By the time \u201cDiamond\u201d Dave Whitaker passed away on Monday, March 2, at the age of 88, he had been privy to a number of things. <\/p>\n
He was a member of the Diggers<\/a>, a countercultural community activist group founded in the late 1960s. He was a co-founder of the KPOO radio collective in 1974.<\/a> He served as a founding member of San Francisco\u2019s Community Congress in 1975, which helped institute the city\u2019s first district elections.<\/a> He was involved with the Rainbow Family, which organized large camping trips in the 1980s and 1990s; he cooked with Food Not Bombs, which gave away free food in the spirit of the Diggers.\u00a0<\/p>\n He moshed with the punks<\/a> at the turn of the millenium, and hosted a show on Pirate Cat Radio, <\/a>from its early days<\/a> into its time as Mutiny<\/a>. He was, for quite some time, the oldest senator of the Associated Student Council at the City College of San Francisco. He was part of the crew that lived in Justin Herman Plaza<\/a> during 2011\u2019s Occupy movement. He was the organizer of an annual birthday party (for himself) at Adobe Books<\/a> as recently as 2019. He was the founder of numerous poetry reading events \u2014 including Poems Under the Dome at City Hall<\/a> \u2014 which he attended every year until 2025.<\/p>\n Before any of that, according to legend and confirmed by local Dylanologist Ian Grant, he introduced a young Bob Dylan to a few key items that would prove critical to the legendary musician\u2019s artistry: Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac, and weed. Some of Dylan\u2019s early bootleg tapes<\/a> were recorded in Whitaker\u2019s Minneapolis home.<\/p>\n Whitaker\u2019s home was one of a few \u201csites of really important cultural meetings\u201d for folk musicians in the area, Grant said. At the very least, Whitaker has his place among the \u201cconstellation of people and personalities that Bob was running with back in the early, early days.\u201d<\/p>\n But that is, be assured, the very least.<\/p>\n According to frequent collaborator Val Ibarra, Whitaker was also somehow present for Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech in 1963. And rode the Further Bus to the Human Be-In (1967) followed shortly by the Death of the Hippies funeral (also 1967).\u00a0<\/p>\n Diamond Dave was, basically, in the words of local poet and musician Jeremy Pollock, \u201cSan Francisco\u2019s Forrest Gump.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe lore and legend of Diamond Dave is all true,\u201d Ibarra said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe really loved people and really loved politics,\u201d said Barbara Bennett, Whitaker\u2019s longtime partner. \u201cAnd he was the kindest person I\u2019ve ever known.\u201d<\/p>\n Whitaker first hitchhiked to San Francisco, he said<\/a>, in 1957, at the age of 19, and fell in with the local beatnik scene, though he soon expanded from there. Whitaker was \u201cpart of every interesting counterculture movement happening around the city for the last 60 years,\u201d said\u00a0 Pollock.\u00a0<\/p>\n