Beloved friend, brother, son, adventurer, teacher, builder and community anchor Justin Valone passed away the evening of November 15, 2023. While working on a construction project, he fell and sustained severe injuries from which he was not able to recover. Among his many loved ones, this loss inspires both tremendous grief and immense gratitude for the inspiring, energetic, generous life Justin lived. 

Justin’s legacy is one of cultivating resistance, sharing with boundless generosity, endlessly seeking new adventures, and building relationships with the land and people around him. His booming laugh was unmistakable and unforgettable. He created guerilla gardens, planted, grafted, and gleaned countless fruit trees, started farms, and taught urban farming to others. He was an anarchist who consistently showed up for radical organizing efforts and mutual aid projects in his home and around the country. 

Justin always said that biking saved his life, and he devoted himself to community bike projects, where he built bikes and, with endless patience, skillfully taught others to ride, build and fix their bikes. 

Justin built and lived in the most beautiful shacks and tiny dwellings, finding the smallest possible wood stoves to fit in them and proudly crafting minimalist beauty from found materials. He also gave generously of his building skills, lending a hand to his friends with an array of projects including houses, outbuildings, decks, lofts, fences, treehouses, garden irrigation systems, and anything else his friends could use help with. 

Justin’s stories from his many bike touring, backpacking, hitchhiking, train hopping, and paddling adventures are hilarious, harrowing, and legendary. He felt a deep and abiding love for the mountains, rivers, and ocean of Northern California. His exuberant energy, joyful spirit, and generous heart touched innumerable friends, comrades, and strangers. Justin will live on in the hearts of his community, chosen family, and family of origin, in the smile of the tiny human he helped create by donating sperm to a close friend, and the three people who received life saving organ donations, one of whom was connected to his community. 

If you feel moved to donate in Justin’s memory,  please click here to donate to the Hub Resilience Fund in support of a project that was close to his heart.

Justin’s community is planning an epic bike ride in his honor from San Francisco to Santa Cruz March 8-10 of 2024. More details to come. If you want to help organize, let us know here.

If you’d like to share a story about Justin, you can do so here. The stories will be collected into a zine that can be shared with the community. 

There are people who are good at being good people — who are ethical, kind and do their best not to hurt their fellow travelers, human or otherwise. And there are people who embrace freedom, and are good at making themselves happy. But we’ve never known anyone who made themselves happy by being a good person as easily as Justin did. He was always fundamentally at odds with a world that says we have to choose between doing right for others and doing right for ourselves, and he lived a life that showed us how to do both. 

We are so deeply grateful for the experiences we shared together, and we’re hoping Justin’s “wild and free” energy lives on to help others make good trouble.