the convergence, and helped network the imc center, and genreally starting field commanding the welcome center. that job, as per consensus organizing comittee belonged to a woman name bernadette. she was very appreciative of my help and gave me new roles that i eagerly accepting and accomplished.

it was really one of the highlights of my life, because i wa so accepted and involved in what was going on, something that i had never really felt before in my life. so it was great. and this is starting ramble, i know.

so i had told some of the folks that i had come down with that i wanted to have a nickname, i wanted to leave sacramento a different person. naturally because of my mustache some folks started calling me handlebar. some other folks also starting calling me thunderbolt...i am not entirely sure of the origin of that one. and of course, up until june of 2003 everyone in the world called me brian (everyone except my uncle snake who called me bubba.)

so, i was doing good work and working with people from food not bombs, indymedia (primarily) and the welcoming comittee and i was also being called different names by different people. the convergence spokesperson, bernadette, got tired of it and took me aside one day, explained that it was too confusing to be known by such different names and perform the role i was, so she asked me which i would like to be called by.

none of them seemed particularly great, so i shrugged and said i dont know. she said, okay, thought for a moment and said "i am going to call you bht, thats what you will go by." and that was all i ever wanted. i got my activist name. that is the majority of the story. people in sacramento started calling me bht and resolved that when i got back to portland that would be my new name. i took two of my closer friends aside and told them thats what i would like to be called from now on, and so be it.

however, over the years when i am asked what bht stands for i do not say brian handlebar thunderbolt, the story is a bit too long and everyone would want a story. so, ironically enough, another person from sacramento gave me a great meaning for the letters, that summed up why i thought i was given the name and what it meant to me. so, whenever asked what bht stands for i would reply "its californian for bein' hella tight."