Tanks, a lot! Rick Johnson at the Fish Store knows a lot about fish - The Audubon County Advocate Journal

Posted: 24 Feb 2020 05:00 AM PST

ATLANTIC - Some people love fishing. For Rick Johnson of Atlantic, it was the fish that caught him.

If you have an aquarium in your home, or another pet of any kind, you probably know Rick — he owns and operates The Fish Store in Atlantic and has been there since 1988.

Rick explained that in the 1970's, a friend's six foot long fish tank caught his attention.

"I never had a tank as a child," he said, but what his friend had in that tank was what really interested him. "It was a certain kind of fish that caught me," unusual cichlids, "and that has attracted people to my store over the years, because they were not sold in most stores."

He also likes exotic bottom dwelling scavenger fish, but says many species are getting hard to get.

"They are getting rare and expensive because their habitat is getting destroyed in South America, in Brazil and Columbia, and it's getting tougher to get them out of the wild," he said because some are on an endangered species list. Some are being bred in captivity but he said the exotic ones can go up to $1,000 each. "I have them from $6 up to a couple hundred dollars," he said.

His biggest tank holds 540 gallons of water, and a group of large fish including a large silver Arrowana and a large Knifefish. He walked up to the tank, several swam up to him, "They know me," he said.

A second tank holds 300 gallons, and is home to one of those bottom scavengers Rick likes — a catfish that he said is over 25 years old.

For fish enthusiasts, Rick can help with questions, has the different foods some fish need, and has accessories for tanks as well.

Along with fish and tanks, Rick offers supplies and food of all kinds for pets, like premium dog and cat food, and supplies for other pets.

"Not as much as I'd wish," he said, "I just don't have the room for all the stuff out there," but he said he could get things he doesn't have in stock.

While many have turned to ordering pet supplies over the internet, the advantage of The Fish Store is Rick himself.

People come back over and over, and for him, that's one of the best parts of the job, "knowing all of those people for all those years. Some of the same people have supported me all that time."

Running a pet shop, Rick says, "is kind of a job that's not a job."

He admits it's not a job you will get rich at, but it's rewarding.

It's hard to get a day off, though, with so many animals and tanks to take care for. "Vacations are few and far between," he admitted.

Currently he has a couple people helping out at the store. Due to health issues, he had part of his leg amputated about two weeks ago.

"I just got home Friday," he said, adding, "I have a couple gals helping me out," before he gets a prosthetic leg, which will be a while, "But I feel good, I feel real good," and he's had a bunch of well wishers coming in to see him.

He opened the business with another man in 1988, more than 30 years ago, then bought the man out in about 1992.

"I've been doing this for about half my life," he said, looking back, "Wow, true story, I am getting old," he joked, "Look how fast (time) goes."

Spiders are one of the things he doesn't carry. "I'm not crazy about spiders, I don't want any spiders."

He's also not crazy about "anything that could bite or sting me," and usually doesn't carry snakes. "I know some people love them," he said, "But the biggest part of my business are women, and they ask, 'You don't carry snakes, do you?'"

He said he orders a lot of things from Florida and a lot of it is delivered right to his door. "I get a lot of things through Southwest Air," he said, "and they won't carry snakes."

While there are risks to shipping any live animals, Rick has a theory why some airlines don't want to handle snakes. "I think they saw Snakes on a Plane, and they freaked out," he said. "I never did see that movie, but I know just from the name alone, I should have watched it."

He does have birds again — for about 10 years of the business he didn't carry them but now with a little extra help, he was back into carrying them. He works with them so that they are used to being handled. He's had hand raised babies, but also adult birds that ended up coming back to the pet shop for a variety of reasons.

And there are some things he doesn't carry.

"There are things I won't sell," he said. "I don't want people to buy (some animals) on impulse. Some creatures get so big they outlive their environment. I try to stay away from those things."

Potbelly pigs, for example, are cute as babies but can get very large. Some fish will keep growing and outgrow their tanks, "and you can't just throw them out (into the lake), they will die in the winter."

"Some things just get too big," he said.

He does have "feeder" animals, like crickets, fish, mice, mealworms, even Dubai roaches, "There are a lot of different foods out there," he said.

The pet store has a resident dog — "He's going to be 3-years-old," Rick said, ready to greet guests, and a cat, "My cat will be 14 this year."

Both are used to being around all the other animals. Rick said the first time the dog saw a bird fly in the pet store, it started in that direction. "I screamed at him and he stopped, and he's never (gone after birds) since." The cat is also not interested in the fish tanks or the birds. "My cat had a bird land on him, he just looked at it, like 'Get off me!'"

Running a pet shop in a small town can be a challenge. "There are hardly any independant (pet stores) left," he said, "But I carry stuff that the big stores don't want to get," and he's always happy to tell you whatever you need to know about caring for your pet.

Mike Zint, vocal defender of homeless rights, dies - Berkeleyside

Posted: 20 Feb 2020 01:30 PM PST

Michael "Mike" Zint, an outspoken activist whose "Poor Tour" around Berkeley thrust the plight of homeless people in city officials' faces, died Friday. He was 53.

Zint organized countless protests and homeless camps in Berkeley after arriving in the city around 2014, fresh from the Occupy movement in San Francisco. He camped out in front of Staples and the downtown Berkeley post office for more than a year, protesting the U.S. Postal Service's contract with the office supply store and its threatened sale of the local branch.

He led a group of unhoused activists in what he called a "Poor Tour" around the city, demanding changes to Berkeley's homelessness policies. The group set up on the lawn of Old City Hall, in the park across from Berkeley High, and at other sites, often getting kicked out by police only to reestablish somewhere even more visible the next day.

Zint's legacy can be seen in the numerous tents stretched, to this day, along the BART tracks on Adeline Street, the Poor Tour's final stop.

Zint was steadfast in his belief that society should support poor and homeless people in their quest for self-determination, and he often used provocative tactics to try to achieve his vision. He doused the steps to Berkeley city offices in blood-like red paint and led other Occupy organizers in "mooning the Fed" in San Francisco. He delighted in making the powerful squirm.

Friends say Zint built a close-knit "chosen family" in Berkeley, and many of its members, along with his sister Pam Winton, were with him at San Leandro Hospital when he died.

"Mike was a natural leader," said Sarah Menefee, his close friend and co-founder of "First They Came for the Homeless," their name for their unhoused activist group. "He's also a master communicator. He listened to people."

Zint loved animals and people, according to friends, who said he welcomed those who were down-and-out into his camps when they needed support.

"I could give you a lot of instances of people that came out of the night on death's door and into the community. They got people back in touch with their families," Menefee said.

Zint was born in San Diego, but moved frequently as a child — from Virginia Beach to Okinawa, Japan — because his father was in the Navy.

"We were just best friends growing up, because we were so close in age," said Winton, who was two years Zint's senior. Two younger brothers came later.

"Back then we were free-range kids — that was allowed," Winton said.

The siblings were an adventurous and curious pair, riding their bikes everywhere, building forts at construction sites, snorkeling, fishing and finding animals in whatever body of water was closest to their home at the time. They would keep the grasshoppers and guppies they discovered, trying, usually unsuccessfully, to bring them into the house.

"When we lived in Pennsylvania we lived on a farm," Winton said. "This is when Michael and I were little. We would do basically the same thing. When barn cats caught mice we would take them away to save them. We put the mice on Tonka trucks and put their paws on the steering wheels."

Winton said she used to crawl into bed with her brother when scary thunderstorms hit.

"We were always together," she said.

As a young adult, Zint was a "yoyo kid," coming and going from his parents' house. Caring for animals remained a theme, though, and Winton remembered Henry, the crow Zint raised from its infancy, the baby possums that would hiss constantly and Elmo the lovebird. Friends and family said he worked in pet stores and had jobs making or maintaining aquariums.

Friends say Zint was married in the past, and he had two daughters and grandchildren. One of those daughters, Crystie, shared memories of her father on Facebook.

"You allowing me to touch animals like a tiny lobster and being kissed on my hand by the kissy fish at the aquarium when I was little. The love I have for sharks, and animals came from you," she wrote. "My looks came from you…My intelligence I got from you…I'll miss your random messages and funny pictures you sent. I'll miss talking to you. It still doesn't feel real."

Winton, who joined the Navy herself after high school and lived overseas, said she lost touch with her brother for years. She had been very disturbed to learn later that he'd become homeless.

Friends said Zint was homeless for some time in Humboldt, then in Golden Gate Park, right before he joined the Occupy movement in the streets of San Francisco. That's where he met Menefee, and the pair founded First They Came for the Homeless there.

Zint took the lessons he learned from Occupy about organizing and street survival to his post office protest in Berkeley. And to the 50-person "Liberty City" encampment on the lawn of Old City Hall.

In speeches and interviews, Zint maintained that both sites belonged to the people, telling Berkeleyside, "We own this property. It's public property."

In 2016, he turned his focus more specifically to Berkeley's homelessness services and policies, gathering protesters on the sidewalk outside The Hub, the city's coordinated entry system. Even then, he was advocating strongly for a sanctioned encampment in Berkeley, where homeless people could be left alone to govern themselves. (He told Berkeleyside, "We don't need care. We need to care for ourselves.") The city is just now pursuing such a site.

Zint and his allies came up with a strict list of rules for their encampments, banning drug use and loud noise, in hopes of demonstrating that homeless people can take care of themselves and create an environment where people can get, and stay, sober.

Friends say Zint researched and knew local regulations, often trying to "push the envelope" without breaking the law.

"He took his actions really seriously," said Barbara Brust, an advocate for the unhoused and a friend of Zint's. "He tenaciously would not let go of the cause. He was brilliant when it came to strategy. I was just going and yelling at the City Council, while he was in the trenches. Absolutely I learned from him."

Zint was not on friendly terms with city officials and police. When members of First They Came for the Homeless sued the city, alleging First Amendment violations and illegal seizure of their property (they lost the case), Zint testified that he wanted the city to lose money.

"My goal was to break their budget," to show city leaders they were "playing homeless whack-a-mole," he said.

Winton said that when she got back in touch with Zint a few years ago, the siblings learned they disagreed on almost everything, not least politics. But they enjoyed debating through Facebook messages, with Zint regularly sending paragraphs-long missives, she said. Zint liked to write everything from poems to persuasive essays, and was prolific on social media, keeping logs of First They Came for the Homeless' trials and tribulations.

Menefee shared what she said was a poem Zint wrote in his last days: "The richest stand on the backs of the poorest/When the poorest can no longer support them, the rich fall/Money cannot buy intelligence."

The city found housing for Zint during his last years, in East Oakland. There he had a beloved caretaker helping him with health issues, and pet lizards. He and friends criticized the housing circumstances, though, saying he was isolated from his community and that conditions there exacerbated his health problems.

Winton said the doctor told her Zint had COPD. She and his friends said he had been sick for years.

Winton flew to Berkeley immediately upon learning that her brother was in the hospital, and was by his side, along with his closest friends, when he died. She said it's been eye-opening to see the community he established in Berkeley.

"My family defines success as going to college and making a lot of money," she said. Zint "went to the school of hard knocks. But in the end he's probably made more of an impact than the rest of us kids."

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