By William M. Breiding: Bruce Townley, aka, Brute Tornley, and late in life, Bruise, for his repeated falls while in a drunken state, is dead. He died on October 17, 2024. He was 70 years old.

Bruce was a pain in the ass. I say this as a man who loved him dearly. He was one of the sweetest guys there was, and generous. In the 1970s Bruce started our relationship by giving my fanzine a bad review. It was honest and true, though. While briefly in Apa-50 he made fun of my written persona by quoting old Doors songs at me to make his point.

When he moved to San Francisco from Virginia he lived with Rich Coad for a couple of years. I did not actually get to know Bruce until he moved to Concord and bunked with Cheryl Cline and Lynn Kuehl while plugging away at a Bacon Bits factory. Later he moved back into San Francisco near the intersection of Polk and Washington (where Frank Norris located his novel McTeague). He lived there for the rest of his born days. He fell in love with San Francisco’s Muni Transit and was a dedicated buff of all of its more obscure routes.

Live action Bruce proved to be a swell guy with a sense of humor and of the absurd. Not too many people have noted this but when Bruce wasn’t bugging his eyes he was really very handsome. And perhaps too sensitive for his own wellbeing. Bruce was both rude and caring, a strangely kind friend, with a component of old fashion courtesy at his core.

He had formal schooling and training in art but remained steadfastly rustic in his styling and line work. He was in some-wise brilliant. He was a great writer of wrenching descriptors. He once described the sky in a Frank R. Paul painting as the color of margarine. He was totally accurate.

It’s a tribute to a certain strain of Old School San Francisco that later in life he worked as a receptionist at a combo CPA/law office. An elderly, balding, portly guy with bloodshot eyes. Bruce could be pugnacious and caustic. Sometimes he was funny while doing it. Sometimes not. He had a laugh that could be described as a cackle. When I called him at work once he answered in an unfamiliar voice: a silky, sexy purr, both ingratiating and genteel. I was glad to have discovered this side of Bruce. It was sort of like being in a Phillip K. Dick novel.

Bruce loved music, particularly old, weird American music. He turned me on to Slim Gaillard and Albert Ammons. Yes, Bruce was a pain in the ass, but we won’t go into that here because you had to love him for it. He was a wellspring of many great things. It’s hard to believe that Bruce isn’t here anymore sitting at Bob’s Diner on Sunday mornings eating breakfast with the Sunday Times spread around him. We’ve lost someone beautiful, I think, and the world just keeps getting smaller. Here’s two cool photos of the man himself and a Xmas drawing from 2020.