Tag: Tim Schapp

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Where Quality Predominates

Don's Original with blue sky on night of a blue moon
Don’s Original with blue sky on night of a blue moon

I found ten versions of “Blue Moon” songs in our digital library and played them all in succession while Duane was here on the eve of such a celestial celebration. Peggy Lee, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker and Sun Ra all did “Blue Moon” but Bob Dylan’s from “Self Portrait” is my favorite.

We had dinner at Vic’s Place and then walked out on the pier. Duane has a new camera so we both took photos in all sorts of low light and challenging situations and then compared numbers, F-stops, shutter speeds and ISOs. We parked the car in the parking lot of the old Vic & Irv’s, god rest their souls, and sat on the beach in front of Marge’s to watch the moon rise over Alayna’s house. On the way out I heard the owner, Fran Beth, say her husband would have been 72 last night.

Duane wanted to see Olga while he was in town and she suggested meeting at Jeffery’s yoga class at the Rochester Yacht Club. This would be his first yoga class. The two of them set up in the shade in front of Peggi and me this morning. The sky was intensely blue until white puffy clouds drifted by. I stopped several times to take a quick photo. Jeffery demonstrated something that looked like a can opener but he was calling it a cannonball. I corrected the yoga teacher, gently pointing out that a cannonball would be both legs. There was a time when I got so good at can openers off the diving board of Tim Schapp’s pool that I was not allowed to do them because I emptied too much water from the pool. I would lean back at exactly the right moment and it would sound like thunder as I hit the water. I could never do a proper cannonball. Wrong body type.

After yoga class, we headed over to Atlas Eats. I had Kimchi pancakes and about six cups of coffee. Duane told us a story about smoking a joint with some friends at a park in the Thousand Islands and some guy came up to them and said, “That smells pretty good, can I have a hit?” They hung out for a bit and the guy left. He turned out to Abbie Hoffman who was in hiding up there.

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Life & Death

Jeff Munson and Tim Schapp on Dartmouth Street in Rochester, New York 1976
Jeff Munson and Tim Schapp on Dartmouth Street in Rochester, New York 1976

Looking back, Tim, on the right in this photo, seems to have gone pretty fast although for him it was torturously slow. I was playing racquetball with him twice a week until six months before his passing and he was still beating me. He was on the varsity tennis team in high school. He was one of the fist people I met when I moved to Webster in the fifth grade. He had a swimming party every year near the end of school. I guess I should have known he was gay. We’d stay overnight and run around in the nude when his parents went to sleep.

He was visiting Peggi and me in Bloomington when he talked us into moving here (back to Rochester for me) in 1975. There was an apartment opening up in the old house he lived in on Dartmouth Street. I think Tom Burke had just moved out. Tim was always a blast and threw the best parties. Everybody loved him. His gay friend’s called him “Otto.” He had a sandwich named after him at Iggy’s. Our classmate and good friend, Charlie Coco, died before Tim. I remember telling Tim between racquetball sets that Charlie had died. Another classmate and Tim’s good friend, Danny Skipioni, died in San Francisco where he had gone looking for a cure. Our friend, Iolo, the dj at Danceteria who played HiTechs and helped produce the first Personal Effects record, was the first to go when no one knew what the disease was. A doctor told him to fly to Florida and sit in the sun to help heal his skin lesions. I think Bobby Moore had already passed. What a grizzly time the early eighties were.

I just saw Jeff, on the left above, last night at the Margaret Explosion gig.

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