Manny The Hippie
|
|
Friday,
May 17, 1996 · Page
A 1
|
© 1996 San Francisco Examiner | |
HE'S PROBABLY the first national celebrity to sleep in the park, bum cigarettes off tourists and get hassled by cops for skateboarding on the sidewalk.
But these things don't bother Manny The Hippie. To him, life is diggity dank . . . er, really great.
"I love living on the streets - everyone's so nice," smiles the cherubic, blond Manny (who gives his last name as The Hippie), a 19-year-old who fled Ohio several months ago to hang in the Haight.
It was a lucky move. In April, he met David Letterman there.
"I was just chillin' outside Ben & Jerry's and there he was. So I said, "Hey, are you David Letterman?' And he said, "Yeah, are you a hippie?' "
The ensuing hours were captured on a hilarious videotape and shown on Letterman's show last week while he was on the air from San Francisco. Manny and Letterman cruised San Francisco, lunching at TGI Friday's and staging a two-man sit-in at UC-Berkeley.
During their visit, Letterman learned a whole new hippie vocabulary: "dank" (good) and "schwag" (bad). "Diggity dank" indicates very, very good.
Letterman had Manny rate various presidents: Jimmy Carter (dank), Ronald Reagan (shwag), Abraham Lincoln (diggity dank) and Bill Clinton (schwag). "I mean, why would you want a president who couldn't smoke a bowl?" Manny pondered Thursday.
Manny also made a live appearance on Friday night's show, when he played a serviceable harmonica with his idol, John Popper of Blues Traveler. As he took a bow, Letterman presented him with . . . a set of golf clubs?
And privately, Letterman, who'd taken a liking to the affable lad, handed him $250 of his own money.
"He told me to get a hotel room - that he didn't want me sleeping on the street," Manny says. "He was really cool."
Manny's brief appearance was such a hit that he's already made one repeat, Monday night, and will now be reviewing summer movies on Friday nights - using, of course, the schwag-to-diggity-dank rating system. The first movie is "Twister," but he refuses to divulge his opinion until he's on the air. Get this man an agent!
And until the checks start rolling in, he still lives off the street.
"Hey dude! Can I bum a cigarette? No? Want to buy some golf clubs?" he calls out to some passing tourists on Haight Street. Strangers won't give the grungy lad the time of day, but to the Haight's denizens, he is their mayor, their resident celebrity.
"Hey Manny!" "How's it going, man?" "You're famous, dude!" other street kids call out, and the teenager blushes slightly.
"It's a little weird," he says of his newfound fame, while munching a piece of pepperoni pizza. "But it's cool. I get free food now from the restaurants around here, and I've gotten calls from bands who want me to play with them. I mean, I have appointments now."
That is, when people are able to reach him. Because he has no phone and no residence, messages for Manny must be left with the patient clerks of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream store at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Sometimes it takes Manny a long time to return a call - a problem for his new employers on "The Late Show," who are thinking of buying him a cellular phone so they can reach him.
But between "appointments" Manny basically just hangs: visiting with friends, sitting on the sidewalk and riding his skateboard. (When first seen, he's getting a ticket from two beat cops for doing so. "They pick on me because I'm famous," he shrugs.)
If he affects the slouch of a dunce, it's more an act than reality. A bright youngster, Manny was reading college-level books in seventh grade - about the time his architect mother had "a nervous breakdown" and divorced his engineer father, and he wound up in a group home. "I was a bully, a really messed-up kid."
But now, he says, he's on good terms with his parents. "They saw me on Letterman and they're proud," he says with a smile.
Although lacking in ambition, Manny admits "it would be pretty cool to be rich and famous. I'd also like to have a house somewhere - a place I can travel from."
He laughs when asked if fame might go to his head. "Ah, no. I'll always be just Manny."