John F. Kennedy Jr.

Back in the early 1990's I was living on Chicago's North Side in the historic Buena Park district, also known as northeast Lakeview. This would put me about five short blocks north and two blocks east of Wrigley Field.

For some odd reason that I cannot remember, there was one early Saturday morning in September of 19-ninety-something in which I took my camera down to Oak Street Beach to photograph a sunrise over Lake Michigan. This would be just north of the Drake Hotel and east of Lake Shore Drive. After finding the beach too nasty with broken beer bottles and tunnel with too much graffiti and urine, I made my way to Oak Street to look for something called The Original Pancake House. I didn't find it.

But what I did find was someone walking toward the lake on the other side of the street staring at me. He was wearing a backward black beret, long sleeve button down shirt with sleeves rolled up, baggy black shorts, and a very Hollywood smile with perfect white teeth. He looked like he'd been pampered all his life like so many I'd seen living on the Gold Coast.

Anyway first he was staring, then he slowed down as if recognizing me,...then grinned widely and said "ahaaa...yeeaaaaahhh..." and then motioned toward me as if he was ready to fight me. This seemed like very strange behavior to me and I sat my camera down and got ready for anything. It had been in its case, carried at my side when he saw me. Then just as quickly he said somewhat apologetically, "okay...okay, it's okay" as his face changed expressions from one of confrontation to relief, as I'm sure did mine. But I've no doubt I still looked at him like he was nuts. I forget just what he said then as he walked away, but was something to the effect of "have a good day..." or something.

Later on that day I saw his face on a tabloid's front page and realized I'd almost got into it with John F. Kennedy Jr. I had not noticed his face on anything since the picture of him at Aristotle Onassis's funeral when he had fish-lips and long hair, and so I had not recognized him. And although I had heard stories of him dating actress Daryl Hannah (a Lake Shore Drive resident whom he was likely visiting that day), I never paid him much attention. And there were even times over the next several years I doubted it was him I ran into. Doubted until after his death when stories of his many fights with strangers he encountered bubbled to the surface.

It's somewhat understandable he would react the way he apparently often did, since he constantly lived in a fishbowl with photographers snapping pictures every time he changed position, most likely in hopes of catching him picking his nose or stubbing his toe or something--the kind of pictures that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars.