Omer Travers

What can I say about Omer that hasn’t already been said by law enforcement? He’s a force of musical nature. Raw, touching, smelly, wasted, wearing a leopard duster, dark jeans, boots and sunglasses at night. I lived in the neighborhood on and off over 20 years. One day in 2008 I stopped to chat with Omer, and bought his 2 CD studio recording. Omer singing. Omer ranting. Omer screaming. So consistent.

I moved out of the mission a while ago, got to thinking about Bum Jovi today. Is he still around? I saw a recent photo w a RIP on it, did he die?

Now long gone but not yet forgotten by the many he’s leapt upon like a mad dog in the middle of the night.

Dear aficionado followers of Travers, please go the extra mile and ‘talk nice’ to him at 2 AM-​4 AM when he is on the sidewalk disturbing the peace for many innocent and kind hearted folk. Invite him to your home’s sidewalk, or better yet your living room. Walk the talk.
Feed him potatoes.
Oh yeah, ‘Peace’.

Dear Omer (aka Bum Jovi)
I’m waiting for the gentrification fairy to turn you into a parklet.

Always: loud and annoying
Sometimes: violent (when he doesn’t take his meds)
Called MAP van for him multiple times when he’s been screaming on our street corner about how he needed to go to the hospital (or methadone clinic).
Glad this guy provides amusement for hipster tourons, but generally a nuisance and sometimes hazardous to those of us who live here.

i hate cops. but i have called them on omer no fewer than 20 times during the 8 years he’s been «singing» homophobic and racist rants below my bedroom window at all hours of the night and day.
i have compassion for the homeless and for people with mental illnesses, but my compassion for omer ended years ago. the reviews on this page are totally obnoxious. if «keeping it real,» is telling my girlfriend and i that we, along with all other fags (um…we’re dykes but whatever) will die of «ass-​cancer» for our sodomistic ways, then i’d prefer to live in a pretend world, where this kind of hateful harassment isn’t at all charming.
oh! and how about the time he tried to dig up the tree below my window, laboring there for weeks on end with only a spoon for a shovel, all the while yell/​singing «la cucaracha» to my mexican neighbors whenever they came and left the building. yeah! racisim is hilarious!
p. s. i rue the day i ever left a pair of black and white zebra print jeans on the street (along with a bag of other random free clothes). it grossed me out to see omer in those jeans every day for the next three years as he screamed at anybody who looked even remotely gay that they were going to die a very painful death of aids and it would be their fault.

Omer saw me walking hurriedly down Valencia street and said
You’re never going to
Make it.
With a creepy grin and then he repeated the phrase louder.
He might of meant my immediate destination or my life’s goals. In either case, he gave me a lot to think about.
Thanks for keeping it real, Omer.

Omer’s awesome. It’s funny to mess with this guy, it just takes a little imagination. I work at a café and he’s constantly coming in to yell briefly and leave. All you gotta do is yell back at him. Usually i just yell, «DAD?!» and it smoothes things over with the ruffled customers and he gets embarassed and scampers off. Besides to be honest i like when he yells at people on the street. For the first year i was here in SF he kinda scared me so i always just came at him real aggressive and we didn’t get along.
I like how he messes with yuppies especially and today i had a shitty day and he yelled at me — «WHAT IS A COMPUTER!!!» Just made me laugh. I hear him late at night too cause i’m nearby where he hangs out and he doesn’t bug me. He’s been here longer than most of us and i once saw him get attacked by some bullies. He wrestled one of the guys to the ground and lay on top of him till the cops came and arrested the guy. Bad. Ass.
So whatevs. He was here first too btw before there were a bunch of thrift store shopping Jr. Yuppies who annoy me way more than omer ever did.
Pfff!
Btw i’m gonna be him for Halloween.

I moved to the Mission in 1993 and he was already here. His playing and singing has not improved a lick. He has become a pretty good whistler though and he is the master of the non sequitur.

Omer is merely a sad reminder of San Francisco’s gradual cultural decline on both its spectral ends. Nothing more. When I got to town 20 years ago, we had The Red Man, The White Lady, Carlos Guitarlos, the guy who looked and dressed like Barney Rubble, and a whole host of street performers and folks on the marginalized outskirts of city life far more interesting (and often times more talented) than what you see today.
We also had a really happening singing duo called Cyen & Omer, performing tightly synced tunes on acoustic guitars prior to the wife walking out, and they were genuinely very good! Omer was already a bit eccentric then, prone to telling tall tales (he once told me he’d broken into Yoko Ono’s apartment in the Dakota and that he was friends with Howard Stern), but he was nowhere near as GONE as he is now. Seeing him these days, raving and unable to carry a tune, not even bothering to tune his guitar, is nothing but depressing — and not «cool» at all, except perhaps to dilettante Mission hipsters too culturally bankrupt to know the difference.
I give Omer two stars simply for old times’ sake.

One time he said I looked like an alien in my big sunglasses. Another time he told me there was a kissing bandit on the street. Sometimes he stands in front of windows of Spork and pisses off the staff by playing aggressively for the patrons.
I was have a pretty bad day. Omer usually hangs out on Social Security building by 22^nd and Valencia when I get home from work and he is prone to a foul to ranty-​foul mood. However, I was crossing the street and I hear Omer sing «I wish you could see, what I see; I wish you see what I see.»
Omer? Is that you? Did you really just lapse from angry Bön Jovi to Chris Isaak? I cross the street in a surreal cloud but then I turn and Omer is yelling again, thrusting his guitar in tourists’ faces.

Bum Jovi!
OK, if you’re going to be a crazy lunatic with a broken guitar who shouts stuff in the middle of the night in the gayest city on earth it is in your own best interest to NOT shout about how only homos get AIDS and they should all die.
I thought he was a bit of «charming» local flavor before that happened. Now I just want to kick him in the nuts.

Yeah this guy is all well & good until he’s under YOUR bedroom window yelling, playing guitar, playing his boom box and generally being a pain in the ass at 4am on a Tuesday.
My most recent interaction with Omer was two nights ago when at 3-​FUCKING-​AM I had to stick my head out of my bedroom window and tell him to shut the hell up & stop yelling because I — along with most of the other normal people in the neighborhood — was sleeping & had to get up for work the next morning.
The «hipster» Omer’s response?
He gave me the finger the continued yelling and carrying on until I contacted my *good* friends at the SFPD to come by to move his crazy ass along.
I’m sure that my BOSS would give Omer one star (maybe negative stars) as well, based on all the mornings that I roll into my job late b/​c I have such a hard time dragging my ass out of bed b/​c I’ve been woken up by this freak the night before.
It’s actually become a normal part of our business to know that anytime I’m late to work it’s b/​c the crazy loudmouth homeless dude was under my window at 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 am waking my ass up.
I flippin’ pay a shit-​ton of rent to live where I do, I deserve to get a solid night’s sleep… I PAY FOR IT.
Now, I have plenty of empathy for the mentally ill & homeless… they need help, they need compassion. I have no quarrel with any of the other individuals who sleep — the keyword being SLEEP — on the steps of St. Peters.
But this jackass?
Isn’t a neighborhood «treasure» — he’s a neighborhood menace.
I used to live in f-​ing CHINATOWN — so you know that if the nightly noise this dude makes wakes me up & causes me not to be able to sleep that he’s one loud, obnoxious, inconsiderate m-​f.
Shame on you people giving him four & five stars reviews — you’re perpetrating & glorifying his clear mental illness. I concur with my roommate, he needs help, not five star Unilocal reviews.

Back in the day I was walking to the 500 club by myself from 16^th and mission Bart. I was hollered at by the local Rico suaves, followed by a crazy and now that I know who he is, this fucker threw popcorn at me!
Not the smartest thing to do but, I was young, cute and didn’t know better.

As Omer’s neighbor, there was never a dull moment (he sat below me, Tak H, and Kev C’s window spewing borderline hateful epitephs for the better part of a year, so I feel I’ve earned the right to call him ‘neighbor’). I can probably write a book about my experiences with this guy, but here’s a few bits about him…
Fashion:
His eccentric clothing choices put any and all Buffalo Exchange shoppers to shame… it’s like the kind of clothes we’d all be wearing if the nukes did actually drop all those years ago. My current fave is the baby jack-​o-​lantern costume that he converted into a vest. The Elton John woman’s sunglasses are a nice touch too. But don’t worry, he’s still rocking the zebra-​striped, post-​apocalyptic clothing.
Enivoronmentally conscious (and unconcscious):
He would sit and stare at the large tree on the corner of 23^rd/​San Jose for hours on end, for several months. He would often say that the tree thrived because he was the only one who took care of it… he would obsessive-​compulsively clean the dirt out of the sidewalk cracks across the street from said tree… then after he finished his 64oz Jack in the Box cup of god-​knows-​what (with the straw and all), he would start with throwing dirt clods at parked BMWs and mess up the sidewalk he just cleaned… the next day, the process would repeat.
«No one CARES ABOUT THE TREEEES… you know what I mean… OXYGEN!!! Remember that?! MUHAHAHAHAAAAA!!» (he’s got a very good supervillain laugh too… talk to him for about 30 seconds and you’ll hear it.)
He’s a chameleon:
He has four personalities that progress in this order throughout the day (someone should come out with a set of action figures. I’d buy em!)
PHASE 1: Yoda Omer (aka The MacGyver) — Happy-​go lucky, your best friend, loves the tree, says profound things about mankind
PHASE 2: Spazzy Omer (aka That Kid from Road Warrior) — The more hostile appearing (but quite harmless) side. He’ll choose a random socio-​political topic and go off on a monologue directed at you… the dude just won’t shut up. You nod, smile, and go inside, and he’s still talking.
PHASE 3: Working-​man Omer (aka The Mick Jagger) — He’s off to Valencia street where he slams furiously on his guitar, yelling/crooning,…will not respond to you if you try to talk to him
PHASE 4: Cold-​shoulder Omer (aka The William H Macy) — He’s now so far gone, he just sits catatonic and doesn’t feel like talking anymore… sad really… but you know Phase 1 is just around the corner so it’s okay.
Valencia just wouldn’t be the same without him. Omer rules.

I probably heard this guys voice more than any other in the mission. Of course the reason for this is that he was stationed in front of our place during the days when I was at home.
My other roomies have already spoke their respective pieces about him and have covered most everything but lemmie add a few things to his Omerness.
Things about Omer you might not know:
1. He used to wrestle in high school (thus the lean profile)
2. He feels the pains of being underappreciated by his artistic peers.
3. He smokes some painful to inhale hand-​rolled cigs, but will share willingly none the less.
4. He will take a dump in front of your house if he feels like it. (speculation but goddamn if it didn’t make me crack up laughing when my roomies told me)
5. His laugh is very fun to try… decent stomach workout.
Interesting guy, who does it his way… worth meeting… will get more interesting the second and third time… yet possibly a bit hard to take the 9^th and 10^th time. Meet him for yourself.

Omer Travers or the terrible Mexican guitar players (the one with the mustache) are the neighborhood’s finest musicians.
unfortunately, omer yells racial slurs when I go by. I don’t think he’s realized yet that San Francisco is diverse.

Where does this Land Of The Lost’s Chaka in hand-​me-​down womens clothes get his 6-​pack abs from? He must have a metabolism like Iggy Pop where he spazzes out enough to always be not just skinny, but cut. I mean his only exercise seems to be tuneless screaming and the punching of guitars.
I know Omer has had a real tough go-​around, but anyone who says he’s a good musician when sober needs to have lived here more than 12 years. Just to have seen him sober I’m saying.
Four unrelated Omer-​memories:
~When Atom and Virgil from Dieselhed fished Omer off the corner to open their New Years Eve show at the Make-​Out Room. Marty the owner sure wasn’t happy about that.
~The time I walked into Aquarius and said to Byram, «I hate it when Bridge And Tunnel slummers pretend to groove on Omers music. It just encourages him!». And Byram said, «Yeah, but what’s cool is when he kicks and turns on them.» I had to agree.
~When my friend Allie got her CD wallet stolen from her car, the stealer took the Omer CDs out and left them on the seat.
~Oh, but the kicker was Summer of 2002. I was in England passing a street newsagent when I saw a copy of my FAVORITE music nerd magazine, MOJO. Bowie was on the cover, Alladin Sane-​phase. I was thrilled to be buying my copy in the street, not from a Bolshie bookstore or Virgin. And Glam/​Bowie? Bliss. MOJO’s about $ 10 bucks stateside as an import and a bargain at half that in Blighty. Whee, bargains. I pay up, skitter off to the nearest café and open to an article on street musicians. Accompanied by a — choke — Picture. Of. Omer. Rocking Valencia Street. A world away from home, and in an instant I’m teleported a block from my house. By this little guy right here…

I believe you guys are referring to Omer Traveres:
He’s played Parkside before too. I’m always reminded of the feral boy with the metal boomerang from Road Warrior.