San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Warriors fan facing eviction gets big assist
The Warrior and the angel had themselves a week.
When last week began, the clock was ticking on Lloyd Canamore and his home on 35th Street in West Oakland.
Canamore figured he had another month, maybe two, before the mortgage company booted him and his four dogs out of the house he moved into 50 years ago.
This isn’t just any house. It’s a shrine. It is painted Warriors colors, bright blue and gold, and festooned with Warriors flags. Warriors balloons are tied to the fence by another neighbor.
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To stay, he would have to pony up $350,000, a coffeespitting sum for a fellow on disability and a fixed income.
Ali Roth is a neighbor down the block. Tuesday night, she launched a GoFundMe account for Canamore.
“I told him, ‘This is a lot of money, Lloyd, I don’t know,’ ” said Roth. “And, like immediately, people just stepped in.” The fund got a boost when Stephen Curry, who once danced on Canamore’s front steps, alerted his Instagram followers to the GoFundMe account.
By Saturday afternoon, more than 5,800 people had donated over $213,000, including a $10,000 anonymous kickin.
This has to be the No. 1 selfie house in the Bay Area. Drivers constantly beep and wave, signifying their Warrior love as they whiz past on the busy street, picking up speed to fly onto the onramp for 24 East. Canamore is often standing out front, greeting the curious and the admiring. He’s the mayor of Warriorville, always rocking a jersey and sporting the bling, faux NBA championship rings (souvenir giveaways).
“I call my house the Stadium,” Canamore said Thursday. “I’m a Warrior.”
He even looks like a Warrior, the spitting image of Tim Hardaway. Some of Canamore’s friends call him Hardaway.
Lloyd and his three brothers and their mom, Clemmie, moved in five decades ago, when Lloyd was 8. Back then, it was just a house.
As a high school sophomore, Canamore started selling hot dogs and peanuts in the aisles of the Coliseum Arena at Warriors games. After work, he and other vendors, ushers and sportswriters would play pickup hoops on the Warriors’ court. Canamore developed a deep emotional connection with the team.
In 1997, tragedy struck. Canamore’s only son, Lloyd Jr., died of cancer at age 14. Two months later, one of Lloyd’s brothers died of AIDS. In his grief, Canamore went off the rails, moved out, experienced drug problems, “almost went crazy.”
Then “I got myself together, came home to take care of my mama.”
On the last day of 1999, Canamore swore off drugs forever.
“I’m 20 years clean,” he said.
In 2016, Canamore’s two other brothers died. A friend, helping Lloyd work through his grief, offered to paint his house for free. The color scheme was a nobrainer. A shrine was born.
The shrine was baptized a couple years ago when Christian hiphop artist Bizzle created a team anthem, “Warriors,” and shot the video on Canamore’s front steps. Yes, that’s Curry dancing in the middle of the raucous group.
In September, tragedy struck again. Canamore’s mother died unexpectedly at age 84.
“It seems like she died yesterday, I cry every day,” Canamore said. “She was my best friend, we watched every Warriors game together, we highfived together, I took her to games, all that stuff.
“Right now is the hardest part of my life I’ve ever been through. For a minute, I thought I had no help, I wanted to be up there with her. Everybody said, ‘Be strong, hang on.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll try. Only thing that helped me be strong is my doggies,” Rambo, Miracle, Sheba and Scrappy.
“Now I got good people to help me out even more. My mama’s looking down on me, I got some help down here.” Ali Roth moved onto the block 12 years ago. Born and raised in Oakland, she owns a tea shop in Berkeley, Blue Willow Tea. She travels the world buying sustainable teas. She also plays drums in a band, raises chickens and collects and repairs vintage motorcycles. The usual.
Roth used to have live bands play in her backyard on weekends, and Canamore would walk down and join the party. They became block buddies.
Last week a friend of Roth’s alerted her that the Warrior House was listed on Zillow. Roth asked Canamore what the deal was. He said that a caretaker had duped his mother into signing for a reverse mortgage. When she died, the note became due.
The mortgage company, Canamore said, offered to buy the house cheap. When he declined, he was told to come up with $350,000 or move out.
Roth was “beyond pissed.”
What is beyond pissed? A GoFundMe account.
“Lloyd has no internet, no computer,” Roth said Thursday. “For him to be able to find help is really, really difficult. I’m just thinking about all the people in similar situations who have no recourse, who don’t have a house painted in Warriors colors. Do you think he would be getting this much attention if he didn’t have the Warriors House?”
But he does, and boy, is Canamore grateful to Roth.
“If it wasn’t for her, it’d be a wrap for me,” Canamore said. “She saved me. Everybody else talk about it (setting up a GoFundMe), but they don’t be about it. Ali, she be about it. She an angel, an angel when I needed it.”
Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler