Today I undertook one of those early 21st-century activities that my grandparents could never have imagined — the Trip to the Household Hazardous Waste Recycling Facility. The used batteries have been piling up in the basement ever since I became a parental maintainer of battery-operated devices. The storeroom had those two cartons of strange substances in spray bottles and old paint cans left by the house’s previous owners. There was that old thermostat with the sticker on it that said, “Contains mercury — dispose of properly.” I did the right thing, finally, after ten years; I loaded up my trunk and hauled my vehicle down 880 to some godforsaken industrial zone in Oakland and waited in line to empty my vehicle of dangerous fluids.
The line was lengthening, and people were turning their engines off and stretching their legs, and the guy in the car behind me walked over and smiled and I realized it was Leonard Pitt — a performance artist who I’d gotten to know back in my theater-critic days. Somehow he and I had both chosen the exact same moment on the exact same day for our once-a-decade pilgrimages. When I knew his work Leonard was a movement artist and teacher and co-founder of the Life on the Water theater; these days he’s working on books — including “A Walking Guide to the Transformation of Paris,” which has been published in French and which Leonard says will soon have a U.S. edition. He has also founded the Berkeley Chocolate Club.
We left our cans of paint and thinner and such and said goodbye. The landscape was post-industrial wasteland, but it felt like East Bay small town anyway.
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