Drag queen, junkie, alcoholic, commune leader-and, finally, Buddhist teacher: these words describe the unlikely persona of Issan Dorsey, whose story dramatically illustrates William Blake's essential insight, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." From his days as a gorgeous female impersonator in San Francisco in the 1950s, through the LSD experiences that set him on the Zen path for the next two decades, Issan Dorsey's life was never conventional. In 1989, after twenty years of Zen practice, he became Abbot of San Francisco's Hartford Street Zen Center, where he founded the Maitri Hospice for AIDS patients. Street Zen draws on a dozen interviews David Schneider conducted with Dorsey before his death in 1990, and the nearly 20-year friendship between them.