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June 5, 2007
San Francisco Hippies Grow Up
Even the useless hippies who washed up in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district in the Flower Child era are capable of growing up — enough to resent the snot-nosed punks who now carry on their countercultural tradition:
From his second-floor apartment at the counterculture crossing of Haight and Ashbury streets, Arthur Evans watches a new generation of wayward youth invade his free-spirited neighborhood.
The former flower child was among the legions of idealistic wanderers who migrated here during the Vietnam War to "tune in, turn on and drop out."
But Evans, who has lived at the same address for 34 years, says he has never seen anything like this crowd, who use his flower bed as a bathroom and sell pot outside his window.
They're known as gutter punks, these homeless kids with dirty dreadlocks and nose rings, lime-green mohawks and orange spray-painted faces, who panhandle with cardboard signs that riff on their lifestyles. "Please Help Us Get Un-Sober," one reads. Another: "Please Give Us Weed, Beer or Money."
Sometimes aggressive, they block sidewalks as they strum guitars or bang on bongos. Gangs of them skateboard down the middle of Haight Street. Some throw used hypodermic needles into a nearby pond they call Hep-C Lake.
Evans, 64, says they should get help, clean up or go home.
Bwahahaha! Mellow out, man! Don't be so square!
Wait, there's more:
"I'm sick of stepping over gangs of kids, only to be told 'Die, yuppie!' A lot of us were flower children, but we grew up," said Robert Shadoian, 58, a retired family therapist. "There are responsibilities in this world you have to meet. You can't be drugged out 24/7 and expect the world to take care of you."
You used to be a flower child? That's groovy, Bob! Give me a dollar!
And this:
John Grima, a program director at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, founded in the 1960s, says his agency provides "nonjudgmental" services for homeless youths. "Still, there's this assumption of a free ride," he said.
Grima said a teen asked him for change on Haight Street. Grima offered him slices of pepperoni pizza. The young man refused, saying he was vegetarian.
"I said, 'OK, then don't eat it,' then I got mad," Grima said. "I said, 'Wait a minute, I don't owe you anything. I'm happy to help you, but I don't owe you a thing.'"
It's never too late to learn.
Hat tip: Michelle Malkin, on a tip from V the K.
Posted by Van Helsing at June 5, 2007 10:48 AM
Comments
This is also an interesting quote from that article:
Evans, 64, says they should get help, clean up or go home.
"I used to be a hippie. I wore beads and grew my hair long," he said. "But my generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior."
Posted by: Anonymous at June 5, 2007 11:26 AM
I think Evans is romanticizing the filthy hippies from the '60s that he claims to be part of. They were nasty, truculent little sh!ts who, like the current bumper crop, expected a dystopian, communal society to take care of them. There's nothing new here, just narcissistic retards who have their collective hands perpetually stuck out.
Ironic that they appropriate the property of the eeeevil corporate grocery stores to schlep their filthy, fetid belongings around in.
Posted by: skh.pcola at June 5, 2007 3:01 PM
It is a powerful gift to see ourselves as others see us. I think that the previous residents probably thought the same thing back in the 'Summer of Love'.
Posted by: James F McEnanly at June 5, 2007 4:13 PM
Congratulations, 'Now Generation', you are now part of 'THE ESTABLISHMENT'!
Posted by: KHarn at June 5, 2007 5:14 PM
If you listen very, very carefully, you can hear God chuckling.
Posted by: Jay Guevara at June 5, 2007 7:53 PM
