The assault came in broad daylight on Monday, March 6. A blow came suddenly, from behind. Jaz Cameron was the target, and when he fell forward on the sidewalk, damaging his mouth and losing a tooth, it added more months to a dream already years deferred.
Cameron runs an art gallery. The art is his, and the gallery — his own description — is a South of Market fence where 2nd Street passes under the highway as it approaches the Bay Bridge. He paints on canvas and cardboard, typically abstract and ranging from primary colors into colors he wants to create “that express the visual in ways that people have never seen before.”
He draws inspiration from maps, the city grid, signs and billboards. Cameron describes how the lines on a BART map bunch together then split apart, and it’s not just about color, but also texture, and how he can put a lot of paint on his brush, but not enough to drip, to create that same feel. He’ll also apply varnish — his favorite brand is Liquitex — to accentuate the texture and protect the work from the elements.
For some time, Cameron had a room in an SRO, but he says other residents found out about his art business and harassed him, tried to shake him down. The managers told him he was “on his own,” so he decided he truly would be. “The harassment was unacceptable,” he adds. “I moved on to a better environment, where no one’s around.”
He’s been living on SoMa streets ever since, “squatting” as he calls it. Cameron mentions a few preferred spots and describes how he arranges cardboard and positions his cart so that “when I’m lying down, no one can see me.”
Until a few years ago, Cameron was a musician, playing alto sax in jazz combos on the street. (His brother gave him the nickname Jaz for his musical tastes.)
Cameron, whose given first name is Cornelius, was working at a Market Street shoeshine stand in 2016 when a taxi jumped the curb and barreled into him and the stand owner. He was rushed to SF General Hospital with severe head trauma. The traumatic brain injury required months of rehab — “yoga-type stuff,” he says, and demonstrates a balance pose — and relearning to walk. And to read.
He’s a huge reader. At his gallery, he paints in the morning and tries to finish by 1 pm so the work can dry by evening. So he sits, talks to people who observe the art, and reads. The work needs to dry because as night falls, he packs the art and supplies into a cart and heads back to his sleep spot.
A friend from the neighborhood, Shelley Costantini, has helped Cameron in various ways: a new sleeping bag when his was stolen, dealing with the DMV to get an ID card, medical appointments — including many rounds of dental work to replace teeth and deal with infection — and a Venmo account for art customers who don’t carry cash.
Costantini started a GoFundMe for Cameron after this week’s assault. It has raised more than $27,000 in four days.
Cameron, who grew up in Los Angeles and studied music at the University of Nevada-Reno, stopped playing music after the taxi crash. The brain injury took away his stamina (he couldn’t stand up long) as well as his memory, which he’s still working on. He turned to art, he says, and not long after the SF Chronicle profiled him and his work. There’s also a short film making the rounds.
Filmmaker Ajai Vishwanath told The Frisc via email that he met Cameron several years ago when working near the 2nd Street gallery. Later, as a film student, he wanted to document how Cameron’s paintings are “full of life and movement, almost like he was tracing a map of the city,” says Vishwanath, who also paints. “You can feel them moving even once they’re finished.”
Cameron last played music a couple years ago on a trip back to Columbus, Ohio, when he brought his clarinet to see his mother. (He also has a flute and alto sax.) With his dental work nearly done, he was getting ready to start blowing again; a new soprano sax awaits in his storage locker. But the attack and the new injury means more dental work, more healing, more waiting.
The first musicians who caught Cameron’s ear — Rollins, Coltrane, Sun Ra — wanted to go down a different path, “where you listen and say, ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’ I’m always trying to find that.’”
Cameron’s got some money from the taxi-crash settlement, which has been paying for his medical bills and art supplies, but for bureaucratic reasons, not food or housing, according to Costantini. His art sales pay for his hotel when he needs to recover from this week’s attack and the oral surgeries.
I met Cameron Friday at his room near Union Square. He expects to be there a few more days, but he prefers sleeping outdoors and using the hotel room “to study,” he adds. “I’ve got squatting down to a science.” Cameron says he doesn’t get worn down by the streets, sleeping four to six hours a night; “coffee comes in handy.”
I ask if this latest incident, and the GoFundMe, makes him reconsider getting an apartment. No: He recently got a passport and wants to travel around the world, “not worry about the housing part.” In the meantime, he says he wants to go back to his gallery: “I try not to worry about it too much, I gotta get back there and make ends meet.”
Cameron also doesn’t get wound up about the attack and the setback it poses to playing music again. He describes himself as patient (“that’s my thing”) and spiritual, words that happen to describe some of the musicians who first got his attention when he was a teenager, including Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane — who harnessed the soprano sax into something entirely different — and Sun Ra.
Cameron says he gravitated to “anyone who wanted to go down a different path and not sound like anybody else, where you listen and say, ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’ I’m always trying to find that.”
Alex Lash is the editor in chief of The Frisc.