Tall Singer, Detroit black girl 13, beyond years, lived in a remodeled garage open to Brooklyn Avenue, bought potatoes to cook for her little brother and sister (the mom drunk or stoned) and proclaimed her poems the crowd. She pleaded with her mom in poems and rocked the crowd, but never got enough to eat, missing her period for months, fainted from hunger. Only place with free meals, the school, sent her home for dizziness. Then she was sent away to live with a grandmother. She could return for a tour.

Pirate Radio, one night I was cleaning out an apartment I had already moved out of, carrying the last bag of trash downstairs to the street and he walks out of the dark, asking for directions. "Oh, it's you!" he said when we both stepped under the street light. Years before that, I met this vato in Iowa City (born Durango MX); when he came to L.A., I sent him to my cousin, who put him up till he found a place. Campus radical, led lots of tours till he went underground, but you might hear him some midnights coming out of pirate radio, announcing his Nahua name.

Hecho en Aztlan, always working two jobs, raising his son alone in that house on a hill. He must've shown, at some point, the son the same foto he showed me: the scraggly bunch of revolutionaries out in the desert twenty years before, him holding something like a single shot .22 carbine. The son, in his black rocker t-shirts and skinny black pants, Converse All-stars, kept wondering why his dad has to be such a hard-ass. Both could easily do a tour (maybe not together).

Grandma Walsh, used to be talking to dozens of cats underneath the fruit trees in the front yard, smell of rotten peaches, a very nice person, gone for a long time I expect, now the yard is full of dead cars, I think she could still be talked into one last tour.

Joker, obsidian eyes like laughing flint, what a joker! He has his scars (no, we don't want to see the false teeth); he's been shot at least once. He has his secrets (secret family in another city). He has gambling debts and death threats; those are forgotten. But so funny, what a storyteller, such a joker. Could be a leader on your tour.

Mytili Jagannathan, Philadelphia poet, once led a group of us on a tour of Philadelphia Chinatown. This one has a somewhat different script, but I know for a fact she could handle the gig.

Guatemalteco, print shop owner, soccer man, plays the over thirty league, using profits from the business to sponsor a girl's club team, hires a professional coach. Took the girls on a Central American tour where they made region play-offs, yes indeed. He doesn't really have the time, but you know, he might just be there.

Samba Pa Ti, hopefully he still blasts out those songs like Billy Bragg accompanying himself on a lone electric guitar. I never gave him enough credit for that. Last seen by my brother wearing the blue helmet of UN peacekeepers, waving at the TV cameras in Bosnia. Where are you, my brother? No one is better qualified to lead your tour. First Aid/CPR certified.

81 But Looks 59, came to Calif. in 1920 as photographer's assistant to Edward Weston, WPA photographer in San Francisco, ship welder during World War 2 (steel splinter destroyed the sight in one eye), this old dude scares us every time we go to Redondo Beach he swims so far beyond the breakers you can't even see him. Expert haggler at Grand Central Market over old, wilted vegetables; they can't pull nothing on him. Often says, "doctors just want your money." If he gives you food throw it away. Still leading the best tours.