On the evening of Monday January 7th, 2019, I received a text message from my friend Eric Butler that he heard something bad had happened with our friend Gregg Friedman. The details were few. I reached out to Gregg and there was no answer. There was nothing really on the internet but a vague police report about an incident at Gregg’s home in San Francisco with his wife Vickki and their two boys Lucas and Max. At some point the next morning, I received confirmation that Gregg had shot himself at his house on Monday morning.
Some people are just born to sell and Gregg Friedman was the best example of this that I have known. However, Gregg was much more than just a salesman. He was a generous, very loyal and adventurous friend. His death was quite shocking and unexpected. The following is my recollection of some of the many really great times with my friend.
This was taken on the side of some river in southern New Zealand on an epic two-week adventure we had with Eric Butler and Bill Miller. We had just helicoptered into the world’s highest bungee jump and jet boated down the river. We were getting ready to white water raft and finish the final leg of the ‘Awesome Foursome’.
I distinctly recall the first time I met Gregg. I was hanging out with Bill Miller in San Francisco, and he said we should go to a bar where one of his friends from college from the University of Rhode Island was hanging out. I can see the space in my head but I don’t recall the name of the bar other than it was on Fillmore Street right below Union. He was sitting at a table and there were some other people around. Introductions were made. He was further into the night from an alcohol consumption perspective than Bill and I were. My first impression of him was that he was kind of annoying. He was determined to play dice. I had never played dice before and didn’t know how to play but that did not deter Gregg. Not only did we play a lot of dice that night, but it would be a game that would weave through my thirty-year relationship with him. Fittingly, the last night I spent with him two months before his death, we played a pretty epic game of dice.
Gregg was a force of nature and single-handedly was the catalyst for some of my favorite stories and memories. Gregg had many good qualities but his one shortcoming was his inability to apply conditional thinking; if I do ‘this’, the result will be …. ? And often the answer was something bad. Gregg had a lot of nicknames from his many friends, but I would often refer to him as “Bubble Boy”. Meaning, he lived his life in the here and now, and consequences be damned. This would suggest he knew or had considered the consequences and opted to continue. My experience was that he was purely impulsive. The end result for Bubble Boy was a slew of crazy results. The following are some of the best ones that I remember.
The next few were small things that have stuck with me. On a random weekday night, Gregg had convinced me and some others to go out for drinks. We would often go to Union Street in San Francisco, which in the 90’s had a number of very good options. There was one place called Cal’s that was in the basement of a newer office-like building. Cal’s was on the bottom half of drinking possibilities that focused on dancing. Our friend John Corrigan bartended there for a while and I can’t remember if that was the reason we selected Cal’s this night. After a little while, Gregg eyed some young lady to ask to dance and she obliged. As I recall, they were either the only people dancing. Gregg went hard on his moves which in my mind did not match the vibes of that night in any way. After about twenty minutes of this, they take a break. Gregg returned back to whoever joined his to report, “I think my dancing has REALLY turned the corner”. That statement struck as so odd and surprising that it has stuck with me to this day. And it really typified Gregg’s whole ethos.
Somehow Gregg connected with two guys named Tommy and Tomas who amongst other things, were associated with the Young Scandinavian Club. What is YSC you ask? Just what it sounds like; a group of young people with Scandinavian heritage throwing parties and trips. And it lived up to what you thought you would expect with parties in San Francisco, Clear Lake, Tahoe and a bunch of other places. What made it a perfect Gregg Friedman situation is he became a member with no Scandinavian heritage. Soon after I applied as well. My mother is Danish and was a legitimate prospective member. I had to jump through umpteen hoops to prove my Danish lineage including getting a copy of my great-grandfather’s Danish birth certificate. Which gets me back to Gregg. How he became a member is inexplicable and when I would ask, he would say he had a sliver of Swedish blood. This situation summed up many aspects of the Gregg experience.
Bill Miller, Eric Butler, Gregg and I went on an epic trip to both New Zealand and Australia in November 1993. This trip created a Gregg story every day. And there are a few of them that were epic.
This is a video that the bungee company AJ Hacket took of ur jumps. Gregg went first and is visibly nervous. I went last and so any nerves were overidden by having to do it because everyone else already did. At the time, it was the world’s highest bungee jump.
Horizontal Bungee: We had planned before we left on this trip to do the world’s highest bungee jump in Queenstown, New Zealand. There was a package called the ‘Awesome Foursome’ which included helicoptering into the mountains to the suspension bridge, where we would do the bungee jump. After the jump, they lowered you into a jet boat, where we would then jet down the river and then we did class 4 whitewater rafting. It was an epic adventure and got the trip started with a bang. For me, the scariest part was the helicopter ride in. The chopper would severely shudder and shake as we went over and across the peaks of the mountains.
After a successful day, we went back to Queenstown and went to a local bar that had a ‘horizontal bungy jump’ for patrons. They would put you in a harness and there was a bungee cord bolted to the wall. About 50 feet down they would put a beer on a table. You got three tries to run as hard as you can to try to grab the beer. Behind the beer on the table were about four or five rows of tables and patrons who would watch.
So of course, Gregg was the first to volunteer to try. The crowd and he were pumped. After some fanfare, he launched for his first try. Gregg had a low center of gravity so he had a good chance of success. However, he was a bit tentative on the first try and came up empty. Now with a feel of what he was in for, his second attempt was much more determined, but still he came up shy, grasping for the beer which was a few feet away. Now he was down to his last chance and Gregg was pretty competitive, not to mention the crowd encouraging him on. He launched himself down the track with everything he had. Just when the bungee really began to get taught, the anchor on the wall at the beginning let go. Gregg was in full momentum and proceeded to fly by the beer and into the crowd that had gathered on the other side of the beer. He went through the crowd and tables like a bowling ball through pins with people, beer and tables flying. Somehow, he managed to grab the beer as he flew by it and miraculously didn’t break any bones as he crashed through the crowd. There was a momentary hush after things settled a little, and then Gregg jumped up with beer in hand and roared. The crowd went crazy.
ATVs and Dennis: We decided to go on an ATV tour to old abandoned mines in the mountains of Queenstown. We showed up to the guide’s shop. There was a ‘well-fed’ gentleman behind the counter who introduced himself as Dennis and let us know that he would be guiding us up to the abandoned mines. He asked whether we had ridden ATVs before and for the most part, we said sort of, even though the real answer was effectively no. He wanted us to practice in a large area right next to his shop. So we each got our machines and a little lesson on how to operate the vehicle. He asked us to spend 20 to 30 minutes getting comfortable with the machines.
We started going around the various practice trails and testing our abilities. We definitely were getting better and more confident. About halfway through our training period, Gregg was in front of me and yelled to me to watch him do some stunt that he had cooked up. He gunned it and then proceeded to run nearly straight into this giant concrete block. The ATV comes to a dead stop and Gregg flips over the handlebars with one hand still gripping the handlebars and lying flat on top of the concrete block. For a minute, I thought he was dead. It was quite violent. He gets up a bit stunned and says he is alright. We then notice pretty quickly that the front end of his ATV is bent out very much out-of-line. By this time, Eric and Bill showed up, and I explained what had happened. The ATV was rideable but one front wheel was noticeably pushed back. We all stood around Gregg’s ATV debating what the approach with Dennis should be. However based on the damage there were not a lot of options.
We returned to Dennis’ office with the strategy of putting Gregg in the back and hoping Dennis wouldn’t notice. This lasted about two minutes. Dennis was providing the last bit of instructions and then all of a sudden his head turned, his talking stopped and he started walking towards Gregg. He uttered something to the effect of ‘what the hell happened to the front of this ATV’? Gregg gave some half-hearted ‘I’m not sure’ which carried no water with Dennis. There was some back and forth and Dennis declared to Gregg, ‘Well now you are going to have to ride with me’.
Dennis wasn’t riding an ATV. He had a dirt bike. Gregg would get on the dirt bike with Dennis and wrap his arms around Dennis’ rather large stomach holding on for dear life. The tour was about four hours and the entire time when we would stop or we would catch Gregg away from Dennis, we would refer to him as Dennis’ liettle bitch. It was hilarious to see Gregg have to mount the bike with Dennis and see his face as Dennis raced up and down these mountains.
This was us in Cairns, Australia near the Great Barrier Reef about to scuba dive. I think this was the first time for all of us. We got a five-minute overview from a thick Australian accent on what to do and not to do. Needless to say, liability is not a big concern down under and Gregg would test those limits.
Scuba Diving on the Great Barrier Reef: We had made our way north in Australia to Cairns. This parto Australia was quite tropical. We went here to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef. None of us really had any suba experience, but in Australia, no problem. I remember the evening we got there we wandered down to the water and found a guy with a sailboat that took scuba tours. So we signed up and were going to leave the following morning.
We showed up, goit in the boat and proceeded to motor (on a sailboat) to the Great Reef which took over an hour. We finally got there and suited up with all the equipment. We sat on the edge of the sailboat and got instructions on what to do. It was pretty windy that day and I was at the end. I had a hard time hearing and misheard the instructions on your vest that provided floatation. Had I not asked, I would have jumped in and sunk right to the bottom which would not have been fatal but not good.
We all jumped in, went to the bottom and checked in with our scuba guide. He counted four of us and we proceeded to follow him and explore the reef. He would stop about every five minutes, circle up and give a count to make sure we were all there. This went on for about twenty minutes. With time we were getting a little more adventurous. And then at some point we circled up and our guide counted one, two, three. In an instant, I knew Gregg was missing. I was already starting to think of bad scenarios as to where Gregg was and what may have happened to him. The guide asked us, all with hand gestures, to sit at the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef and wait for him to go look around to see if he could find Gregg.
Our guide returned after about five minutes and did yet another count; one, two and yes, still just three of us, not four. He did this a couple of times which nearly made my head explode. We were asked to sit again at the bottom of the ocean and wait for him to look around. And upon his return, the same result and the same stupid counting; YES, still just three of us. He did this about five times in total which was inexplicable to me.
While we were waiting for probably what was twenty minutes in total, I was imagining the phone call we would need to make to his mother explaining the situation. Which was totally inexplicable but that was the Gregg experience. Mercifully, we finally went to the surface and we could see Gregg swimming on the surface about two hundred yards away. We all swam to the boat and of course grilled Gregg as to what happened. His response was very unsatisfying. Our Great Barrier Reef experience came to an end and we went back to shore.
There are a hundred other Gregg stories. Being with Gregg was rarely boring. Gregg was a special person in a good way. He was a very good friend, but more importantly a good son, brother, father and person.
I had visited Gregg the November before his death. It was a 25-year reunion of ur New Zealand and Australia trip. I showed up at his house midday on a Saturday. His wife and kids had gone to their grandparents in San Luis Obispo. We caught up over a beer in his living room. He conveyed that he was having some family issues and personal challenges, but seemed to be in reasonably good shape. In typical Gregg fashion, instead of hitting the town, we ended up going to a neighbor’s house for a fundraiser for his kid’s basketball team. Initially I couldn’t believe I traveled to San Francisco to hang out at some house but it turned out to be a really fun time.
We had a surprisingly great night hanging out at one of Gregg’s neighbor’s house. This is the last time I would see Gregg.
I have spent the last month trying to figure out what could have happened. And while there are some threads to pull, it still doesn’t add up. Gregg was a better friend to me than I was to him. He would randomly call me up just to check in. I will miss those calls and it is hard not to believe that we probably had a few more adventures.