I woke up destitute on a hard cold floor of an old welfare hotel in San Francisco in 1994. I had flown in the day before from Anchorage with nothing but $200 in my pocket. I would have had more, but I missed the last day of work at Barnes & Noble/Starbucks in Anchorage, the first chain bookstore and coffee shop to open in Alaska. The manager decided to mail my paycheck to San Francisco since I missed that last day chasing a giant Rottweiler named Talketa for hours after she escaped from the place I was staying, where I also slept on the floor.

My time in San Francisco was spent moving from welfare hotel to welfare hotel, working in coffee shops in the financial district from 6am to 10am, then split-shifting back from 2pm to 6pm. I spent middays in the public library, using their computers to type the book I started in the airport before flying from New York (JFK) to Seattle, then to Anchorage. I also created websites sold to people on floppy disks for cash. The library became my lifeline when I had no computer access in the rooms where I survived.

This adventure changed my life forever. I had taken a two-week vacation from my computer engraving company, and it took 13 years before I returned to the place I once called home. Home became a moving target. Was it where I laid my head on a cold floor, listening to the sounds of San Francisco rolling in from Market Street?

I wrote for hours and read book after book. I went through my Henry Miller phase, reading tales of New York and Paris. At a little book/clothing store in Haight-Ashbury, near the Beastie Boys’ X-Large store, I bought a Brooklyn Dust Brothers hat I wore until it was nothing but sweat, dust, and grit. There I found a book by Bill Shields, published by Henry Rollins’ 2.13.61. I tracked down Bill’s email and began corresponding with him from the public library. His book Human Shrapnel told dark stories of Vietnam, sucking chest wounds, and death, darker than welfare hotels at 3am.

At that point I still hadn’t found myself or my path. I wandered America searching for something, someone, myself. The road finally led to room 244 and my first technology job, which quickly had me start my first business. Innovative Web & Video Design (IWVD), then became Structured Technology Solutions, which quickly became Techstur.com. From there the rest is history.

I just woke up at 11:30pm in my house in upstate New York, about an hour from where I grew up, the place I once had to escape. My dog is snoring, my wife and kids are asleep, and my mind is full of thoughts I need to write down.


I haven’t been back to San Francisco since the six months I spent there, but I do think of it often and miss those days, even though it was a rough ride. It led me to S. Lake Tahoe for the winter, which ultimately took me to Key West, just 61 miles from the start of my technology career…