Yes, the rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated—-and Ryan Little has the scoop from the man’s bedside:

“The Black Cat Man is still hanging in there.”

That’s what William “Willy” Turner told me yesterday afternoon when I visited him at the Deanwood Rehabilitation and Wellness Center on Nannie Hellen Burroughs Avenue NE, and it was a nice thing to hear several days after a handful of local blogs declared him dead.

For more than a decade, the man known to locals at Black Cat Bill greeted showgoers lining up outside the Black Cat with the call “Black Cat, Black Cat! A little change for the homeless?” Regulars knew him. The club sometimes helped him out with food. He was a neighborhood fixture who helped keep trouble away from the 14th Street NW venue. “It’s a match made in hell with Dante,” he told Washington City Paper in 1997, referring to both the Italian poet and club owner Dante Ferrando.

Read the rest at Arts Desk.