Recognize this man? From 1990 to 2010 he was probably the most familiar figure on the Strip (Connecticut Avenue between Dupont Circle and Florida Avenue.) Whether homeless, depressed, or manic until he was carted off to St. Elizabeths Hospital, there he’d be sitting out at Cosi, the only cafe on the Strip that still admitted him.
Inappropriate behavior got him barred for life from Kramer Books, La Tomate, Marias, Zorbas, and even Triangle AA Club. Combing his hair at a mirror where people were dining, and the subsequent scuffle with the waiters, got him thrown out of Odeon Cafe and thrown into St. E’s. A woman he argued loudly with in the Childe Harold threatened to sue them for all the money they were worth if she ever saw Bob Goglia in there again.
“I’m lucky that Cosi hasn’t barred me,” he told me, “because during one of my manic episodes, I was sitting outside and shouting that I was Al Capone’s son. I don’t know why I said that because I’ve never been in organized crime.” The night manager sent him off and told him not to come back, but the general manager was a friend and Bob was reinstated.
Before he died, Bob talked of wanting to live the life he was leading — a life of poverty, but in the service of God, the life of Saint John of the Cross. “I haven’t gotten there,” he confessed. “A monastic [life] is not that easy. I think you can’t smoke in a monastery. Plus, I can’t walk in a monastery because they won’t accept me. I’ve tried. It was after a manic episode. I went to the Franciscan monastery in San Francisco and told them I’d like to be a monk. They talked to me for a while and I told them my history, that I drank and had a lot of sex and had a few nervous breakdowns. It wasn’t the profile of a future monk.”
So long, Bob. You’re up there drinking coffee now without the lithium, Depakote, Zoloft, Clozapine and Risperidone. You are missed here on the Strip, with some exceptions.
