Recently, on the Bouchercon 2010 blog, chair Rae Helmsworth talked about Delancey Street and how it's one of her favorite places. All my fur stood up because I had not thought of, or remembered Delancey Street for YEARS. Years i tell you. All the way back to those first years I had moved to the Bay Area.

In 1974, my sister was living in Northern California and had, as a graduation present, promised me a trip to visit. I so wanted to go there. But after graduation, i ended up at Mass General Hospital for back surgery, served five weeks there, and spent the summer vegetating and hoping that the fusion would fuse. It did, for a while but that's another story. I finally made it after slogging through graduate school. And it confirmed that I wanted to live there. Right Now.

In 1976, after finally turning in my thesis (that's yet another story) I headed to Oakland, driving cross-country with my friend Linda Mason (I wish I knew here she was).

My graduate work and intended career was in "criminal justice" and everything was complicated because the expert on my field was on sabbatical. Don't ever do that. I never met the guy but boy was it a hassle. Nowadays, researching my thesis would have been ever so easy.

Hemingway (thanks Freya) I was very very aware of the issues that affected prisons, and ex-cons, "victimless crime" and sentencing theory. Yeah, well it was fascinating to me at least.I actually worked with a professor on a book about sentencing theory. I was pretty immersed. It was a fascinating program/school/field. And somehow, and it may have been this incident, I learned about Delancey Street.

Delancey Street, which is about to celebrate its 40th anniversary came out of a self-help ethic. An acknowledgment that at least at the time, the 70s, nothing was working. Addicts and junkies were forever addicts and junkies, and prison recidivism was a given. As their website says their "average resident has been a hard-core drug addict for sixteen years, abusing alcohol and multiple drugs and has dropped out of school at the 7th grade and has been institutionalized several times." They did not rely on experts. It was ex-cons and ex-users and ex-addicts helping each other. (I see now there are now four other Delancey Streets in other cities. Yow). They began, as i recall, with a restaurant to bring in money. They now have an amazing array of enterprises to support their work. There were issues, yes, but they've survived.

One day, as I very vaguely recall it, I was at the Fruitvale BART station (my sister lived right near it, and i was staying with her) i was approached by someone selling raffle tickets. this was, I think my first encounter with Delancey Street. I bought a few and then probably settled into my BART train seat to read what I might win. This is what i remember.

I remember about seven or eight prizes. Some were generic, regular stuff. Maybe a tv, or oh, i dunno, what was hot in the mid-70s. No, no, not theft hot, popular hot. But it was the, er, alternative raffle prizes that I adored. One prize was a 30-person strong greeting committee at the airport. So you could get off the airplane and you'd be met with a cheering section with banners and balloons, treating you as if you were a major celebrity, or politician and everyone on the plane would wonder.

Another prize was an alibi. Provided for anything but actual criminal activity, as I remember it, you would win a bunch of guys willing to swear that you were....elsewhere. You were, perhaps, somewhere playing poker, or, at a movie, or anywhere but where you actually were.

And my favorite prize of all time, which told me, pretty much, everything I needed to know about Delancey Street, was the promise that no resident of Delancey Street or alum/graduate of the program would move next door to you. The on-line history tells me that I probably bought those tickets from a member of the program who was kicking or had kicked a heroin habit.

Ya GOTTA love that, right?

Happy anniversary Delancey Street.

http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/