Matthew Souzis fumbles around behind a red-eyed plastic head that hangs off a fake tree branch in his living room — one surrounded in all directions by books.
“All these little heads, I found. But this one is really creepy, it was hanging off a fence across the street.”
“The face was black with dirt. And it had this mohawk hair that was so disgusting and literally filled with, like, motor oil and peanut butter or something,” Souzis says, gazing fondly at the bespectacled bald head. “I brought it home. I can’t say no to this head staring at me.”
Back at home on 14th Street, he chopped off the mohawk and gave the toy a deep clean and fresh batteries.
Souzis flips the switch and the head begins to vibrate violently, emitting zombie sounds and red laser-like lights from the eye holes — “It does this, which is so creepy,” he says proudly. “So I sort of brought some peace to this lost soul by adding the Harry Potter glasses, which of course, I found on the street.”
Souzis’ entire ground floor studio apartment is filled with such discarded treasures that he has discovered over the course of years wandering the streets of San Francisco.
“This town is very special when it comes to garbage,” Souzis says.
On a typical day, he rolls an eight-sided die to tell him which direction he’s to walk from his Mission District home. Even on days when he’s not in the mood, or doesn’t want to go the direction fate has chosen, Souzis says he always ends up finding something perfect for his collection, or running into a familiar face he hasn’t seen in a while.
And then there are the books – thousands of meticulously organized books on topics ranging from UFOs to politics to feminine spirituality.
He gestures to his Christmas folklore section and begins talking about Krampus, Santa Claus’ evil counterpart. When he was a young boy taking the subway in Brooklyn, Souzis remembers seeing a brochure that raised the question: Santa or Satan?
“It blew my mind. I must have been 8 years old,” he says. Now, Souzis is 52, and has an entire Santa-Satan section of rare books in his library, which he has dubbed the Whybrary.
His nephew, when he was very young, was not a fan of Krampus, Souzis says with a mischievous grin, and mimics a high-pitched child’s voice: “He’s like, ‘Is Krampus gonna come and get me?’”
Though he’s been collecting books and found objects for years, producing art in various forms, and occasionally working tech contract jobs, he has often had to navigate financial difficulties to survive in San Francisco — recently by inviting outsiders into his home.
To Souzis, being poor has creative value. “One of the things that this culture really doesn’t understand is that there’s value in not having a lot of things.” Of course, Souzis has a lot of stuff, but he has no car, doesn’t go on vacation, and owns no major assets. As a “divergent thinker,” Souzis says he simply can’t comply with what he calls “our cruel capitalist society.”
This means that when he worked in tech in the 90s, he didn’t invest in stocks. When his colleagues bought Google stock at a dollar a share, or Bitcoin at 50 cents, he didn’t partake.
Souzis gets some government assistance. He struggles to pay his rent and has recently started to try and monetize some of the work he produces. He has written and designed elaborate zines, records psychedelic music and is working on a podcast. Among friends, he does divination readings.
Despite the struggles, he wouldn’t change anything. “I feel like I’ve been blessed with a strange life,” he says. As proof, he adds, “I’m also one of those people … I’ll turn my head and I’ll see something and no one else has seen it.”
That’s how he found the perfect vase for his plastic tree, or came upon the thick Grecian pillars a boutique shop was throwing out. And it’s how, when Souzis realized he hadn’t seen his typewriter in years — and remembered that he would definitely need one in case of an apocalypse — he came across the perfect old typewriter at an auction. “I knew the magic was right!” he says. He’s been churning out poetry ever since.
“I have friends over the years [saying], ‘You have so much work, why don’t you put it out?’ I have young people [saying] ‘Please, let me’ — you know, they want to help me,” Souzis said. He remembers one friend booking him a music gig at a venue without warning him, in an effort to help Souzis “get out there.”
But something holds Souzis back. “I’m kind of old,” he says. “I want to do it on my own terms.”
All he wants is to be able to sustain his home full of relics, to read and create, and share it all with the public.
Earlier this year, he began hosting salon gatherings at his home to discuss various esoteric topics, playing music, and allowing people to tour his museum-like home. He is uncomfortable charging attendees but is open to donations to the Whybrary.
More recently, he began to host people on Airbnb Experiences, offering up his fortune-telling services, a musical performance, and an interactive tour of his space. He has received only glowing reviews, to the point where Souzis worries they might seem fake.
An app he spent two to three years building allows users to determine astrological positions at any point in time. But Souzis says he has “hardcore PTSD” from the effort, and he couldn’t bring himself to schmooze with the right people to sell it.
“But I am proud that I got it done. A lot of people talk about their big projects and they don’t get it done,” Souzis says.
That app now lives on his tablet, with the web certificate out of date. He doesn’t seem too bothered.
“A lot of people are like, ‘You’re so dumb, why are you 50 and you’re stupid and poor?’” Souzis says. He looks around the Whybrary at his treasures. “But I have this.”
My kid and I had a great Sunday evening with Matthew about a year ago. He’s very conversant in many topics.