Athlete – Addict – Poet – Hustler – Punk Jim Carroll died yesterday in New York City.

He played high school ball with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; partied with Andy Warhol, and had his cab stolen by Salvador Dali.

I walked into my neighborhood bar in Berkeley in 1982, and there was this wild Irish apparition declaiming onstage to a 4/4 punk beat. We had a beer afterward, and I was a fan.

Basketball Diaries was an entertaining history of a crazy period in American culture…his poetry was more hit-or-miss for me.

Breaking and Entering, his later memoir, was entertaining and fascinating as an account of a man wrestling with his own moral shortcomings and desire for transcendence and normalcy.
–