ABC7’s interview with Demetrius Striplin gives the Bay Area side of Tupac Shakur’s murder-trial week a precise place: Marin City, where Striplin says he knew Shakur before the legend hardened.

The courtroom is in Las Vegas, but one of this week’s quieter Tupac Shakur scenes sits back in Marin City, where Demetrius Striplin is remembering a young friend instead of watching every hour of testimony.

Striplin told ABC7↗ (external source, opens in a new tab) that he grew up with Shakur in Marin City and is aware of the trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the man accused of orchestrating Shakur’s 1996 killing, but is not following the case closely. Opening statements were held Monday, ABC7 reported; by Tuesday, the Associated Press↗ (external source, opens in a new tab) was reporting on testimony about the wounds that killed Shakur.

For Marin City, the point is not the evidence chart. It is the smaller geography that existed before the case file: Striplin’s account of music indoors, freestyling, Shakespeare in a living room, and a friend who had not yet become shorthand for an era. He told ABC7 he knew Shakur “as a friend,” and said he thinks of “the friend who made it.”

That is the local edge of a trial now moving nearly three decades after the shooting. Striplin wants answers, he told ABC7, but he also placed himself outside the proceeding: not a witness shaping the record, just someone from Marin City waiting to see whether the court can settle what rumor never could.

Tomorrow, nothing on a Marin City corner will announce that shift. The visible change is farther away: a trial calendar turning, and an old Bay Area memory pulled back into public view.