Larry Hunt of San Francisco, known for drumming on Market Street, has died at the age of 64.

SAN FRANCISCO (CGO) — San Francisco has several eccentric people and colorful characters that make the city unique to those who visit it. The city lost one of them this week. Larry Hunt was known to many as “The Bucket Man”. Before you saw it, you must have heard of it.

“If I stop playing, I will die,” he told ABC7 News in 2009.

Hunt wanted to play his impromptu drums forever as long as he had an audience, and he did. Tourists stopped to listen to “The Bucket Man,” as he was affectionately called. In 2009, he ran into those businesses near Union Square that called him and several other street performers a social nuisance.

“That’s how I got off the streets, I was homeless and I got off the streets just doing it,” he told us.

Hunt, 64, died on Monday. A forensic medical examination has not yet determined the cause of death.

VIDEO: Dressed in bushes, determined to scare; “Bushman of the San Francisco Bay” played a prank on the natives of San Francisco

ABC7 News spoke to their partner of 12 years.

“He lay down and never got up. I went to check on him and he was dead,” said Cheryl Lane Martin.

When he died, Hunt was living in the SRO. For many years he lived on these streets across from the Glyde Memorial. He knew everyone, and everyone knew the Bucket Man.

“His photos are everywhere. He’s been playing drums here for God knows how long. I’ve been here for 22 years,” explained Iris Butler, a friend who also works at Glide.

He made a cameo appearance in The Pursuit of Happyness and proudly displayed a photo of then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom playing his buckets.

For years, Charles Grace shared this space with the Bucket Man next to the cable car’s turnoff at Powell and Market.

VIDEO: San Francisco man documents Tenderloin’s fentanyl crisis and tries to stop overdose death

“He found his little niche in life and really enjoyed coming here. He carried those buckets five to six blocks,” Grace said.

Hunt has always been outspoken. In 1993, he struggled to keep his Social Security benefits when Alameda County proposed significant budget cuts.

“I haven’t committed crimes in my life, but if you all cut this budget, you will kill everyone who is fighting in the street,” Hunt said at a public hearing in 1993.

His partner says these buckets have given meaning to his life.

“His smiling face and how happy he was, how happy he was playing buckets and making everyone happy,” Lane Martin added.

On Tuesday, where the Bucket Man regularly entertained, there was unfamiliar silence.

If you are on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live

Content Source

California Press News – Latest News:
Los Angeles Local News || Bay Area Local News || California News || Lifestyle News || National news || Travel News || Health News

Related Articles

Back to top button