Speaker 1: School of Humans. Hello listeners. In today's bonus episode, I'm
Speaker 1: talking with one of my parents friends from the counterculture,
Speaker 1: a psychedelic pioneer I call far Out. So what are
Speaker 1: your last thoughts you're on far Out? Any last things?
Speaker 1: Want to tell us about far Out? Since we're gonna
Speaker 1: tell his story on this podcast, It's interesting from me,
Speaker 1: I would say far Out was the epitome of the
Speaker 1: left wing politico hippie who started out as a left
Speaker 1: wing intellectual and ended up as a hippie, super duper
Speaker 1: pot smoking guy who in fact, I mean he was
Speaker 1: the epitome. He sold like ounces and nickel bags and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, so he really supplied it to
Speaker 1: the people. A ground floor member of San Francisco's counterculture,
Speaker 1: far Out was the manager of a world famous San
Speaker 1: Francisco rock and roll band, and like many of the
Speaker 1: psychedelic Pioneers, he's a nice Jewish boy. He's from Chicago
Speaker 1: and landed in San Francisco's North Beach in the early sixties,
Speaker 1: where he became friends with my mom. San Francisco's North
Speaker 1: Beach neighborhood was ground zero for the city's iconic beat
Speaker 1: nicks and the alternative art, literary, music, and comedy scene
Speaker 1: before it morphed into the famed counter culture and moved
Speaker 1: to the hate Ashbury neighborhood in the late sixties. Now,
Speaker 1: for his entire adult life, far Out has been in
Speaker 1: love with my mom's best friend from her North Beach
Speaker 1: belly dancing days, and far Out spent lots of time
Speaker 1: around my mom's best friend's communal table, a famous gathering
Speaker 1: spot for future famed musicians like the Anonymous Artists of
Speaker 1: America and the Quicksilver Poster artists like Stanley Mouse, Nelton Kelly,
Speaker 1: plus actors, writers and smugglers who gathered to smoke doobies,
Speaker 1: schmooz and eat Chinese food and hippie stew and people
Speaker 1: always like just went to the table, rolled joints and
Speaker 1: drank coffee, rolled and smoke joints and drank coffee and
Speaker 1: just bullshitting like all the and all these like all
Speaker 1: the time. It was like it was it was like
Speaker 1: a coffee house. So it was somebody's house right now.
Speaker 1: My mom's best friend's table is the same place where
Speaker 1: my dad met my mom in nineteen seventy and where
Speaker 1: Dad met far Out, So that was a famous table
Speaker 1: by the time I got there. Oh yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: got there late. Yeah, you got the table late, dad later. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: although far Out primarily worked in rock and roll, he
Speaker 1: had one good story about pot smuggling through Mexico over
Speaker 1: the Rio Grande. I'm Rainbow Valentine. This is disorganized crime
Speaker 1: smuggler's daughter going to do young, free and groovy, making
Speaker 1: it up. We rolled along a country gang New York State,
Speaker 1: making it up as we roll. Oh my god, Oh
Speaker 1: can I have just taken a trip through the city
Speaker 1: San Francisco to get to the Castro, which is an
Speaker 1: awesome neighborhood. I'm gonna ring the doorbell. Oh, here we go. Okay,
Speaker 1: I went to far Out's apartment in San Francisco. Now
Speaker 1: in his eighties. Far Out has been a small time
Speaker 1: pot dealer for over sixty years, and he might be
Speaker 1: one of the last meaning psychedelic pioneers still living in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Proper in the Castro. Go all right, I'm
Speaker 1: going in, All right, how are you? I call him
Speaker 1: far Out because he says it all the time with
Speaker 1: complete earnestness and far Out awe, he really means it.
Speaker 1: And since I say far Out all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'd probably Shay far Out one hundred and two times
Speaker 1: a day. Now, far Out was never a true smuggler.
Speaker 1: He was a band manager with a pot dealing side hustle.
Speaker 1: But being a true psychedelic pioneer, he did one smuggling
Speaker 1: trip and he told me about it while sitting in
Speaker 1: his tiny apartment full of pot paraphernalia and iconic memorabilia
Speaker 1: from his life amongst San Francisco's music superstars. His one
Speaker 1: smuggling trip happened to be some of the best pot
Speaker 1: he'd ever smoked. It was the best, most spectacular Mexican
Speaker 1: pot I have ever run across in my life. It
Speaker 1: was literally technicolor. It was yellow, gold, green, red blue.
Speaker 1: And I've been smoking pot since fifty seven, So what
Speaker 1: do we have? We have forty three sixty two years,
Speaker 1: so I consider my judgment pretty good. It was the
Speaker 1: best Mexican pot that I ever smoked in my life. Now,
Speaker 1: being in his eighties, far Out is vague on details
Speaker 1: like who asked him to supervise the trip, But remember
Speaker 1: business was all done amongst close friends, so it was
Speaker 1: probably another psychedelic pioneer. Also in rock and roll, they
Speaker 1: rented a house south of Mexico City, and they were
Speaker 1: going ahead with a purchase, and they needed somebody to
Speaker 1: supervise the whole operation. I flew down to monter Ray,
Speaker 1: which is in northern Mexico. At the airport in Monterey,
Speaker 1: I rented a car. I rented a new Dodge, a
Speaker 1: seventy Dodge, and I started driving south. Now the rented
Speaker 1: Dodge became a critical part of far Out's illicit adventure
Speaker 1: about to unfold, and I drove all the way south
Speaker 1: south of Mexico City. I drove hundred some miles south,
Speaker 1: followed my nose. I arrived at the house. I entered
Speaker 1: the house. They took me to the back living room,
Speaker 1: in the back room, and there in the back room,
Speaker 1: piled in a corner was two hundred and fifty pounds
Speaker 1: of the most beautiful Mexican pot. And they had already
Speaker 1: bought really thick clear plastic vinyl. They'd bought sheets and
Speaker 1: sheets and sheets. So I decided, what we're going to
Speaker 1: do is we're going to wrap these two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pounds one pound at a time, and then I
Speaker 1: had us operated into five piles of fifty pounds each
Speaker 1: fifty bundles each, and we made five bundles each. There
Speaker 1: was two hundred and fifty bundles. Now I made five bundles.
Speaker 1: Each bundle was fifty pounds. So it was wrapped over
Speaker 1: and over again with this vinyl because we were going
Speaker 1: to cross it on the river under Rio Grande. Now
Speaker 1: the Rio Grande has been a popular smuggling route since
Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight, when the Mexican American War ended seeding
Speaker 1: Texas to the US and causing trade issues between the countries,
Speaker 1: leading to tariffs. Rio Grande borderland residents seeking to avoid
Speaker 1: paying tax on goods began smuggling over the Rio Grande,
Speaker 1: adopting smuggling routes previously used as escapeways by Texas slave
Speaker 1: was seeking freedom in Mexico, which abolished slavery in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight, so the smuggling trip far Out stepped into
Speaker 1: had a plan. Far Out would drive a wrapped cube
Speaker 1: of two hundred and fifty pounds of pot one thousand
Speaker 1: miles north through Mexico to the Rio Grande border. There,
Speaker 1: he would send it across the river, passing it off
Speaker 1: to the Texas smuggling crew waiting on the other side
Speaker 1: of the rio Grande. Now the Texas crew member was
Speaker 1: a physicist whose day job was to watch cloud chamber
Speaker 1: photographs of nuclear explosions. So far Out and his crew
Speaker 1: set off north with the cube of two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pounds of pot in Farout's dodge, which left first,
Speaker 1: with the rest of the crew following forty five minutes behind.
Speaker 1: So we started out. I start out. I had a
Speaker 1: few joints with me so I could smoke on the way.
Speaker 1: I figure, if I see a check station up ahead,
Speaker 1: I'll just toss the joint out the window and open
Speaker 1: the windows and air out the car. And I come
Speaker 1: to the first town and there's a restaurant. Basically, it's
Speaker 1: a roof on poles. There's no walls to the restaurant.
Speaker 1: It's a roof on pole with a bunch of tables,
Speaker 1: and there's a few people sitting there round And I
Speaker 1: pull up my car and park it. And in the meantime,
Speaker 1: while I've been sitting in this restaurant, some local drives
Speaker 1: his car. He's driving his car around the area and
Speaker 1: he slides into a creek. So a few of the
Speaker 1: people who are hanging out at the restaurant get up.
Speaker 1: They go over to the other side of the road,
Speaker 1: and one of him has him chaded with him and
Speaker 1: he chops down a spindlay, a thin tree, but he
Speaker 1: gets by chopping down the tree. He gets a long
Speaker 1: pole with ridge and they all go together and they
Speaker 1: used this long chop down tree and thing, and they
Speaker 1: pull They jack this car and this truck out of
Speaker 1: the river, and everybody goes on with their life. Far
Speaker 1: Out far Out finished his tacos and moved on smoking
Speaker 1: doobies another two hundred and fifty miles up the road
Speaker 1: to a hotel where he meets up with the rest
Speaker 1: of the crew. Now the hotel was just some random
Speaker 1: nowhere spot, nothing special, But it turns out the hotel
Speaker 1: is significant for a progressive socialist idealist like far Out.
Speaker 1: I'm walking downstairs to meet my friends and have breakfast.
Speaker 1: I'm on the second floor, and from the second floor
Speaker 1: down to the first floor into a big circle. In
Speaker 1: the center, there's a sort of a bench stairway. There's
Speaker 1: a half a flight and then a little landing, then
Speaker 1: another flight going down. As I'm walking down the first
Speaker 1: flight towards the second flight going down at that landing
Speaker 1: in the middle, as I'm walking down, I see a
Speaker 1: picture of yellow as Abotta, an old hero of mine.
Speaker 1: He led the Mexican Revolution in the early ye twentieth century,
Speaker 1: but he's a hero of mine. And I'm walking down
Speaker 1: the stairs, I'm approaching that picture hanging on the wall
Speaker 1: of a Potta. It's a famous picture as a Potta.
Speaker 1: He's got his bullets bundeeerrows across his chest, he's got
Speaker 1: his sombrero on his head, and he's holding his rifle.
Speaker 1: And as I'm walking down the stairs and I'm approaching
Speaker 1: that picture, a really strange, weird feeling comes over me.
Speaker 1: I can't figure out what's going on in my body,
Speaker 1: in my head. And as I come to the bottom
Speaker 1: step and I'm standing in front of the picture, I
Speaker 1: realized the wall that the picture is hanging on as
Speaker 1: the wall against which Zapota is standing to have the
Speaker 1: picture taken. It turns out at the hotel that we
Speaker 1: were staying in used to be Zapota's headquarters. He used
Speaker 1: to ride his horse around that inner circle inside the
Speaker 1: brick wall. For me, this was even more of an
Speaker 1: adventure than the smuggle itself. You know, I stood where
Speaker 1: Zapota stood. This blew my mind. Even now, I get
Speaker 1: the chills thinking about it. I'm Rainbow Valentine. This is
Speaker 1: disorganized crime. We'll be right back. After spending the night
Speaker 1: at Zapota's former headquarters, there was another five hundred miles
Speaker 1: to go so far out started out in the dodge
Speaker 1: and the crew followed forty five minutes behind a secret
Speaker 1: caravan of sin Semea smugglers. I took off another restaurant
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty miles. They showed up. I finished up,
Speaker 1: paid my check on one another two hundred and fifty miles.
Speaker 1: That evening, we wound up together at a motel in Metamoros.
Speaker 1: We're gonna wait till midnight to do the smuggle on
Speaker 1: the Rio Grande. We drive in my rented car to
Speaker 1: Rio Grande. We drive through the beach. Now we get
Speaker 1: to the beach and it's blackest pitch. We're probably within
Speaker 1: fifty feet of the edge of the river. We've parked
Speaker 1: the car and we've dragged this big bundle to the
Speaker 1: edge of the river. And the edge of this big
Speaker 1: bundle is sitting now on the It's half into water
Speaker 1: and half on the land. I positioned it so the
Speaker 1: land part is holding it in place. We've got a
Speaker 1: rope on bundle. The other end of the rope is
Speaker 1: in the hands of our Texas physicists friend who's at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the river. He's better walkie talkie with him,
Speaker 1: and we've got a waukie talkie with us, and we're
Speaker 1: in touch with him. He's under the water. We're on
Speaker 1: the Mexico side. He's entered the water from the Texas side.
Speaker 1: We're in touch by wakie talkie. But also what we
Speaker 1: hear on our waukie talkie is the Matamoros police radio.
Speaker 1: They're all talking in Spanish, and almost every other word
Speaker 1: is marijuana. With every other word marijuana, we were sort
Speaker 1: of uptight. We couldn't were so black on the beach
Speaker 1: that we couldn't see anything either in front of us
Speaker 1: or in all four directions. We couldn't see if anybody
Speaker 1: was approaching us. The cops could have been approaching us
Speaker 1: without their lights on. And you know what marijuana are
Speaker 1: they talking about? Are they talking about suspicion of us
Speaker 1: with marijuana and some other man who knows we're listening
Speaker 1: to them, and we're talking to our friend under the water,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. And it took until
Speaker 1: about three am. This was almost three hours before everything
Speaker 1: was clear before we got to go ahead from him.
Speaker 1: When he gave us to go ahead, I stood at
Speaker 1: that bundle and I pushed it slowly into the water.
Speaker 1: And at the speed that I pushed it into the
Speaker 1: water was the same speed that it staggered crossing the water.
Speaker 1: And we watched it crossing the water until we could
Speaker 1: no longer see it, and then we got an okay
Speaker 1: from him. They said see you later. The crew piled
Speaker 1: in far Out's rental car, relieved to pass off the
Speaker 1: weed when the danger they'd been evading for one thousand
Speaker 1: miles zeroed in on them. The Mexican police, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: come to an intersection. It's hard to tell how the
Speaker 1: intersection was defined, but we could tell it was an intersection.
Speaker 1: We were not yet at the town and there was
Speaker 1: a big I can't tell what it was hanging from,
Speaker 1: but there was a traffic light in the middle of
Speaker 1: this intersection where nobody was there, and you know, and
Speaker 1: they were also It's three in the morning. So we
Speaker 1: come up to this intersection and the traffic lighters read
Speaker 1: so we stopped, and as we stopped, I noticed about
Speaker 1: thirty feet in front of us, there's a cop. It's
Speaker 1: like a municipal cop standing there, which is I can't understand.
Speaker 1: This is three in the morning. He's a municipal cop.
Speaker 1: There's no civilization in this area at all. What's he
Speaker 1: doing here? And why is he here? And what's a
Speaker 1: cop doing here? But the fact that you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we were foreigners and we were guilty, and so it
Speaker 1: was hard to think eight And as I see this cop,
Speaker 1: I made the mistake of looking directly at him, and
Speaker 1: so our eyes met. This all happened real fast, and
Speaker 1: as our eyes met, he did this. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: had no choice but to approach him, and he took
Speaker 1: us into town and he confiscated the car. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the details of this. They confiscated. This was all underhanded.
Speaker 1: This wasn't legitimate. But Darre in charge, he confiscated the
Speaker 1: car and he said we could come back tomorrow morning
Speaker 1: to the police station and pay our fine and recieve
Speaker 1: our car. Now far out doesn't know why the car
Speaker 1: was confiscated regardless, Now they had to pay a fine,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately all their money was in the impounded car. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem was that while we were conducting our business us.
Speaker 1: I put my wallet under the front seat of the car.
Speaker 1: What we had to do tomorrow morning was pay one
Speaker 1: hundred paco fine, but the hundred pacos were below the
Speaker 1: seat in the front seat of my car. We went
Speaker 1: early that morning. We climbed over the cyclone fence of
Speaker 1: where the car was confined, and I went into my
Speaker 1: car and I got the wallet from under the front
Speaker 1: feet and then we climbed out. And then we went
Speaker 1: to the police station and paid them a hundred pacos
Speaker 1: and they went and released there, released my car. Oh,
Speaker 1: disorganized crime for sure. Meanwhile, the Texas crew drove the
Speaker 1: cube of pot from the Rio Grande to the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay area. Far Out drives back to Monterey, Mexico,
Speaker 1: and flies back to San Francisco to help them with
Speaker 1: a distribution. And we opened a pod and one of
Speaker 1: the fifty pound bundles leaked and got wet. That's it.
Speaker 1: That was it. A local pot dealer and music manager
Speaker 1: rather than a smuggler. Far Out had never done something
Speaker 1: this daring and dangerous, and he never would again. Far
Speaker 1: Out preferred dealing small amounts of pot to his regular
Speaker 1: customers in town. Over the intense adrenaline rush of smuggling
Speaker 1: large quantities over boarders, supporting my theory that my parents
Speaker 1: are adrenaline junkies. My meeting with far Out ended with
Speaker 1: him reminiscing about his great love for my mom's best friend,
Speaker 1: who recently passed away. Far Out expressed surprise that my dad,
Speaker 1: of all the people around mom's best friend's psychedelic table,
Speaker 1: had been the one to call him to share the
Speaker 1: sad news of mom's best friend passing. An icon of
Speaker 1: San Francisco's psychedelic history, far Out has been a pot
Speaker 1: dealer for almost sixty years, along with his career managing
Speaker 1: global rock band I can't tell you who, but it's giant,
Speaker 1: like the biggest. Now, this reminds me it's always good
Speaker 1: to have a side hustle in order to generate multiple
Speaker 1: income streams, and in this unprecedented pandemic full of immense
Speaker 1: devastating job loss, cultivating side revenue hustles is a valuable idea.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying we should all become pot dealers, but
Speaker 1: maybe toilet paper dealers. I do hear there's a black
Speaker 1: market for it now, and I'm totally serious about this.
Speaker 1: There's a black market for toilet paper. We should all
Speaker 1: become toilet paper dealers. Stay safe out there, Wash your hands,
Speaker 1: don't touch your eyeballs. I'm Rainbow Valentine and this is
Speaker 1: Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter. Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is written
Speaker 1: and recorded by Me Bow Valentine. Our producers are Gabby
Speaker 1: Watts and Taylor Church. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Liven,
Speaker 1: Elsie Crowley and Me at School of Humans and Connel
Speaker 1: Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music is by
Speaker 1: Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with original theme by Mark
Speaker 1: Karen and Me. You can follow us online at Disorganized
Speaker 1: Crime Podcast dot com. Vel story Doing It As with
Speaker 1: Me Tamble by Stephen Princess of the Red says, keep
Speaker 1: it real, handshake seals the deal, Rap stat seal Meal,
Speaker 1: Going up these old golding to Doobe, Young, rich and groovy.
Speaker 1: Maybe it up As we roll along, Rolling along fer Country,
Speaker 1: Roll Rolling along Far Country, Roll, Rolling along Far Country.
Speaker 1: Low