AntiochKenny Booker Jr., widely known around eastern Contra Costa County as “The Birdman” because he routinely gave anyone who looked his way the middle-finger salute, died last Saturday in Pittsburg from heart complications. He was 28.
For more than a decade, Booker walked the streets of Antioch and Pittsburg, giving acquaintances and strangers alike his signature salutation.
His father, Kenneth Booker Sr., said in an interview this week his son was borderline bipolar and schizophrenic but smarter than people thought. He graduated from a special program high school in San Francisco at the top of his class.
Also dubbed the “Antioch Flip Off Guy,” Booker Jr. walked the streets of Pittsburg’s Century Boulevard and Antioch’s Somersville Road “almost exclusively,” a police spokesman said. He also frequented the Somersville Towne Center mall not far from his home.
“He was around quite a bit two to three years ago, but we haven’t had much contact with him since,” Pittsburg police Captain Phil Galer said.
“Mr. Booker was well-known to our officers, as he frequently walked around and attracted a lot of attention by his gestures,” Antioch Police Chief Tammany Brooks added. “As with many local residents, our officers developed an understanding of and relationship with Mr. Booker that often allowed any potential problems to be identified and resolved. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Booker family for their loss.”
Booker Sr. said his son didn’t mean anyone harm but couldn’t keep him from saluting folks with his middle finger no matter how many times he and his late wife tried to stop him. Police would sometimes bring him home to try to keep him out of harm’s way.
“He didn’t know how to say hi. It was his way of waving,” he said, noting his son only flipped people off in Antioch and Pittsburg, where he felt at home.
Booker Sr. said the family moved here from San Francisco 13 years ago. Another son, Andreas Porter, 26, a group-home counselor, was fatally shot near his home in 2004.
In 2015 “The Birdman” became a victim of violence when he was deliberately run over several times on Delta Fair Boulevard after he saluted the wrong person. It wasn’t long, though, before he was back on the street with a broken ankle and his leg in a cast, sitting in a wheelchair at an Antioch intersection giving people his middle-finger salute again.
“Me and my wife were down on him all the time — he’d be in the middle of streets stopping traffic — and we would get on him, but he couldn’t understand why. … He got a kick out of people’s reactions.”
Though some were taken aback by Booker’s gesturing, many who had been around awhile saw him as harmless.
He loved the San Francisco 49ers and music of all kinds, his father said, and used to sing loudly as he walked down the street. He also attended many concerts on his own, using public transportation, sometimes meeting friends at venues.
So well-liked was Booker that someone created a Facebook page called “The Birdman” in his honor, where readers would post photos and videos. It had more than 8,000 likes, and on Monday when news of his passing was announced, dozens posted comments.
“That’s horrible. He always made my day!” Tyler Kihlstrom posted.
“I will miss you,” Grace Aja Green wrote. “I always looked forward to seeing you when I was in town.”
“I’m glad the last memory I have is as I was walking out of Antioch mall,” Erica Coleman wrote. “He smiled at me! Dammmnnn!! He had a good heart and a good spirit!”
“In a world full of villains, he was a hero,” Anthony Garcia, of Tracy, posted on the Antioch News Facebook page. “I’ll never forget the first time he gave me the bird. Made me feel good like I was part of the community.”
As late as November, Booker had been seen at a Delta Fair Boulevard intersection listening to music on his headphones and flipping off drivers. One person posted that Booker recently learned the peace sign and had been offering that as well.
Genia Turner Briggs, who drives school buses for special needs students for Antioch Unified District, started a GoFundMe page for the family. She said she taught him to wave at her bus “with all his fingers.”
“Kenny came to my church in Brentwood off and on over the last few years,” she wrote. “I would give him rides to/from when he needed them. I considered him a friend, and he was very sweet and well-mannered while attending church.”
He was “was very much loved by his family and friends” and “his family was devastated by the loss of their loved one,” Turner Briggs wrote on the GoFundMe page.
The Rev. Keith Smith posted on a GoFundMe page that Booker had attended his Family Life Center church in Brentwood on and off in recent years and his “heart is broken” over the news.
“His father is devastated and his friends are in disbelief,” Smith wrote.
Booker’s father said his son had gained a lot of weight eating greasy and salty foods in the last year and suffered from congestive heart failure.
He “will miss everything about Kenny,” Booker Sr. said. “He was my heart, he made me laugh and … well, he was just fun to be around.”
Besides his brother, Booker was preceded in death by his mother, Bobbie Porter Booker. He is survived by his father, sister, Rosha Booker, and other near relatives.
Services are pending.
