If you know more information, or have photos of this bubbler ~ Please contact me: RIBubbleGuy@yahoo.com. And Thanks!
goodwill floats in the wind
SF Gate
Friday, February 8, 2002
Go ahead and burst Esteban Wilson's bubble. He'll just blow another. And another. And another - on his happy pace of some 3,000 bubbles a day. He blows them on BART trains. He blows them in the middle of Bay Bridge backups. He blows them for hours outside his pad in Piedmont, where he's known to locals as the Bubble Man.
"I feel like the bubbles are doing the job," Wilson says. "These days, people are flashing me two fingers instead of one." Everyone seeks relief from life's routine stresses - the bills, the morning commute, the moronic tailgater in his SUV. Wilson has arrived at his own solution. His solution is made from soap.
"When you congest people in the cities like we do, it doesn't bring them together, it tears them apart," Wilson says. "Bubbles are a way of spreading good karma. And if McDonald's can serve a billion burgers, I can serve a billion of these."
A billion bubbles. It's a lifetime goal that Wilson, 27, set some years ago, when he first blew a stream of bubbles from the window of his Honda and felt his growing road rage drift away. Behold the bubble. A sphere so rich in symbolism, bobbing on the breezes, a thin, fragile being brought to life by his breath. Or something like that.
Wherever he went, Wilson started bringing bubbles. In his car. On the sidewalk. On the public transit system. He once had a run-in with an anti- bubble BART rider. But the other passengers rose to his defense.
Mostly, he says, bubbles inspire benevolence. He has had friendly encounters with Julia Vinograd, Berkeley's Bubble Lady, who is similarly obsessed with bubbles but who is not to be confused with Wilson's girlfriend, Celeste the Bubble Woman, whom he met at a nightclub some months ago.
"I was on the dance floor, blowing bubbles and popping them on my nose," Wilson says. "She saw me, and I think all the good energy I was creating drew her to me."
Blowing bubbles isn't the best way to bring in the bucks. But there's a practical side to Wilson's pursuit. He is considering becoming a bubble soap salesman, hocking his homemade solution on Fisherman's Wharf. If that doesn't fly, the fluent-Spanish-speaking Wilson says he might find work as a court interpreter.
"You could call me Don Burbujas, like Don Quixote but without the windmills, " Wilson says. "I'll always blow bubbles. My plan is to blow a bubble with my very last breath."
SKIP IT: His other plan is to get together tomorrow with his former girlfriend, Kim Corbin, who is recognized in select circles as the Skipping Lady of San Francisco.
They're meeting at 2 p.m. under the Fairyland sign at Grand Avenue and Harrison Street in Oakland to conduct a Circle of Bubbles, Laughter, & Joy workshop.