Today at 3:30pm we gather at Ventura Cove Park to honor Dr. Jim Novak. The address is 3209 Gleason Road. Wear what you would wear to the beach. Bring nothing but yourself.
I want to tell you why we are doing it there, of all the places we could have done it.
For the last two years of his life, Jim spent his Wednesdays and Thursdays in Pacific Beach feeding strangers. Not patients. Not friends. Strangers. He did it through a quiet, nine-year operation called God’s Kitchen, run by a husband-and-wife team named Chris and Venus Ibanez. They have served well over three million meals out of a single van. They have no website. No nonprofit status. No donation page. No flyers. They do not advertise. The people they feed find them by word of mouth, the way real medicine has always traveled.
Chris told me yesterday why they do it that way. He said the government would tie his hands, and he wants to be free. He said they do not photograph the people they serve, ever, because it is not picture day for them. He said his job is to read the signs and flow with the day. Jim loved every word of that. Jim loved Chris and Venus, and they loved him.
I sat with Chris on the phone yesterday and asked him what he wanted me to tell you. He said something I have not been able to stop thinking about.
He said: most of the people who live on the outside have their guard up all the time. They have to. The world has earned that guard. But on Thursdays at the Cove, he said, their guards are down. And when your guard is down, you can finally start to receive what you were supposed to receive — a hot meal, a hug, a word, a name.
That is what my best friend was doing with the last Thursdays of his life.
He was not building anything. He was not posting about it. He was not adding it to a CV. He stood at a grill, served food, talked to people whose names most of us will never learn, and went home, and came back the next Wednesday, and did it again. Two days a week. Quietly. For two years.
Chris told me his “outside family” — the people on the street who knew Jim from those Thursdays — has been calling all week. They saw the news. They want to come. Some of them knew Jim better than people who shared a last name with him.
That is who he was when nobody was looking. That is who all of us should hope to be.
So here is what today looks like. Chris will speak first at 3:30. He hits hard and he hits fast — that is his way, and Jim loved it. Anyone who wants to say a few words about Jim can. Keep it short. Then the line opens, and the outside family is served first. There will be a tent for Jim with photos, candles you can light, and a bottle of wine and a cigar he and Chris were supposed to share. We will share it for him.
If you come, find Chris and Venus when you arrive. Thank them. They are the reason today is what it is, and they were the reason Jim’s last two years had the shape they had.
Come as you are. Casual. No need to dress up. Just bring whatever piece of Jim you carry. Tell a story. Serve a plate. Be the light he was.
And if you cannot make it: do the one thing. The thing you have been putting off. The call, the apology, the appointment, the dream. That is the only tribute Jim would actually want.
His guard was always down. Today, let yours be too.
Ventura Cove Park, 3209 Gleason Rd, San Diego — Thursday, April 30 at 3:30pm. To contribute to God’s Kitchen in Jim’s name, reach Chris Ibanez at (619) 929-7669.