Meet Billy, “The Fishing Pole Man” on Sproul

To the majority of UC Berkeley students and Sproul Plaza paroozers, he is known as “The Fishing Pole Guy.” He has been deemed “crazy,” “hilarious,” and “classic Berkeley,” but few people actually know the real story behind this iconic and eclectic individual.

For starters, his name is Billy Wollbrinck.

Caliber was interested in learning more about Billy, to discover a truth behind the flurry of rumors — “He’s homeless.” “He’s hella insane.” “There’s more than a likely chance he’s tripping on acid.”

One can’t help but wonder about the backstory of this man, but contrary to popularly notions, I learned first hand that Billy is not homeless, creepy, or delusional. He only wishes to make a positive impact on the Berkeley student population.

Upon discussing when an appropriate time would be to conduct the interview, Billy suggested that I meet him in “his spot” at noon on a Wednesday. We did exactly that, and sat down in the middle of Sproul to chat about all that Billy stands for over the course of 60 minutes.

Billy grew up in Los Angeles. When asked where he is originally from, he enthusiastically responded, “Where does it look like I’m from? Hollywood of course!” He attended community college for a short while in Los Angeles and then moved to San Francisco to continue community college there. Billy proudly explained that he studied Chinese for four years; Japanese for two years; and algebra, geometry, and conceptual physics intermittently.

Billy mentioned, “Algebra is a lot like Chinese characters and so I had a great time.” If you’ve ever wondered what he’s doing as he scribbles on his little piece of paper, he is practicing his Chinese symbols.

In addition to this schooling, when Billy moved to Berkeley in 1975, after serving in the Marines for a few years in the ’60s (he describes deserting the Vietnam War as “the best thing [he] ever did”), he began to sit in on various genetics and astronomy classes. He is particularly infatuated with Professor Filippenko’s Astronomy C10 class, citing direct quotes from Filippenko throughout our conversation. He fervidly emphasized the importance of going to college in order to escape “shitty, peed on jobs” such as the ones he has had in the past.

Billy’s last job was one in shipping and delivery at a hospital in Los Angeles. He thoroughly disliked this situation as he felt his work was exploited and he was paid unfairly. He has made the occasional buck over the years selling various possessions, once even selling a painting for $50.

It has been difficult for Billy to hold down a job due to the fact that he is schizophrenic. The National Institute for Mental Health states, “Many people with schizophrenia can lead rewarding and meaningful lives in their communities.” Billy exemplifies this notion as he preaches positivity to everyone who takes the time to talk to him. Schizophrenia has contributed to a range of difficulties in Billy’s life in terms of acquiring a decent salary, and generally getting by financially.

Materialism is among many things that Billy does not support. He has never lived lavishly, partly because his outlook on life has never dreamed of living in such a manner. In describing how to accomplish various goals in life, Billy insightfully preached, “If you’re going to be where you’re going to be, then you will find a way to get there. If it’s necessary, you’ll get there.”

Much of Billy’s collection of passionate mantras, including this one, stem from an important experience he had back in ’71: his last acid trip. In addition to the hallucinatory effects of LSD, Billy’s schizophrenia made his recitation of this anecdote very intriguing, yet quite cursory.

He began by classifying his last experience with LSD as a “bum trip,” meaning that fear relentlessly took over his entire psyche. Wandering around a residential neighborhood in an attempt to come down, he knocked on a woman’s door and asked if he could play the piano he noticed through the window. Predictably, the woman called the cops who proceeded to put Billy in the “drunk tank.” In the drunk tank he had what may have been the most important experience of his life.

Transcript: I’m a Catholic, and I pray to God but at that point . . . you reach a point when you can’t pray to anything. There’s no power outside of us, and I didn’t know this. We create the gods, we create the demons. What took Siddhartha seven years took me 35 minutes on LSD. I couldn’t spin out so I spun in for the first time.

Only one way out was the toilet. It was the worst and the best. This is where I discovered the black hole. I didn’t know about black holes then. And even after it was over, I didn’t consider it a black hole until Filippenko’s 10C class where he talks about how there is a black hole in the center of the universe, 30 million times the mass of the sun. But this passed me and I didn’t think anymore about that.

So finally I’m spinning faster and faster. I was going so fast I saw galaxies spinning by like… if I could’ve killed myself I would’ve. Because you actually think you’re going down this toilet hole. You’re a kid on acid. You believe everything that happens to you… the whole time I’m trying to say it’s okay, I’ll get out of this. I was trying to fix it when I gave up. And it stopped.

From this I surmised that there is no power from outside of ourselves because all the power persecuting me came from me. All of it. We have a tremendous amount of power but we don’t know how to use it because we follow our heads and not our hearts. I hit nirvana. It was incredible. I hit the eye. I hit the center of the storm.

This experience triggered Billy’s current efforts to stay grounded and be present in reality, lessons which he attempts to teach on Sproul. He considers himself a teacher, an individual “doing a public service,” a performer, an artist, and a direct result of the Free Speech Movement. When asked how long he plans to stay on Sproul, he responded that he will continue performing in the same location for as long as he can. He believes that students will get his message one way or another, by talking to him directly, by listening to students recap conversations with him, or simply by taking the time to speculate what exactly it is that he does.

He’s just “one mouth crying in the wilderness telling [us] what’s going on.” He is not homeless. He is not creepy or uncomfortable to talk to. Interestingly, campus police hovered over our conversation twice, along with numerous other adults, just to “check in” throughout the interview. Of course I’m glad that I was being watched out for, but Billy is no threat.

I would highly recommend taking a break in your undeniably busy college life at some point to stop and chat with him. Don’t be worried about interrupting his performance — he loves to talk to people. There is no way that an article could ever fully capture Billy’s unique essence, let alone debunk the copious number of rumors spread about him. He’s on Sproul at noon Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Find out the truth for yourself.

Read the transcript of the entire interview here. I highlighted my favorite parts.

Photo by Aishwarya Aravind