Those of us who really vibe with the place seem to share a desire to get behind the city’s strange magic and discover the past souls and events that make San Francisco what it is - that make it feel this particular way that it does.
To the author and everyone else who has arrived here recently: welcome to San Francisco!
IIRC he said he had expected some kind of alternate hippie-economy based on genuine values and having ownership of the neighborhood, and was disappointed that he didn't see any evidence of that. Just a bunch of idle people.
My uncle had the same description. Disappointed that it was just stoned people and not a lot of real substance.
"The immigrant, on arriving, found himself a stranger, in a strange land, far from friends. Time pressed, for the little means that could be realized from the sale of what was left of the outfit would not support a man long at California prices. Many became discouraged. Others would take off their coats and look for a job, no matter what it might be. These succeeded as a rule. There were many young men who had studied professions before they went to California, and who had never done a day's manual labor in their lives, who took in the situation at once and went to work to make a start at anything they could get to do. Some supplied carpenters and masons with material—carrying plank, brick, or mortar, as the case might be; others drove stages, drays, or baggage wagons, until they could do better. More became discouraged early and spent their time looking up people who would 'treat,' or lounging about restaurants and gambling houses where free lunches were furnished daily."
The point of the left is to bring prosperity into reach for everyone, not to stroke the hair of able young men in poker dens who refuse to work, and whisper "You're valid."
That's what capital wants the left to degrade into.
https://genius.com/The-mothers-of-invention-who-needs-the-pe...
> History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
> My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
> There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
> And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
> So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)
Then there's the fact that even the 18-20yo "Hippie Pilgrim" demo, which has held up pretty well for generations, is secretly stratified by the socioeconomic status of the parents. One's take on it depends on the specific cliques they're exposed to.