RIP Josh Mann

Abstract

College Night has been a Tenderloin U event since 1999. In a photograph of the first night, a young man sits in the front row, happily engaged in the goings-on. Three years later, he commits suicide. Big D is the first to tell me about Josh Mann’s death. We discuss it in his apartment with some of Big D’s friends, revealing their relationship and his living situation. The suicide reverberates throughout the neighborhood. I only discover later that day that I knew the young man. Many of the young people I know are close to him. I attend the funeral, the first of many I will go to over the years. The family is devastated. Three months later, a second son commits suicide.