John Ross reads at Modern Times
By Tim Redmond
John Ross, the legendary poet, writer and shit-disturber who has been our Mexico City correspondant for years and broken numerous big stories, called me last week to say he’d been knocked around by the SF cops.
Now, that’s nothing new for John — he has never done well with authority and has been beaten badly by police officers in San Francisco, Mexico City and numerous other locations over the years.
But today, John is 71, blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and recovering from surgery and chemotherapy for liver cancer. He’s physically weak and has a hard time walking. He’s certainly no threat to law enforcement.
And somehow, he tells me, he wound up on the wrong side of a violent police confrontation, right on 24th and Valencia.
There was no protest; he wasn’t in the middle of a riot or disturbance, trying to get a story (as he’s done so many times before.) He was walking — slowly, with a cane — to a café to buy a bottle of blueberry Odwalla, which he figured was good for his liver.
Read his account after the jump.