Not Dave Rovics

I went down to City Hall today to support a musical jam featuring singer-songwriter, anarchist, and self-described “Anti-Zionist Jew from New York,” Dave Rovics. He was singing in support of the burgeoning movement for rent control in Portland, and he has offfered his political analysis of the situation along with fifteen “Songs for Landlords” on Soundcloud.  (Folkie and WeeWilkie, take notice.) I enjoyed Dave and his songs, and while I was taking pictures, I met another photographer who told me, “I’m actually a retired professor and writer.” 

“Me too,” I said, grinning. “My field is history,” he explained, “and oral history is really my main thing.” Me too. “I spent some years in South Africa, and my work was the oral histories of people who fought apartheid.” By then I was dumbstruck. Was this a joke? Did this guy know my story, was he messing with me? We exchanged cards.

But the photo above is not Dave Rovics, though I’ve included one of him as an Extra; and it’s not Alan Wieder, the street photographer whose story is so much like mine it gives me chills. 

The photo above is a man named Edward. I met him waiting for the bus. He said he’s 92 years old and he asked me what all the ruckus was about at City Hall. I explained that some landlords are charging outrageous rents, raising rents by as much as 400% and then evicting people so they can get higher-paying tenants. Edward nodded, “So that would be adding to the homeless problem we have.” Yes, I said, and the fact that people in Portland making minimum wage can’t afford to live here at all. Gentrification.

“I know a little about that,” he explained, “because in my youth I posed for Edward Hopper. He was a man of the people, and he painted my portrait because he thought I was a man of the people.” He paused. “But I wasn’t always a man of the people. I have very clear memories that in a past life I was Edward III, King of England. That’s why my mother named me Edward. She was an uneducated woman, but something told her that was the right name for me.” I did a google image search for portraits by Edward Hopper, and I found a self-portrait of Hopper that could have been my man. Certainly the hat seems right. I don’t use psychedelic substances, but I felt a little peculiar in my mind after this morning’s adventures.