June 05, 2007

NPR: It's Not Another Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury

How nimbly the hippies adopt NIMBY


Isn't being a hippie more than just the fashion statement (long hair and beads) this quoted dude mentions?

NPR: It's Not Another Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury: "It's Not Another Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury

Once they were hippies and flower children. Now, they are homeowners and shopkeepers. And they don't like what's happening to Haight-Ashbury.

The Los Angeles Times reports on the tension in the San Francisco counterculture neighborhood over its newest residents: gutter punks -- '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.' Boing Boing points out some interesting quotes:

'I used to be a hippie. I wore beads and grew my hair long,' [64-year-old Arthur Evans] said. 'But my generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior.'

And this one:

'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.'

This year will definitely not be another Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury. I guess sooner or later everybody forgets how they started."



No comments: