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Feature
Fogged In
San Francisco, back when it was beautiful and not the world capital of political correctness, didn’t have to go out of its way to attract attention.
(Page 2 of 2)
The city has a proud history of wackiness dating back to self-anointed “Emperor” Norton. Garchik says, “I think it’s [wackiness] a bum rap if you assume that’s all the city is, which discounts all the serious stuff. It’s easy for people to think it’s very bizarre, but it’s a cliché—like people who say New York is heartless. It’s always been known for its sense of adventure, devil-may-careness. It’s also a serious city — the whole high-tech Silicon Valley stuff [more staid San Jose than San Francisco], people believing anything is possible.” She blames the kooky label in part on “politicians afraid to take a stand — instead of losing 100 votes if they take a stand, they put all these quite silly little measures on the ballot and let the voters decide.”
DINING IS AN EQUALLY emotional, indeed religious, experience here. Alice Waters, who founded the foodist temple Chez Panisse in Berkeley, is the Dalai Lama of dining whom orthodox foodies pray to regularly and ask forgiveness from should they dare to eat a politically incorrect fish, an out-of-state tomato, or a chicken with a sketchy résumé.
Restaurants have supplanted theater as major performance venues, vying for must-eat-at destination of the month (even if this month’s trendy bistro may be next month’s sub shop). Local menus require ESL instructors to translate ingredients to diners not fluent in Advanced Menu-ese (Australian wagyushabu-shabu, anyone?). The airport recently opened a remodeled Terminal 2 with an upscale dining court that has foodies all a-twitter.
Food is breaking news here. A page one story in the Chronicle featured an in-depth expose by wornout radical Warren Hinckle about a scandalous lack of Irish coffee glasses at the Buena Vista, where Irish coffee was invented. After new glasses were uncovered, Hinckle wrote a full-page follow-up. Rumors that Starbucks might buy up-market Peet’s provoked sputtering callers on talk shows; San Franciscans always let you know they never set foot in Starbucks. A trip to Trader Joe’s is like a visit to Lourdes. You don’t want to be caught shopping at Safeway for non-“artisanal” olives.
Anti-war protests here draw sparse crowds today, unlike the rebellious Sixties. What truly enrage San Franciscans these days are paper bags, soft drinks (banned last year in all city buildings by mayoral edict), and any whiff of tobacco. Cigarette malingerers outside stores are ordered to move along, unlike panhandlers left alone to ply their trade.
The city finally passed a law that ostensibly bans sitting and lying on sidewalks, but it’s far more dangerous to be nabbed smoking here. Panhandlers are so pervasive (more per capita than any other city in America) that the city was forced to outlaw “aggressive panhandling.” It’s not uncommon downtown to be hit up three times in one block, but panhandlers no longer ask for spare change — a few bucks, please, for a skim milk cappuccino (Visa and MasterCard not accepted).
In San Francisco’s desire to become the world capital of political correctness and social nirvana, it’s possible to foresee a day when the board of supervisors bans the sale of fried food, white bread, refined sugar, and farmed salmon. Bistros here carry a pledge on their menu attesting to the sustainability, pedigree, and culinary correctness of every locally harvested radish and gluten-free muffin.
A lot of this sounds familiar to a Scandinavian who moved to the city in 1985: “Like Sweden, San Francisco loves to tell everyone in the world how they should live.” She adds, “People here give lip service to saving the planet, playing to the liberal gallery. They go on about not leaving a ‘carbon footprint,’ then hop on a plane to visit the rainforest.” Everyone here is busily recycling and composting like mad.
THERE ARE CARBON FOOTPRINTS aplenty on San Francisco’s once tidy streets. “I’m amazed how dirty it’s become,” says a regular visitor here, a common complaint. Travel & Leisure recently named the city the nation’s 12th dirtiest (not even counting the sex gadget shops), grungier than Dallas/Fort Worth, Washington, and Boston. On the other hand, the city ranked high for its coffee, ethnic cuisine, diversity, and neighborhood life.
San Francisco long prided itself as a cosmopolitan city where women wore gloves downtown and gents went to work in suits and ties, but the city’s funky style — and dress-down Fridays (indeed Mondays through Thursdays) — finally got to author Danielle Steel, who moved from San Francisco to Paris last spring because, she grumped, “You can’t be chic here.” San Francisco was once dubbed “The Paris of the West,” but now looks more like the Fallujah of the West (although Herb Caen long ago tagged S.F. “Baghdad by the Bay”).
Steel was soundly hissed, but old timer Carl Nolte, who writes the “Native Son” column in the Chronicle, agreed with her. “You know what? She’s right. In my travels around the town, I have noticed more and more that San Franciscans look less and less like San Franciscans.” Nolte quoted a female friend, “The shop girls are dressing better than the customers, who look like garbage. They have no pride in their appearance.” In Steel’s rant, she said, “There’s no style, nobody dresses up. It’s all shorts and hiking boots and flip-flops. It’s as if everyone is dressed to go on a camping trip. I don’t think people really care how they look there.” GQ names San Francisco the 20th Worst Dressed U.S. City.
Leah Garchik counters, “I think it’s nonsense. Who does she see in shorts except tourists? That was just something for her to say — the mystery is what personal score she was settling.” Garchik adds, “I think that [funkier dress] is true for all cities in the U.S., but in Europe they may dress up a little more.”
Even baseball’s 2010 World Champion Giants are a beloved band of scruffy misfits, led by shoulderlength haired Tim (“The Freak”) Lincecum and showboat reliever Brian Wilson, with his big black bushy Captain Ahab beard. Most of the bewhiskered starting nine have fallen into line. Wilson attended the ESPY awards clad in a spandex tux.
There is ample reason for San Francisco’s love affair with itself as a Petri dish of creative ferment: In the past 60 years, the city has nurtured revolutions in sex, drugs, and rock and roll, also stand-up comedy, gay life, ecology, and cuisine — although it has long been resting on its innovative laurels (including porn — a new documentary about the golden age of pornography, San Francisco-based, is titled Smut Capital of America).
San Francisco may praise itself as a haven of eccentricity and experimentation, but it still takes New York City or Los Angeles to certify a pop performer, a comedian, a gourmet trend, a lifestyle change. A fad may begin in anything-goes San Francisco (like Burning Man, the annual love-in of burned-out and wealthy wannabe hippies) but it needs to leave town to get serious national attention. That might be at the heart of the city’s self-infatuation (Garchik prefers to call it “self-awareness”): a deep-seated insecurity, the worry that nobody east of Sacramento takes San Francisco very seriously…except San Franciscans.
THE CITY WAS AGHAST when Prince William and Kate snubbed the city last summer for a visit to Los Angeles, the city’s scorned rival that localites still take joy in feeling superior to, even if L.A. is considered by many to have surpassed San Francisco culturally. S.F.’s best known theatrical contribution is Beach Blanket Babylon, a zanycamp parody of pop life now in its 37th year, a show that appeals to gays, grandmas, and gaga tourists alike. The drag show at Finocchio’s was a hot tourist ticket for decades, but it closed once the same show could be viewed for free any night on Castro Street.
The world coos over the city, adores its hilly vistas, climate, sourdough bread, and cable cars, but in its heart the city struggles with (and yet is deeply proud of) the fact that it is not New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, or Washington. A woman I know calls it “a toy city.” Long ago, New York Post columnist Leonard Lyons wrote off San Francisco as “a three-day city.” An editor at the New York Daily News once told me, “It’s a pretty town, but once you leave there and return to New York, San Francisco dwindles in importance to the size of a pin.” So if San Franciscans are obsessive about flaunting the city’s glories and goofiness, perhaps it’s just to make sure the city gets noticed at all.
About the Author
Gerald Nachman is a writer in San Francisco and most recently the author of Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan’s America (University of California Press).
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Kitty| 10.21.11 @ 6:35AM
I visited the city back in March of 1990. I loved its architecture and the bay. I loved all the seals camping out on the docks. But I much prefer living in Nowheresville.
donserge| 10.21.11 @ 8:00AM
My question would be: Is San Francisco self-sufficient or do they receive state and federal $$ to support this nonsense?
Nunya| 10.21.11 @ 8:26AM
I love the city of San Francisco, been there many times. The people of San Francisco, that's a different matter entirely... For me it's the epitome of the saying "It's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there." I've felt that way for many years.
Dave| 10.21.11 @ 8:39AM
My sentiments exactly. I couldn't have said it better.
Buck Ofama| 10.21.11 @ 12:36PM
New motto:
"San Fran SICKO: A Good Place to Leave"
oldfart| 10.21.11 @ 8:38AM
I have been to SF twice in my life. The physical SF is a wonderful place. But I don't care to subject myself to their self-indulgent lifestyle.
Moe Blotz| 10.21.11 @ 9:12AM
Did smiley face begin its existence in the Gay Bay as well? San Francisco was also at the fore front of the microbrew resurgence in the late 70s via Fritz Maytag and Anchor Brewing Co.
AngloSaxon| 10.21.11 @ 9:37AM
If we ever have a another civil war in this country, San Francisco should suffer the same fate as Dresden. Only San Francisco deserves it whereas Dresden didn't.
Anthony| 10.21.11 @ 10:12AM
I think it's more a question of when rather than if. It will be fun watching VTWIN and his loopy gang of bikers ride to the defense of San Fran.
Since Obozo and the American left are suddenly in love with the use of predator drones to kill Americans overseas, I can't imagine why anybody would have any complaints if several dozen landed in San Fran.
Besides, the imagery of big phallus' falling upon SF is fitting.
Buck Ofama| 10.21.11 @ 12:35PM
>the imagery of big phallus' falling upon SF is fitting.
"Fitting" LOL
How about stealth drones shaped like the B1 bomber... Hairpie in the sky, for all the dykes.
cowgirl| 10.21.11 @ 9:38AM
My family has owned one of the most famous bars in SF since 1945. I was born in East Oakland Hospital and raised in what used to be a small city south of Oakland. Growing up in the Bay Area, I knew SF like I knew the back of my hand and loved going to the "City". Especially at Christmas Time in Union Square. My favorite was the top floor of Capwells on Market Street (long gone) where there was a Santa Claus Winter Wonderland with rides and displays of the White House, The Washington Monument and various other national and international historical sites done up in Legos. My memories of SF and Oakland for that matter are bittersweet. Both cities have been ruined beyond recognition by LIBERAL polices and politicians. Both cities are truly disgusting and I do my best to stay away from both.
The author stated that SF is hostile to conservatives - yes this is true. However there is one conservative that even the gays are unable to get out of the city and that is radio talk show host Michael Savage. He holds multiple PhD's in scientific discplines and he is an expert in history with an emphasis on Middle East History. He wrote a book some years back called "Liberalism is a Mental Illness". One can only believe that all Dr. Savage had to do was look out of his window at work in San Francisco everyday to get all the facts, stories and diagnosis that he wrote about in his book. He would have to look no further .....
Moe Blotz| 10.21.11 @ 2:29PM
Dyiz think the Gay Bay may suffer the same fate as Sodom and Gomorra? Around Phluffya I can not find a broadcast of Savage Nation unless I tune in to 990 between 03.00-05.00 in the morning or 790 from Allentown just before midnight. Pity Dr. Weiner canna' find a broadcast venue with the cojones he has.
Bob Grant| 10.21.11 @ 7:04PM
There's a thing called the internet. Perhaps your answer lies there?
BTW. Wasn't Moe Blotz a character in the God Father?
Jeamar37| 10.22.11 @ 7:23PM
Amen cowgirl. You can say the same about Berkeley. When I went to school there eons ago it was a wonderful place to live. The last time I visited there Telegraph Ave. looked like a third-world market place. We "can't go home again."
Sam Vaughn| 10.21.11 @ 9:44AM
Timely. San Francisco has ceased to be. It's thriving trade/mercantile heritage might as well not have existed. Ultimately, it is sad, demented, no morals whatsoever, and I would sooner raise my children in Toledo, OH than SF. As a visitor I stumbled upon the Up your Alley festival and was appalled. The place is truly a sick disgusting hell hole with a very thin veneer. I won't ever go back.
JimH| 10.21.11 @ 9:44AM
I guess we can look forward to the future when it regains it's glory and becomes the headquarters for the Federation's Star Fleet.
POST American| 10.21.11 @ 9:56AM
----San Franciso -----de FUKISHIMA . . .
STILL no spotlight on GE's Jeff I-Melt-down.
--That's right ----NONE.
cowgirl| 10.21.11 @ 10:28AM
Are you trying to prove Savage's point about liberals?
Dan Mathewson| 10.22.11 @ 1:04AM
Not only Savage's but Paul Johnson's comment about conspiracy theory being an American intellectual disease.
Melvin| 10.21.11 @ 10:23AM
This is the same city that prides itself on being a Sanctuary City, all the while quietly shipping illegal entrant minors who were caught selling drugs to San Bernardino to let the local populace there deal with this little law breakers. I guess it was OK to soil San Bernardino streets but not the bay area.
Citizen Jerry| 10.21.11 @ 10:29AM
I suppose the food is really good, but I have no desire to visit the "bay area." I don't want to be caught there when the sky falls.
Who Knows?| 10.21.11 @ 10:39AM
Here's a quote from a book published in 1957---
"Believe it or not, there is actually a politician in San Francisco who so detests the political Left Wing that he will not make a left turn with his car."
Ah, how things have changed---what HOPE?
Brian B| 10.21.11 @ 11:36AM
There's nothing wrong with the beautiful city of San Francisco that a neutron bomb wouldn't fix.
blackwatch| 10.21.11 @ 9:08PM
I live 100 east of SF. It is not architecturally coheasive or beautiful.
I would rather smash my thumb with a mallet than visit that dump! Row after row of ugly attached homes littering the hillsides. It is not a pretty sight. Ok they have a few nice bridges and a triangular shaped building. whoppee fucking doo.
nuke it...please, somebuddy...
Buck Ofama| 10.21.11 @ 12:32PM
San Fran SICKO
>50 totally nude bicyclers peddled past the window.
I wonder how many of the bicycle seats had sludge on them- and how many of the riders wanted to sniff or lick them clean.
PM| 10.21.11 @ 1:29PM
As a visitor, I once made the faux pas of asking for Cheese Whiz, a Midwestern recipe staple, at a SF grocery store. You would have thought I was asking to vote Republican, or take my purchase out in a plastic bag! It's a wonder I wasn't asked to leave the store.
Mac Jehoff| 10.21.11 @ 2:32PM
You should have asked for duck butter, then the Cheez Whiz and the fruitcake at the grocery store would have thought you had a kinky recipe.
Eduardo| 10.21.11 @ 2:59PM
I hope the closest I ever come to San Fran will be eating Rice-a-Roni.
Derek O'Connor| 10.21.11 @ 3:41PM
Gerald,
The word is `navel', not `naval'. Given all the nudity you talk about in SF, it must be hard not to be a navel gazer. Also, given that SF is a major port, there must be quite a few naval navel gazers.
CalMark| 10.21.11 @ 3:50PM
For someone new to the Bay Area, San Francisco used to be a wonderful destination.
But recently, I've realized it's a dirty (in every way) city with peopled dirty, intolerant narcissists. And the people...their rhapsodies about SF would be comical, if they weren't so tedious; transplants are the worst about this.
If SF ceased to exist, only people who like to parade around publicly in their underwear (or less than that) would miss it.
Infantryman| 10.21.11 @ 4:58PM
It was a wonderful city in 1950 when we were off to the Korean War. We came from all directions of the United State like a swarm of young locusts and the good people of San Francisco took care of us for the two or three days we had before we flew to the Far East. The ciy and its environs were beathtakingly beautiful. We ate delicious food, chased the lovely girls and couldn't pay for a drink---a proper soldier's town. I shan't forget her as she was.
AngloSaxon| 10.21.11 @ 5:43PM
Wasn't San Francisco the place where Gen. MacArthur returned to the US after being fired by Truman? I know the people gave him a fantastic welcome home parade. It's amazing how the city had changed when it erupted in the "summer of love" sixteen years later.
Vern Crisler | 10.21.11 @ 5:02PM
I visited SF a couple years ago on business. It reminded me of a college town, especially the Fisherman's Wharf area. SF can afford to live as a permanent adolescent city as long as there are plenty of grown-up cities around the country.
My colleague and I drove through the gay Castro district. It was a sick place, but it also provoked a lot of mirth as we looked at all the bizarre places. Its also altogether too cold in some of the suburbs as the sea-wind blows all the time. A nice place to visit if you want culture shock, but given its "self adoration and self righteousness," and its crazy leftwing politics, only gays and liberals would want to live there permanently.
Redstateboy| 10.21.11 @ 5:10PM
SF falling in to the Pacific would be very little missed by the rest of America but Washington, D.C. being vaporized?? America would prosper again.
FrankM| 10.21.11 @ 5:14PM
One thing that I thought was overlooked is the dangerous side of the place. Murders and violent attacks are a frequent occurrence, and the lackadaisical attitude toward law enforcement and justice is very disheartening for victims and those of us with a moral compass.
CalMark| 10.21.11 @ 6:34PM
...and the cops are creeps.
I got hit-and-runned, and a cop ran me out of the station house. My complaint led to a "mediation session": a city-sponsored "get-even" for the cop, no doubt prepped by Union lawyers, who verbally bashed me for two hours with the assistance of city "facilitators."
Law enforcement tax dollars at work in the self-styled "World's Most Beautiful City."
Bookworm | 10.21.11 @ 5:17PM
As does Mr. Nachman, I remember the City when it was eccentric, not crazy. Just as we love our eccentric aunt, but hide ourselves behind locked doors when the crazy uncle shows up, I find that the less I have to do with today's San Francisco, the better. It's still a geographic gem, balanced exquisitely between Pacific Ocean, San Francisco Bay, and the Marin headlands, but being in the City is emotionally exhausting and, when you have kids, often embarrassing. The City that Once Knew How is now a doddering imbecile.
Stephanie| 10.21.11 @ 7:26PM
I grew up here and it breaks my heart to visit now. It was a wonderful place until the 60s and then it attracted people from New York and other places during the Haight Ashbury era. The change was very fast and brutal, to tell the truth. Too many people came all at once, along with hordes of illegals. Rents skyrocketed due to demand. I consider SF to be a very intolerant city. The author fails to mention that many odious movements started here or at least grew out of control. Jim Jones, SLA, Zebra Killings, Zodiak. There is no parking now. Except for a few, the public schools are terrible. As for food, who cares. I still can't find anyone that really condemns Jim Jones that lives there. The downhill rapidly progressed under Moscone and it's been sinking ever since.
notasicko| 10.21.11 @ 7:38PM
I went there for a wedding once. All I remember is getting sick on the Golden Gate Bridge, then throwing up. From what I read these days, it was entirely appropriate. Too bad, I love seeing SF in old Alfred Hitchcock movies.
Occam's Tool| 10.21.11 @ 9:36PM
Had a lovely symphony orchestra and great chocolate. Now it's all about vermin.
RCV| 10.22.11 @ 9:37AM
No, it still has a wonderful symphony orchestra, great opera, good museums, great restaurants ... And good chocolate, seafood and chowder. Still one of America's great cities.
John Navratil| 10.22.11 @ 4:24PM
RCV,
Come the Houston! A fabulous Opera, good symphony, repertory theatre as well as a great ballet. Unlike our rival city to the north beginning with 'D' there are numerous locally owned restaurants with wonderful chefs!
The weather..... better visit between September and May.
Chris C| 10.24.11 @ 4:25PM
"Unlike our rival city to the north beginning with 'D' there are numerous locally owned restaurants with wonderful chefs!"
I agree. Decatur, TX has almost no locally owned restaurants with wonderful chefs. Still, I'm surprised that Houston considers Decatur a rival. Or did you mean Denton?
Dr. Benway| 10.21.11 @ 10:42PM
If the author is such an expert on San Francisco he should know that "Dikes on Bikes" ride Harleys not ten-speeds.
Paul McGrath| 10.21.11 @ 10:55PM
None of you know what you're talking about. The Marina, Cow Hollow, Russian Hill, North Beach, Pier 39 and Fishermans' Wharf, Telegraph Hill, Coit Tower, Downtown, Union Square, Union St., the Richmond District, Ocean Beach, the Sunset, the inner Sunset, 24th St., South of Market, the Giant's ballpark, the walk under the Bay Bridge from there, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Cliff House, the Buena Vista (overrated, but still great), and a trillion bars, restaurants, good looking people from everywhere on earth, and a ton of good-looking women dressed like fashion models, Asian babes, South American babes, European babes . . . not to mention all the wierd stuff, which is, wow, occasionally FUN! Like walking back to the hotel after a great dinner and the theatre and finding the USC marching band playing their fight song at midnight in Union Square! (Yeah, yeah, that's a tame one. The Folsom St. fair is another story, but you know what? You don't have to go there on that day.)
AS to the gays? Well, first of all, there are really not that many of them--any more than most American cities like New York or Chicago--and secondly, not one gay person has ever bothered me in my life. They mind their business, and I mind mine. And a few I've known were pretty great guys.
If you don't want to visit the city, well, don't. Dayton, Toledo, Ft. Wayne, Des Moines, Omaha, Little Rock and Waco are, I'm sure, wonderful cities. Drink your Bud light, enjoy your fat-ass wife, have a wonderful dinner at the local Olive Garden, and smugly contemplate how superior you are to those godless San Franciscans.
You really are so much better than them.
The Clintidote| 10.22.11 @ 12:35AM
"You really are so much better than them."
That was a lot of meandering verbiage, but you finally made it to the truth, so congratulations.
Buck Ofama| 10.22.11 @ 1:21AM
LOL, someone has a thin skin.
CalMark| 10.22.11 @ 4:07PM
"Drink your Bud light, enjoy your fat-ass wife, have a wonderful dinner at the local Olive Garden, and smugly contemplate how superior you are to those godless San Franciscans."
Good night. Snobbery for me, and as for thee--you're really NOT entitled to an opinion, peasants.
Paul McGrath| 10.22.11 @ 11:52PM
Works both ways, Calmark. That's the point I was trying to make. Disparage San Franciscans all you want, but mind the beam in your own eye first.
CalMark| 10.24.11 @ 2:49AM
People here are pointing out (with some asperity, it's true) factual things they don't like about SF, most of it having to do with its filth (on all levels), its ultra-liberal slant, and "anything goes" atmosphere. You may disagree, but those are specific criticisms levied at specific conditions--most of which SF'ers are PROUD of.
You don't like people ridiculing the perverse and perverted things you celebrate. So you haul out your tired, nasty elitist slurs. They show more about you than us.
You see, most mainstream Americans LIKE the stuff you insult so nastily. And regard someone like you as they would a sneaky, dangerous venomous reptile at the zoo.
In short, your cattiness demonstrates your utter ignorance about the rest of America--the real USA. It proves that you are completely out of touch with the mainstream of the country in which you live. Even more worrisome, you celebrate it because you think of yourself as superior.
John Navratil| 10.22.11 @ 4:34PM
Dang, y'all. I think we dun put a burr under the boy's saddle blanket. Pass me some more of them beans, cookie... and the bottle!
I working this here Noo Yawk Time crossword puzzle and need a nine-letter word for parish schools beginnin' with 'P'.
Paul McGrath| 10.23.11 @ 12:22AM
Might be "parochial," dimwit. Your cleverness astounds. A much more difficult task might be to try to determine what point it is you're trying to make.
John Navratil| 10.23.11 @ 10:32AM
I'm so sorry that it was unclear. The point was that you have a very parochial view (but, clever boy, you were just ahead of me)! I wasn't trying to be too abstruse - I really thought you'd get it. Perhaps I misjudged. It won't happen again!
Paul J| 10.22.11 @ 10:04AM
I visit the city every few years, at times it's like a fantasy in which everyone can watch the world in their own glass bubble and turn innocence into self indulgence....reality is never their strong point...
Petronius| 10.22.11 @ 10:57AM
There has been no mention of late about Occupy San Francisco; as if anybody would notice. The place has been ground zero for miscreants for so long one should wonder why all the "occupiers" of all other cities don't just gravitate to their own kind and move there.
CalMark| 10.22.11 @ 4:08PM
Oh, they're there, all right. In front of the Fed. (Oh, the ironies abound.) Angry, unbalanced, screaming up a storm.
And looking as though they haven't had contact with clean water in far too long.
Paul McGrath| 10.22.11 @ 11:56PM
Interestingly, the S. F. has handled it pretty well. Protest all you want, but no camping, no tents, no sleeping overnight. Every night, the bums have to take a hike.
In Oakland it's a different story. The bums have seized control, and the end result will not be pretty.
Paul McGrath| 10.23.11 @ 12:06AM
Meant to say S. F. P. D.
presidioJoe| 10.22.11 @ 12:12PM
I live 20 minutes away but visit enough to worry about an unsettling trend that been showing up in the local news the past couple years...shootings and gang shootouts outside the usual violent neighborhoods during the waking hours.
Pablocruize| 10.23.11 @ 1:01AM
In the second half of the 50's my folks would drive over the Donner Pass from Reno. Drop down into the San Juaquin valley to stop by Galt's Chicken Kitchen and drive out to frisco over the Bay Bridge to visit my Mom's sister up in Burlingam. I thought SF was the coolest place in the world, Mack the Knife cool. Oh well, now it stink's, I'd never go back.
POST American| 10.23.11 @ 10:53PM
---------------------FINAL WORD-----------------------
ALAS
FORD/ Carn--EGG--Hee/ Rockefeller
and Stanford Research's MOST successful
and lasting disaster from the EUGENICS promoting
'Sexual Liberation' OP of the 60's
ALAS
San Francisco, in its final throes
--------SAN FRANCISCO de FUKISHIMA
Can we hear the HAARP through the
CHEM-trails and fallout overhead?
--------------------LISTEN!-----------------------
-----------------------ALAS. . . . .
Todd Powers| 10.23.11 @ 11:44PM
I visited my aunt out there 30 years ago. It was a crazy place then. She lived right around the corner from the Haight.
Could someone tell me if we'll be talking about San Francisco in 30 years like me talk about Detroit now?
Little Miss Spellcheck| 10.24.11 @ 12:39PM
Two minor quibbles: It's Dykes (not Dikes) on Bikes. And the members of that group ride ostentatiously powerful motorcycles, not pedaled bicycles.
Ron| 10.24.11 @ 1:19PM
Ah, "Gay Bay"...I visited it once...That was enough for this poor, old country boy...
"I should have beat you with your Birkenstock when you set my house on fire..." Bowling For Soup from the song "Friends Like You." Very appropriate...