The Philanthropist.

Interview #4 – Geist

Monday, May 24, 2010; 9:10 p.m. EST

A day trip to Twin Cities, Minnesota, brought Geist’s current look into the world. Initially out for a Green Hornet-inspired image, he came across a cowboy-style hat while shopping and picked it up. With it, another style entirely started to form in his head. He added two coats – a duster and a British Army coat – and a pair of buckle-laden boots to the heavy, outermost layer of his outfit, followed by cargo pants, then a pair of sunglasses reminiscent of first-generation Oakley X-Metals and half-gloves. “The half-gloves are because I really need the dexterity for the things I have and for what I do,” Geist told me.

“The mask…I sorta got criticized early on for the mask,” he said. “Usually I wear it down around my neck when I patrol and meet people – I wanna smile. But if any press/photography comes around, the mask goes up.

“It became a cowboy, kinda accidentally, but it’s got kismet,” he continued. He told me that one of his favorite actors is Dean Martin, especially as Dino starred in cowboy roles in Westerns. “I’m not hung up on Westerns [in general], but the thing about the cowboy as an American hero who is usually solitary and lives by his own creed and honor, I think that’s pretty noble.”

The dominant color scheme of Geist’s outfit is green. “It’s sort of a camo deal – black and khaki green, which works well because I patrol a lot of parks and I want to blend in,” he said. “Well, a little bit – as if I’d blend in anywhere.”

Geist told me that when he first entered the online RLSH community and met a friend, Entomo the Insect Man from Naples, Italy, Entomo saw Geist’s picture and said “Finally! America now has the first cowboy hero! The emerald cowboy!”

His voice and laugh were infectious. They were near raspy, but without a smoker’s hack; experienced without sounding old. And my Lord did he love to laugh. After many anecdotes, especially when referring to himself with a genuine humility, he laughed – here, for the first time.

Another point of Geist’s pride about his outfit is its functionality, even putting the camouflage aside. “The cargo pants have lots of pockets, which are good to have – same with the coat. There are a lot of things I carry.”

Geist’s arsenal includes newer-model bolas, which he says are more streamlined and discreet – and less goofy-looking – than older models; pepper spray; a classic baton; a stun baton; a mini-stun gun; a horseshoe stun gun; leather gauntlets, for defense; smoke grenades; Minnesota-legal pyrotechnics; lots of portable lighting – and marbles.

“There’s nothing illegal about it,” he told me. “If someone’s running at you, throw marbles at their feet; see what happens.

“But my costume still has some surprises built into it,” he added. “The hat, the coat, etc.” He was quick to add that he can’t and wouldn’t want to take everything with him on every patrol. “A lot of times it’s not applicable and there’s only so much you’d want to bother carrying.” He ballparked his entire ensemble at 30 lbs.

“Where do the backing and capital come from to finance your outfit and tools?”

“I have a safety deposit box where my best comics are, but I sold my mid-range old Spider-Man and Fantastic Fours to start it.

“As a collector you never want to get rid of anything. I thought the metaphor of ‘selling these dreams to make the dream real’ is kind of appropriate. You could take the stories of heroes and become a ‘hero’ and I just thought ‘Well, what better purpose?’”

How did it all start?

“I’ve got about a dozen reasons, and I’ve probably given half a dozen answers to that and they’re all true,” he said. “There are so many reasons, y’know, the brush with crime in my youth, watching unsolved crimes on TV, the incidents on September 11^th had a personal effect on me, watching the growth of gangs and lawlessness, the troubles that the police have in trying to keep law and order.” Geist frequently exhibited respect and sympathy for the police. “So many of us had just watched the news and said ‘This is not enough; innocent people are being harmed, people are homeless or hungry, children are being hurt, women are stuck in abusive relationships, animals go hungry.’ There are so many problems and all of us want to step up and don’t quite know how. This [the RLSH] is an unusual answer, but we figured ‘Let’s just see what works,’ and it has to a pretty good degree.”

On August 19, 2007, just four months into Geist’s RLSH career, a flood rocked Stockton and the surrounding areas of southeastern Minnesota (Meryhew). It was Geist’s first year as an RLSH and he arrived the following morning to help. “This was when I’d just sold my boxes of comics and gotten all that cash, so I realized they needed bottled water, cleaning supplies, fresh clothing, mops, sponges, food – anything that was clean,” Geist said. So he went to the store and loaded up a truck full of supplies. His town wasn’t very strongly affected by the flood so he drove east to the Stockton / St. Charles Flood Relief Donation Center.

I felt, for the second time this month, as though the story was driving itself – that had I stopped taking notes and typing, the pages would fill themselves in. Maybe the book has its own agenda, or its own inertia. As Geist regaled his flood relief tale to me, I felt as though I was the passenger, not the wheelman, and our conversation was like fuel, forever burning to bring me a distant horizon, closer to the answer to a vague question about the RLSH I’d barely even asked myself.

“Stockton was a mess; everything was caked in mud,” Geist said. “There were people who had everything they owned in their front yards and it was trashed. I stopped at the donation center and pulled up my truck and saw a state patrolman crossing my way – I was on foot and caught his eye. He put his hand on his taser and I asked where I could put my donation items; he looked me up and down and told me where to go. He asked if I wanted a hand and I said ‘No sir; I’m a superhero.’”

And he laughed.

“I made a number of other visits with more supplies and different ones to Stockton, Lewiston, St. Charles and Rushford – I couldn’t get into Rushford but there were drop-off points; it was one of the worst towns hit.”

In the months to come, Geist befriended several Stockton residents trying to rebuild their homes and he brought them lumber and building supplies. He also founded relationships with some key leaders and grassroots citizens who he helped rebuild Stockton and who eventually asked him to show up at a benefit event for their town.

“I went in, made a quick speech about the townspeople being the real heroes and got out.”

Another major event in Geist’s three years helping others was a fire in St. Charles, MN, on April 17, 2009 (Collins). In the early afternoon, Minnesota Public Radio announced that the town of St. Charles was being evacuated, as had just been reported in Winona, MN-based Winona Daily News (qtd. in Collins). Geist heard about the evacuation almost immediately, though he was at work at the time.

“It was getting worse and worse,” he said. “When the order to evacuate the town was given I said ‘I haven’t taken lunch today and it’s like 2 o’clock, so I’m gonna take lunch…could be a long one; got some things to do.”

And he laughed.

“So I drove to the town and there were police roadblocks. The town was in danger of blowing up because there were five tanks of anhydrous ammonia that were in the midst of a plant on fire, so the firemen were taking care of it.

“My goal was to get into town to see if anyone had not been evacuated and get in and get out.” Here, his trademark laugh had vanished, replaced by a somber remembrance. “The town was completely…smoke everywhere. Incredible; I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like driving through the thickest fog you’ve ever seen – and yet this is a small town; residential.”

In the end, Geist had to sneak into town, as the police were stopping people at a roadblock. He told them he wanted to volunteer to help evacuate, and a patrolman had him pull over to the side of the road until traffic had dissipated. Geist took a back road instead and found his way into town around the roadblocks. Apparently the police had barricaded the main roads but not the smaller side roads.

“I pulled around a corner and there were firefighters fighting this huge blaze. I’m a huge believer that experts know what they’re doing – cops, firefighters, EMTs, so I don’t need to mess with that.”

After finding a police officer to direct him to the command center, Geist arrived there and asked for a job. “The guy gives me something to do, and he’s [on his radio] saying ‘Oh, so there’s five gas tanks? And if they blow, everything within 300 yards is gone – 500 yards is dead? Ok.’ So he gives me a job in traffic, to relieve an actual highway patrolman, and my instructions were ‘If it’s an emergency vehicle, they pass through; if it’s a civilian, turn ‘em around. If it’s media, they’re in that parking lot over there.’ So I got to direct traffic over there.”

Once things dissipated, he went back.

Fortunately, there aren’t major natural disasters in Minnesota every day of the year, so despite the Herculean tasks of flood and fire volunteering, Geist’s focus spreads beyond catastrophe to better his local area and in Minneapolis as he can using his choice of handouts, patrols and benefits.

“It’s hard to narrow down, because there’s so much need in the world,” he said. “I fight for the forgotten. The average homeless family seeking shelter, kids, anyone who’s slipping through the cracks, who nobody seems to care about – that’s who I care about. Anyone who’s overlooked by society, including animals.

“If something comes up, I’m well aware of it and try to answer specific needs to the community. My local pets shelter recently has more cats than they’ve ever had, so I’ve been buying cat food and I’ll knock on their door and they’ll say ‘Hi Geist, what do you have for us today?’ 99% of people in my town here have no idea who I am or that I exist, and I like it that way. However, the homeless shelter knows it, the pets shelter knows it and the Ronald McDonald House knows it. I’m greeted by name when I walk in with an armful of supplies.”

Geist also has an arrangement with a local comics shop, and after last year’s Free Comic Book Day, he was given a tall stack of free comics and other things from around the shop. He walked in in-costume and told them where the comics are going (“The Interfaith Charities Network, Ronald McDonald House – anywhere there’s kids,” he said) and gave them all away to charities in his town and to People Serving People in a nearby town. “It’s a shelter for entire families I’ve been to three or four times,” Geist said. “There are kids there all the time that are economically challenged, trying to find a haven from an abusive relationship, but kids are kids and want comics – especially about heroes.”

Regarding crime-stopping patrols, Geist’s philosophy is that most situations are best resolved without fighting. Most situations can be and have been talked down, in his experience. “There are people who could’ve gone to jail or been handcuffed if I were a policeman, but if I can talk to someone and quiet a situation, I’d really much rather do that.”

He told me it was actually rare to come across a crime on which he can intervene. “Think about a cop – how often do they pull their gun? You hear about cops retiring who have never pulled their gun. I’ve never pulled my stun baton on anyone. My martial arts instructor said that he’s never had to use his abilities; he’s never gotten into a scuffle with someone on the street. It just doesn’t happen. Anyone who wants to get into that kind of scuffle shouldn’t be doing this.”

Nevertheless, Geist, a fan of The Shadow, hopes that the criminals in his city will hear of him and be less inclined to go out and commit crimes. “I hope the criminals think I’m a loose cannon who can do anything, that I’m crazy to dress up in a costume – that maybe I don’t follow the rules, that maybe I don’t have ethics,” he said. “I love that; that doubt, that fear. That’s probably our superpower – they don’t know what we’re gonna do. We’re a bunch of loose cannons, whatever.”

Geist patrols at least once a week locally, and says that it takes a while to get suited up, so once he is, he might as well stay suited up for awhile. The week before our interview he drove to meet his RLSH partner, Razorhawk, for a long patrol. “Last Friday I left the house at about 6 p.m. and came home about 3 a.m.,” he said. “There’s an hour and a half drive each way in that time too. Razorhawk and I tried to make a good night of it, and you drive to get there so you try to put the time in and do what you can. He also realizes I can’t fall asleep on the way back so it doesn’t always last too late. We’ve patrolled until 4 a.m. before, but it’s safer if we patrol until midnight.”

Geist, like Fear, embraces a comfort with self-improvement in his RLSH practices. He told me a story he had written up on his MySpace page well before our interview that he jokingly told me to call “Geist’s Misadventure” upon writing it. Geist was on his way back from the airport, having dropped off another RLSH figure who was departing Minnesota, and decided to paint over some gang graffiti near a bridge that crossed over a river.

“I take care of gang tags. If you use a neutral grey spray paint, that’s legal. You can’t paint ‘Geist’ but painting over a gang tag is also a lethal insult to a gang. It’s nothing I mind doing at all.”

“What about artistic graffiti?”

“I dig it; that’s cool,” he told me. “If it’s art, it’s art. There’s a definite difference between someone expressing themselves – legally or not – and criminality, saying ‘This is my turf; we own it and you don’t belong; I’m the boss.’ They don’t own it; they’re not the boss and that’s what I want to express to them.

“All I would’ve needed to get out of there is a stepladder, which I have, but I went down there thinking ‘If someone went down there, they got back up. I can do the same thing; I’m a superhero!’”

It wasn’t until after he got down on the riverbank that he realized how the spray painter left the area. “I wasn’t willing to risk my life to see if the water was shallow enough to step around to the other side of the bridge. I called the fire department and police to save me. They were pretty specific, of course, asking for details.”

Geist assured the police he’d give them his real ID when they arrived on-scene, and that he was a Real-Life SuperHero named Geist who was painting over graffiti. “It was so amusing and embarrassing,” he said. “The irony was not lost on me at all.”

Two fire trucks and several police cars arrived and Geist did his best to ensure them he was in no danger, just stuck where he was. The fire department called in a boat they had on the river, which came and picked him up. He apologized to them and explained himself and they got him onshore. He obliged their request to wait and speak with an officer, to whom he presented his ID and explained himself again. Geist had taken before-and-after pictures of the graffiti to the officer, who spoke with his commanding officer for some time.

“He was a very nice guy – all the cops have been,” Geist said. “This is my third or fourth encounter with the police in my town. They know who I am; they know Geist the crazy kooky guy who tries to do a good thing and they know my real name and occupation. I wasn’t cuffed; I could’ve run but I always opt to cooperate.”

The officer came back and informed Geist that technically he had been trespassing, but he was free to go. “The cops get it, sort of, but they want me to be safe about it and that’s what he told me too. ‘If you wanna do something like this again, give us a call ahead, for your own safety.’”

Still a bit chagrined by the story, Geist was immediate to add, “There’s always something new to learn.”

Often on graffiti-removal outings Geist uses what the RLSH refer to as an oracle – a home-based partner to act as support and lifeline to patrolling RLSH. Sometimes they are other RLSH, sometimes not – like Ecliptico’s wife, who stands at the ready to alert authorities in case he’s overmatched. Sometimes the oracles are local, and sometimes not. “One of my favorites has been Doc Spectral,” Geist said. “He’s not an RLSH and yet he is someone in the community and well-known, well-liked, very funny guy, smart too. He has looked up the meaning of gang graffiti for me, has looked up license plates for me, addresses; he’ll get on MapQuest or Google Earth and know where I am and when I’ve gone under a bridge to paint over gang graffiti. He says ‘If I haven’t heard back from you in 20 minutes I’m calling you, then I’m calling the cops.’”

Attempts to reach Doc Spectral for an interview proved unsuccessful.

In addition to working with Razorhawk and an oracle, Geist is a member of the Great Lakes Heroes Guild, a Minnesota-area RLSH group. He also patrolled with Golden Valkyrie on her first patrol in early 2010. “She brought brownies on her first patrol,” he said. “She told us ‘My parents thought this superhero thing is great!’ She’s probably 19, 20. You do find this mixture, even among us, of innocence, idealism, some cynicism, some heroes who have been through some bad crap in their lives [before becoming RLSH].

“Then there are some…some people have some issues and possible retribution that they’re trying to avenge. There are some dark individuals with some great intentions.”

I wanted to know more about life behind the mask, so I asked Geist at last about his civilian life blending with his efforts as an RLSH.

“I had an elder family member who I just had to tell, because I didn’t think he’d be around for too much longer. He liked it. I can’t say he totally got it, but he understood and I’m very glad I told him before he passed on. I do have family who I keep it from, who have never heard of Geist. Will they by next week? Maybe. I have close family who cannot know, and if they were to know it would be so bad I’d have to deny it up and down.”

“What about non-family? Any hardships with separating Geist from your legal identity?”

And with that he laughed one final time – knowingly, almost forcedly, but not deceptively. “The hardest part about being an RLSH is…When people ask you what you’ve been up to – your dentist, your cousin, hairstylist, co-worker – you have to say ‘Not much; how about you?’”

I imagined by his tone that somewhere in Minnesota, at that moment, his eyes were gazing off in the distance, recalling those instances in which he’d shrugged off any interesting activity to his friends at work while further memories danced behind those same shrugging eyes – memories of rebuilding Stockton, of feeding and clothing the less fortunate. All his warmth, humor and honesty on the phone seemed so distant from the unmasked man I imagined to be wearing jeans and a polo shirt, feigning stoicism to keep his identity a secret from his co-workers, from his barber.

“And they ask you ‘No really, how have you been spending your time?’” he said, “and you have to bluff.

“I’ve become a lot less interesting to them.”