I was greeted this pre-dawn with a tweet from my friend Walt, saddened by the death of the man well-known as the Silver Lake Walker, otherwise known to his patients as Dr. Marc Jacobs.
In shock and abject sadness over the sudden loss of such a fixture of the neighborhood I then went about posting up on Blogging.la a bit of what he meant to me as a treasured community icon who I encountered numerous times since moving to Silver Lake in 2003, such as in the series of images above (click for the bigger picture), captured as he passed by me and other cyclists outside Trader Joe’s as we readied for a ride.
I’m going for a walk today at lunch in honor of him.
UPDATE (3:46 p.m.): Well, I did it. Took an extended lunch and logged five miles walking in honor of Dr. Abrams, stopping at Trader Joe’s to pick up a couple bouquets of flowers in hopes of recognizing his house on Moreno Drive and leaving one there and leaving another at the mural on Sunset. Alas, I couldn’t recall the house’s location so both bunches of flora ended up at the mural.
And if there’s anyone reading this who thinks I’m making too big a deal about the man’s impact on this neighborhood, here’s a short and wonderful documentary from Lauren Malkasian made about the Walking Man a few years back: