There are files in The Advertiser's library stuffed with photos of Neil Abercrombie. The pictures go back even before the long hair and ZZ Top beard, back to 1963 when he was named manager of the Rex Ravelle bodybuilding gym. (Not Rex Kwon Do, but close.)

There he is in 1969, a 31-year-old UH lecturer being interviewed shirtless, saying "It is not we who reject society but society who rejects itself."

There he is in 1970, running in sweats looking scraggly but determined, like Tom Hanks in "Forrest Gump" jogging cross country, calling himself "the only serious candidate for U.S. Senate."

There he is in 1975, wearing a flowered, fringed poncho while serving in the state Legislature.

There he is in 1982, on King Street, sitting on a wooden platform with the words "Da Soap Box" written on the side, holding a campaign sign and flashing a peace sign.

Of all the things he's said and done in Hawai'i in his public career, those images bleed through like an old sign on a cement building that refuses to be painted over.

You might not remember the pictures exactly, but you remember the impression of him in the beginning. The long beginning. He didn't get suited up and all mainstream until the mid-1990s. Before that, it was a cultivated, purposeful, visage and the practiced rhetoric of a radical. It was a deliberate performance, with costumes, props and scripted lines. At times, he was college-campus serious. Alternately, he played the goofball, pulling stunts like "Super Senator" and cutting up a huge "tax pizza," hamming it up with his eyes bulged and tongue hanging out for the photographers.

And like Tom Hanks and his goofy "Bosom Buddies" early days, Abercrombie managed to get past that pigeonhole. He gave up the attention-seeking schtick and got the public to accept his new image. Forty years ago, he had a hard time proving he was, as he claimed, the only serious candidate for U.S. Senate. Now he is the only serious candidate for governor the Hawai'i Democrats have fielded since Ben Cayetano (remember when Mazie Hirono ran for governor, then held a press conference saying she was running for mayor, and then changed her mind again and ran for governor? And who can even recall Randy Iwase's listless campaign two years ago?)

Though he has given up the ponchos and the taxicab, this latest move may be the most outlandish of his life: to walk away from a virtually guaranteed lifetime seat in Congress to run for an office that will require a very different set of skills than he has put into use over the last several decades.

Radical, dude.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.