Cameron Bren
The 33-year-old Bumblebee hanging out on State Street before a brutal fight left him hospitalized.
Until a month ago, Bumblebee had found Madison to be a welcoming stopover on his travels around the United States.
But less than a week after praising Madison in an Isthmus article about “traveling dirty kids,” Bumblebee was found lying in a pool of blood on a hiking trail in the UW-Madison Arboretum.
“They told me I barely made it,” the 33-year-old Bumblebee said, lying in his hospital bed. “They gave me a lot of blood, and they didn’t expect me to make it through the night — but I did.”
Bumblebee’s birth name is Benjamin Sturdevant. He arrived in Madison on Sept. 7. Although he praised the city for having friendly police and generous residents, he noted that his nomadic lifestyle can be dangerous.
“You got to be careful traveling by yourself,” he told Isthmus.
But he didn’t imagine the peril might come from a friend.
Bumblebee says he remembers hanging out drinking with two friends, Smurf and Johnny Love, on Oct. 4. “We were sitting there drinking a half-gallon [of liquor],” he says. “Everybody was happy; next thing I know I wake up in the hospital.”
Matt Johnson, who goes by the street name of Smurf, remembers a little bit more of the altercation. Smurf recalls Bumblebee and Johnny arguing that day, when suddenly, Bumblebee pulled out his knife and approached Johnny. Smurf says he jumped on Bumblebee and took the knife away. He didn't want to get hurt himself, so he stashed the knife and hopped on a bus heading downtown.
Hours later, Smurf learned that the fighting turned savage.
According to a police report, Bumblebee was found unconscious and seriously injured near Seminole Highway. His eyes were swollen shut. Police later found Johnny, whose legal name is Skyler Goldsmith, sleeping behind a liquor store in a blood-soaked shirt next to a broken acoustic guitar covered with hair and blood.
An officer woke Goldsmith, 24, asking him if he was okay. He told police he was fine, just taking a nap. When asked why he was covered in blood, Goldsmith allegedly responded that he had just won a fight with someone he considers a friend and hit him with the guitar.
On Oct. 10, Goldsmith was charged with first-degree reckless endangerment and jailed on $50,000 bail.
Although Bumblebee doesn’t remember much about the Oct. 4 incident, he concedes there was tension building between him and Goldsmith.
A few days before, the two had had a less serious fight, when Goldsmith punched him in the face. Bumblebee was laid out on the sidewalk when police found him and asked what happened.
“They gave me a breathalyzer and I blew like a .643...and they were like, if you just tell us who hit you, instead of taking you to jail, we will take you to detox and we’ll give you your dog.”
Bumblebee says if he went to jail his dog would have gone to the pound, which would cost him hundreds of dollars he didn’t have to get her out. So he told police it was Goldsmith who hit him.
“They arrested Johnny, took him to jail for a night, released him, dismissed the charges, I got my dog back,” Bumblebee says. “It was either Johnny or my dog, and so I chose my dog over Johnny. And so Johnny started, ‘you’re a narc, you’re a narc,’ this that and the other. All that animosity built up and built up, and then finally he just exploded when we were out drinking.”
Bumblebee was released from the hospital on Oct. 19. The hospital gave Bumblebee a one-way bus ticket to Ithaca, New York, after he was discharged. He said police would bring him his dog before leaving.
He plans to stay with his dad in Ithaca until healing. Then he's going to Southern California for “Black Sheep Christmas,” a gathering of the Rainbow Family, a loosely affiliated group of travelers who sporadically congregate. “It’s a Rainbow Gathering for all the kids who don't have family,” he says.
Despite nearly dying, Bumblebee says he has no plans of changing his lifestyle.
“I am who am I am,” he says. “Can’t keep me down. If I'm still breathing, I'm still Rainbow.”
Bumblebee's biggest regrets from the whole dust-up are losing his dreads and his guitar.
“I'm just really mad that I don't have a guitar...and, dude, they cut my dreads off,” he says. “That was 12 years of dreads.”
As for Johnny Love, Bumblebee says he doesn’t deserve that name.
“That dude cost me a lot, almost my life,” he says. “I told them full charges. I don't give a fuck about that kid; he deserves everything he fucking gets.”
