Kyle Dinh - a Tribute
Kyle and I were friends in the 90s. He passed away late 2024 and I just found out. Aside from his motorcycle club, I can't find any mention of the death of this fine and interesting gentleman. I moved away from San Francisco in the 2000s and lost contact. Gone, but not forgotten.
When I first met Kyle he was dating this smoking hot local singer named, Essence. Kyle had some very hot girlfriends - he had a rare type of mojo with the ladies, always at ease - like he knew the punchline, which he actually DID but never revealed. He left it for you to figure out, which could be mildly annoying over time. He wasn't a saint! Or maybe that's actually a trait of saints or some damn Yoda, I don't know;-) ... Anyway, Kyle got me started in the Dot Com scene by urging me to learn HTML. A few months later I got my first salaried job as a content grunt. And then the parties began. A LOT of parties with free booze and food almost every night. Those years in San Francsico during the insane Dot Com Bubble were non-stop. Kyle and I had that kind of chemestry - neither of us knew when to stop. Comical mayhem for years. Just one example was when Kyle and I were "drinking" on the day I was flying to Hawaii to get a little RnR from the madness. So very slightly impared, Kyle came with me to the airport to see me off. These were the days before 9/11 so you could go right up to the departure gate without a ticket. So as I'm handing my boarding pass to the gate agent, Kyle sneaks in behind me and then down the jetway to the plane. I don't think he planned it, if he did he didn't tell me. It was a 777 so of course there would be some empty seats, he thought. Not even one free seat. Kyle spent the next 5 hours in the bathroom while I was passed out from the well, nevermind. I came-to just as we were making our descent, Kyle roaming the aisle. I can see him shuffling towards me like it was 5 minutes ago. So I gave him my seat and the lady next to me was very happy because I probably smelled pretty bad, and she finally had someone to talk to. Even in the haze of memory I can still see how her face lit up when Kyle sat down. How did she make sense of it all? Maybe Kyle told her the story, I never asked. So we landed with me in the bathroom... No luggage, either of us. We had to toss our jackets - it was just too hot. I remember shoving my parka into a garbage can, watched by tropical birds. The rest of that trip is a blur of excess. Was it one week or two? I don't remember. Somehow we survived.
Kyle was extrodinarily tech savvy. His website is archived here... I wouldn't have entered the Dot Com scene if it wasn't for him, and I wouldn't be where I am now. Knowing Kyle sent my life on a very different trajectory. I'm getting ready to fly today, so I will update this page as I see fit - I moved to the country when the boat got too crowded, but then I learned that Kyle Dinh was eaten by white cannibals on an island near Tijuana, for no good reason at all. Golly, you hear a lot of savage and unnatural things about people these days. So for now, I just wanted to put this up because there's so little out there and Kyle had so many friends. Maybe, like me, they're not aware that he died; complications after heart surgery. For me, tho, I have the luxury of returning to my room, safe within my womb, for now.
Another lessson Kyle taught me was in his instruction to keep a low-to-no Internet footprint - duck now before the fan hits the shit. He was prescient with that advice - long before the plague of social media. Although he later had a comparatively large footprint (for reasons, I imagine) - I have lived by his instruction. Below is one of the only pictures on the Internet that anyone will ever see of me. Because of Kyle, I never had a social media account and I basically have a zero Internet footprint. Even the below pic is not tied to my real name. I'm not in hiding, just living by good advice.
A theory of some people as buffalos: Some people are buffalos. That's my assertion. I hope that I am a buffalo, but I'm honestly not sure. I don't think a person can be a buffalo unless someone else deems them to be a buffalo. So in regard to myself, it doesn't matter what I think - a clog on the wheel, a bronco, a buffalo, another NPC... Kyle, however, is a buffalo. And not only that, I will declare Kyle to be a rare buffalo. That's not sentimental BS because a friend died blah blah RIP blah. Kyle is/was a rare buffalo - someone much more difficult to pin down or label, perhaps impossibly so. Not even something to strive for, just something to stop and watch as it rips up the ground along its path, perhaps dragging us along for a while if we're lucky.
Where the Buffalo Roam Final Scene