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The Board seems a less interesting place these days since the death of Ron Hardcastle. I'm sure his Family and Friends all miss him in their own private ways, but this board seems less spirited and even 'a little boring' since Ron left. Just wanted to say.
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Yes, thank you so much Dave, for remembering Ron.
We all have made friends here.
We may never meet them face-to-face, but they are still our FAMILY.
Ron is missed by many of us.
I am thankful to have known him.
I am thankful to have known everyone here.
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Raising a glass of Anchor Steam.. To Ron H.
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Rom Hardcastle has passed away? When did this happen? I'm am certainly out of it.
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I started a new job at the end of July, and the months have flown by. I've not spent a tremendous amount of time here (or anywhere else for that matter). I am rather shocked by the news. He and I exchanged many emails about the shows we had seen. He struck me as someone who had a life well lived. May he rest in peace.
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I could be wrong, but it would appear I'm one of the few people here who actually spent time with Ron. During several visits to L.A., I'd make a point of letting him know I'd be up there, and we'd usually meet at Amoeba, then go eat somewhere, then I'd give him a ride home.
Curiously, having exchanged e-mails with him for several months, his behavior in person was quite different. The e-mails would contain long descriptions of various partners he'd had, detailing road trips they'd made, details of places where they'd lived, and the like. I sometimes wondered if maybe the reason he was telling me all this was to somehow homogenize it in his own mind. The relationships were all long gone, to other lovers, other places. But here was still Ron, attempting to understand them with some perspective, hoping to distill something from them that had somehow eluded him at the time.
However, in person, he was actually quite quiet and mild-mannered. Sometimes, I'd have to keep asking questions, just to keep a conversation going. I think, like a lot of men who end up finding themselves single for decades, and I dare say I can count myself among them, there is an acquired reticence when actually among others, as if not really knowing how to interact, a need to re-start sociability, accompanied by an underlying fear of possibly alienating the other person.
He could be quite volatile here on the Board, and I would discuss this with him in e-mails, to which at one point he took offense. But we soldiered on, and I planned to see him when I was back in L.A. in August. But that never happened.
I still have no idea of the actual circumstances of his death, nor the location. He lived in a nice complex in West Hollywood. At least, I think it was there, maybe closer to Silver Lake. I am not so familiar with the neighborhoods. It seemed nice to me. But I wonder if he met with some kind of foul play, of some sort, or an accident. He rode a bicycle or took the bus, and would only rent cars when he needed to. He lived in the L.A. area for most of his entire life, and seemed slightly shocked when I suggested he might enjoy other places, too.
At one point, he described a friendship he had developed with Don Bachardy, the artist partner of the late Christopher Isherwood, going on at length about the times they'd had. I don't think they were ever more than friends, but, like many other connections, that also had faded with time.
That was something that seemed to weigh on him, the passage of time. He even confessed that he was buying voluminous amounts of videos and Blu-Rays, with very little space to store them, as well as apparently massive amounts of vinyl, CD's, and books, on all kinds of subjects.
It's more than a little tragic when someone finds himself in an eddy of life, when they had always thought they had been in a major current. I see that sometimes about myself, though, frankly, I'm not particularly upset about it. But I wonder if it didn't weigh on Ron's outlook: no longterm relationships, a tendency toward collecting too much, becoming passionate, even alienating, about opinions. All aspects that tend to remove one from the main stream of life.
He was actually very sweet. I'm just sorry he wasn't more appreciated by those he enjoyed most.
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I completely missed this. We sparred a couple of times, but I liked him very much and enjoyed him on the boards.
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