I just found this tribe, and while I live in Portland, I would to join all of you some wednesday night. Following, is the story that explains my undying fascination with the man:

my friend David and I, both writers and avid Buk readers/fans, were rooming in the Arthur Hotel (a drunk and junkie-filled, flophouse shithole) here in Portland, when he died. That night, we bought a couple bottles of cheap port, brown-bagged 'em and walked around downtown, vowing "not to sleep until the spirit of Chinaski shows itself"... after being run out of the apartment of some girls we met that night and were annoying the shit out of, we ended up on the roof of the Modish Bldg. at SW Park and Stark. I threw my empty bottle high in the air over Stark Street and into the middle of "Paranoia Park" (O'Bryant Square). There was no crash... David and I looked at each other, befuddled. After stumbling all over each other to get down to the all-brick landmark, we made an alarming discovery - there sitting upright with not a scratch on it - was the bottle that I had just heaved about fifty feet into the air and onto the bricks! We fell over laughing, and after several minutes of shouting and hugging, felt satisfied that the man had given us a sign. Two weeks later, in a druken stupor, I fell three stories, face-first, off of the roof of the Arthur Bldg. while Dave and I were up there tying one on and acting like jackasses... amazingly, I survived the fall with a broken jaw, eye orbit, and hip, but didn't lose or break a single tooth - and after recovering from my facial surgeries, didn't look any worse for the wear. I don't know that Bukowski had anything to do with my survival, but do believe that the incident with the port bottle was a premonition...