Erick Rock Club and his goat Deer would very much like you to come to the Earth Day festival he has been planning for months Friday afternoon in Cal Anderson. But he’s pretty sure you won’t. And not just because of short notice.

“I’ve been walking around with this goat trying to tell them about this Earth Day festival,” Erick told CHS earlier today. “People are too busy. They keep walking.”

With a threat of rain, Erick said Cal Anderson might not work out and maybe he’ll need to move the music and gathering he hopes comes together to someplace out of the drizzle — maybe the entrance to Capitol Hill Station, he says.

It turns out the man with the goat has a lot of vision and a lot to say about the way the world works and the people who are too busy to talk to him about Earth Day. CHS walked by plenty of times — We should have asked him about the Earth Day festival earlier.

(Images: Rock Club Foundation)

Over the past six months, Erick and Deer have been come part of the Capitol Hill legend. Drunken packs of bros and woo girls pay a buck to pet Deer in the midst of crowded nights in Pike/Pine. The money is mostly inconsequential. Erick says he received regular government support because of his disability from a brain injury as a child. Erick and Deer live in his van, moving around the neighborhood and city as needed. He puts what money he can and all of his energy into an organization he formed called the Rock Club Foundation, “created to empower the people by encouraging creativity, igniting passion and spreading love.”

Erick hoped things like the Earth Day festival and a Free Day Market he works on every Sunday with Food Not Bombs down near the Cascade Playground would help him start to make the changes he wants to see so badly in the world. The Bernie Sanders campaign, he says, also offers hope.

But it probably won’t be enough to keep him on Capitol Hill and in Seattle.

“I’m leaving Seattle. Because Seattle doesn’t care,” Erick said Friday. “What do I have to do? Climb a tree?”

Erick said he is making plans for moving on now that April 22nd has come and almost gone.

“The whole reason I have this goat is to tell people about my organization to try to make the world a better place. All I’m trying to do is save the planet.”

You can learn more and connect with Erick on the Rock Club Foundation Facebook page. There is also a “goat fun me” fundraising page if you’d like to give him a few bucks without bugging Deer.

*goat noises* — Dear The Goat (@DearTheGoat) April 20, 2016