I encountered Dutch twice, once at Dave Ekin's shop in North Hollywood. he was striping an antique motorcycle for Harrah. This was in about 71. It was a pleasure to watch him pull some lines. The other time was in Santa Paula at a roadside produce stand, about 20 year ago. I saw an old Moto Guzzi with a sidecar in the lot so I wandered over for a look. I knew it was his bike by the polished and engraved German helmet sitting on the seat. He came out of the store with a bag of fruit. He began to speak and it was a rambling, semi lucid, diatribe about the government, conspiracies, lies that your parents told you, the uselessness of money, etc. True, he was a gifted artisan but he was, also, a nut of the highest magnitude.
Not from personal experience by any means but stuffing pine cones up your ass must be extremely painful but I would think a lot better than removing them... LOL
Indeed. I never expected to be in my mid 70s. The timeline might be flawed but the story remains the same.
A lot of creative people seem to have one diagnosis or another; artists, musicians and so on. Probably a large part of what makes many of them see things differently than "ordinary" people, as well as a large part of why a lot of them have been self medicating with drugs and alcohol. Life is never easy...
it’s not the truth of Von Dutch it was the folks in the documentary I could not stand .and they way it was presented . didn’t mean Von was a douche , but the documentary was douchey
Belief in conspiracy stories, irrational, emotional behavior, ego manic, , friend one day, enemy the next day, bouts of extreme depression, in general ,the world revolves around them.
If not for characters, it would be a boring world. I saw a guy sitting at the entrance to Wal Mart a few years ago. He was painting pictures and selling them to try and make a living. He told me the story of being an addict and one day finding paint in the trash and painting a picture on a piece of cardboard. He said he sold it quicker than panhandling for his drug money. I took his picture and posted it to Facebook one day with his story. He ended up selling a bunch of paintings. (usually around $30). He got offered to be one of the painters of a local business. (Daniel on the right). https://clutchmov.com/really-cheap-geeks-are-brightening-up-the-city/ He is not as talented as Von Dutch was and he has his issues. Currently off the drugs but still you can find him painting somewhere and going off on this or that or getting arrested basically because he doesn't fit. Would Von Dutch be as well known today if he wasn't also quite the character?
I got the eccentric part. need more talent though. I’m might start rambling about conspiracies and alien abductions just to see if the talent level increases
Damn, have we met before? I'm pretty sure that's me you're describing because my wife says I'm all those things
He probably had several undiagnosed mental issues and even if they were diagnosed he wouldn't have gotten help anyway. I encountered people like that every day in the NYC subway system. I once knew a very talented artist that just couldn't cope with everyday life and people. His art work was absolutely incredible, but wound up hospitalized until his death.
It depends on what type of Bipolar Disorder you have, and to what degree. Rarely does anyone have just that, so there can be a host of other symptoms if not treated.
Long line at the gas station one day, guy in front of me wearing a Von Dutch jacket (actually a nice jacket). Just being me I said; "Hey, Ken Howard hates you." He turned around and said "Who?" "Oh sorry, thought you were someone else."
In an interview conducted by none other than Neal East himself ( he was working for Car Craft magazine at the time) it was revealed that Dutch was paranoid ( shout out to Black Sabbath)/ schizophrenic, alcoholic and had developed what some might call Parkinson’s disease ( seems Dutch had an art piece hanging from his ceiling and the lines on it were very ragged and uneven.
You only gave it 15 minutes, based on personal feelings. It was actually an interesting and informative story.
Seeing this mention of the Hollister shirts, just cracks me up, I am originally from the San Joaquin Valley and have been through Hollister many times . One of the cool things about the H.A.M.B. site, is that you can be creative and change your avatar over and over. I made up one that was poking fun at the original drunk on a Harley photograph that was about that drunk weekend in Hollister, that the movie, "the wild one " was loosely based upon. So I chose a picture of a clean cut Harley rider and put in the name Gustine California, just to throw people off and generate some laughter, because there are as many drunks in Gustine as there is in Hollister !
The Jalopy Journal
