Point Reyes Western Weekend 2025

Western Weekend occurs every year in the small West Marin town of Point Reyes Station over the first full weekend in June. In conjunction with my work for PRRIC, I spent both days of last weekend enjoying the festivities. 

Saturday's events included a farmer's market, open artist studios, a bunch of local musical acts, a barn dance, and a bunch of other cool stuff. The highlight for me was when I got my portrait sketched by a robot (well a robot arm and camera attached to a laptop and equipped with a pen). 

Sunday's main event is a parade that runs down the main street featuring cowboys and sheriffs on horseback, floats from local orgs like Rotary International, and even local Flyn Q's cosmic enlightenment rap group, Spacesuit. 

In the run up to this year's festivities, a picture was posted in a Facebook group from a Western Weekend parade taken around 1960. It wasn't long before one of Anne Dick's daughters identified Phil, Anne, and a very young Laura in the picture. 

Even better, I was able to find the building in the background of the photo and to watch Sunday's parade from the same vantage point. 

Here are some more pics of the parade: 

Picture of the Day

You guys have probably already seen this picture, but I may have just lined up a Blade Runner-themed belly dance performance for the 2012 Festival/Conference so, in honor of that, I thought I'd post it.

There is a lot we know about this photo. I know I read about it in one of the volumes of letters (I'm guessing 74) and PKD talks about the event as well as this young woman at some length. Why I bet someone out there in the aether could find that information lickity split, and they would forever earn my (and all of our) respect as a serious Dick-head, because all of my volumes of letters are in my office, and I'm not. If you could just put that info right in the comments section that would be great.

That way, while you're doing that I'll try to figure out how to start taking donations and reservations for the 2012 Conference. Let's start making those travel plans! I can't wait to meet all of you!

A Polaroid is Worth 276 Words

Sean Young apparently took a bunch of Polaroids during the shooting of Blade Runner and they've made their way onto the her site. I can't stop looking at them. Especially these:


It's cliche to talk about how primitive cultures often believe being photographed steals one's soul. But that's obviously true sometimes too, and it demonstrates how simple the underlying assumptions are. There's something about these pics. The Dickian angle is to think about how, for us, Blade Runner is a seamless reality that we enter and exit as we please; its borders are solid, and reside on your remote control. But these images reveal that seemingly seamless reality to be nested inside another, larger reality. It's not just that Sean Young is preternaturally beautiful. It's that the way we've known her, as Rachel Rosen; I mean we know the movie's not real, but we've read enough Phil Dick books to know that the movie does have a realness to it, as it exists consensually in our society's collective consciousness. So to see the curtain pulled back on that world - it doesn't exactly freak me out - but it does make these pictures entirely too difficult to stop looking at.

Also the polaroid pics look so cool and retro and yet they're pictures of this future setting and fashion, only as it was conceived of in the late 70s/early 80s. Oh, and the importance of photograph as memory (and voyeuristic tool) in Blade Runner. Oh man! Can't stop looking.

Also, Sean Young is a 2012er. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Rare PKD Photo of the Day

This is a great shot of PKD that Anne Dick sent me a while ago. This photo was taken at the house in Point Reyes in 1963. Anne writes:

"This is a picture of Hatte and Laura in 1963, maybe a May birthday dinner for Hatte since it's still so light. We sat down for dinner together every night and always made a big deal out of birthdays. Once in a while Phil would barbecue. I liked this, no pots and pans to wash -- although Phil usually did the dishes as I recall and made the desserts. He was a very pleasant family person and seemed to enjoy life with us."

Hatte was Anne's daughter by her previous husband, poet Richard Rubenstein, and of course Laura (the younger of the two girls in the picture) is PKD's first child and now works with Isa Dick-Hackett steering the PKD Trust, and Electric Shepherd Productions. I get the sense from both Anne, as well as PKD's depiction of the family in Confessions of a Crap Artist, that the early years in Point Reyes were very happy.

The exciting coda for this post is an announcement that Anne Dick is republishing her memoir The Search for Philip K Dick. Edwin Mellon Press printed a limited run of Anne's memoir in 1993, and today that memoir often sells for over a hundred dollars. Anne has worked very hard this last year revising the book, and is self-publishing it later this summer. I'm excited about this, because it's a great book, gives tons of insight into PKD, and what it was like living with him. I can't wait for more Dick-heads to get a chance to read it. More info about the book and how to buy it will be forthcoming. But, just to get a sense of what demand is like, if you may be interested in buying the book (estimated cost is about $17.00) please leave a note in the comments section.

Rare PKD Photo of the Day

This photo was kindly sent to me by Tessa Dick. According to her it was taken in Phil's condo sometime in 1980, right around the time Panter interviewed PKD for Slash Magazine. (Interview here: you're welcome).

She writes:

"I took that photo shortly after the magazine people gave him the Rozz Tox T-shirt. Phil was sitting on his sofa in his condo. He said that he really liked Nicole Panter."

The Rozz Tox Manifesto (which you can read here), written by Gary Panter, argues that artists should work within the capitalist system, so I can see why he might like it. The more iconic image of PKD in the same shirt is available here. Panter writes in the Manifesto:

Item 4: We say, enough to the instigators of game show design, for we are sick and dizzy. Show us the backs of these monstrous facades, for even bare plywood is a healthier visual texture. Oh you seekers of the new who run terrified from history into the clutches of an eternal life where no electric shaver can be built to last.

Kinda sounds like someone we know huh?

Frequent commenter Robert Cook adds this detail to another recent post which used the Panter photo:

This photo was taken by Gary Panter or his then-wife Nicole (former manager of L.A. punk band the Germs), who visited Dick in the late 70s and took several pictures of Dick, alone and posing with Panter. Dick is seen in the photos wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with one of Panter's drawings.

"Gary Panter is a renowned illustrator, fine artist and designer, and he has drawn for 70s L.A. punkzine SLASH, he designed PEE-WEE'S PLAYHOUSE for Pee Wee Herman, and he has published many cartoon stories of his character JIMBO, a sort of punk Candide. Recently, a huge two-volume slip-cased monograph on his work has been published, with one volume consisting solely of excerpts from Panter's sketchbooks, while the other volume features his illustrations, paintings, constructions, and contains several articles about him and an interview with him."

According to Tessa the picture on the wall is of Fat Freddy, this one to be precise:


Thanks Tessa!
(And readers stay tuned for a much more extensive question and answer post with Tessa soon!)

Rare PKD Photo of the Day

Here's another photo courtesy of Anne Dick. I'm pretty sure PKD's in the same corner as the one seen in this photo. Anne doesn't remember very much about his cigar smoking so I'm guessing he wasn't a particularly heavy smoker. I do remember reading that PKD enjoyed smoking cigars with Tim Powers and Kevin Jeter. According to Linda Levy, Tim worked in a tobacco store when he and PKD were hanging out. PKD was a snuff man (according to Sutin he preffered Dean Swift); it was something he got into when married to Anne, and according to Sutin, it became 'a dominant passion' in his life. He had cans of it everywhere; the stuff was perpetually swirling in a particulate cloud around him, shaking forth from his clothes. I don't know what else to say; sometimes a picture of a guy smoking a cigar is just a picture of a guy smoking a cigar.

Rare PKD Photo of the Day

Here's yet another picture of PKD courtesy of Anne Dick. A couple of things jump out at me. First, wow, that's some beard. From what I hear, PKD was quite hirsute, with lots of hair all over his body. Anne Dick writes, "That picture was taken pretty early in our marriage. He wanted to grow a beard and I said, why not, and he was extremely grateful. I remember this--because it was surprising."

The second thing I noticed were the glasses. Did PKD need glasses? I don't recall a lot of photos with him wearing glasses, but these look pretty thick. I wouldn't imagine his eyesight was very good if when he did wear glasses he opted for the kind you can use to start fires by magnifying sunlight. Anne thinks they were reading glasses.

Rare PKD Photo of the Day

Photo by Anne Dick

Here's another rare shot of PKD. This one was taken in the backyard of the Point Reyes house near the end of his marriage to Anne Dick. Like this other picture I posted earlier, Anne says that this photo was taken around the time that PKD was writing The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Actually, you can see this picture featured in the short PKD documentary packaged with the five DVD box set of Blade Runner. While light on details, the documentary does a pretty good job of painting a basic picture of PKD's life. There's nothing new in it for us initiates. Rumor is there's a much longer and more detailed Argentinian documentary about PKD in existence somewhere. Don't even get me started on The Gospel According to Philip K Dick - too much typing!

I always suspected PKD wore combat boots.

Here's Anne's backyard a few months ago:

Rare PKD Photo of the Day

Photo by Anne Dick

I've been up to visit Anne Dick (PKD's third wife) in Point Reyes three or four times now. On my last trip up Anne was kind enough to give me some scans of a few rare PKD pictures. More about my visits with Anne in a forthcoming post, but for now check out the picture.

I thought this was a great picture, perhaps taken in 1960 or 1961. I've heard from a number of sources that PKD hated having his picture taken, but in this shot he seems to be doing more than simply tolerating a photograph being taken of him. His smile doesn't seem like a mask and his stare is good-natured, not quite as standoffish as he sometimes appears.

I sent my impressions of the photo to Anne. She responded:

"This picture was taken toward the very end of our marriage and my perception is that Phil looks terrible as if he were deteriorating from within. I've never liked this picture. I've gone back and studied it just now to see if I can understand why it makes me feel this way. I think it is because of the difference between the expression of the lower part of his face, a smile, seemingly pleasant, and dead eyes. Contrast that expression and the look in his eyes with the picture with me in front of the fireplace or other pictures taken early in our marriage."

You can see that photo here.

I wrote back:

I have gone back and looked at the photo of the two of you and can see what you're saying. If it was late in the marriage perhaps he was writing The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch?

Anne:

"You’ve hit upon something! I think that smile is Palmer Eldritch's smile; the eyes of my Phil are dead. He probably was writing Stigmata at that time, the very end of our marriage. He finished that book after he had begun to leave. (He came back and forth a number of times.) Have you noted that the character of Palmer Eldritch changes at the end? He becomes not such a bad guy after all.

Yes, those two pictures were both taken at the end of everything and I think they are both very sad."

Maybe I just like this picture because I've stood in that corner of that living room:

Thank You Anne!