ForbiddenKnowldgeTV
Alexandra Bruce
May 14, 2014
In April, 2012, my mother’s cancer was in remission for the first time and, after spending several months in my parents’ home, in one of the “Other Desert Towns,” I wanted to see if San Diego was the paradise that it’s cracked up to be (by some).
I’m bonkers for the beach and swimming in the ocean, so I decided to rent a tiny old shack on Mission Beach, in San Diego for a month.
Since I can work from anywhere, I thought I’d give it a shot, especially as the Coachella Valley was becoming too hot for human habitation.
I was able to meet up with my (now) good friends, Galina & Felix, retired physicians from Russia, living in Toronto who maintain a rigorous routine of walking at least 20 km per day, to maintain their health. So we’d walk up and down the beach and would see this guy, who totally looked like a schizophrenic homeless man on rollerblades, floating down the asphalt boardwalk in the most impossible and bizarre, slow-moving arabesque.
There was no question that this man was definitely in an altered state of mind – whether organically- or drug-induced, we did not know.
Now, a short New York Times documentary has been made about this local living legend, who has become something of a celebrity on this stretch of San Diego Beach.
Turns out, this rollerblading lunatic is Dr. John Kitchin, a neurologist who once lived in a mansion and used to have a custom BMW and a Ferrari. He was a self-described “asshole.”
After doing a job he hated for a couple of decades and the collapse of his marriage, plus the onset of of a possible neurological disorder, where he began to lose the ability of facial recognition, he took the advice of an old codger, “To do what you want.”
He quit his successful medical career to pursue his passion: skating along the boardwalk of San Diego’s Pacific Beach. He calls himself “Slomo.” His goal in life is to “not be an asshole.”
With his background as a neurologist, he can clinically assess that he might be crazy – but to see and hear him describe the motivations behind his chosen path, this man couldn’t be more sane.
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Read the full story here: http://nyti.ms/1lkXluH
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