Summer of tough love in San Francisco

I didn't go to Haight and Ashbury streets when I first visited San Francisco back in 1977 towards the end of the hippie era. I am sure it was different then because Jimi, Janice and Jim Morrison had only been gone for just six or seven years then.  Now in June of 2013 I was finally able to visit the birthplace of hippodrome's flower children. I rode a crowded city bus up from downtown San Francisco which let me off right there Haight and Ashbury. Today it's now a tourist destination with many gift shops lining both sides of the street for a seven block area. There were lots of young people around as they once were in that bygone era; some of them local, others just tourists like me, and still others backpacking their way from far off states. These young people weren't hippies in the classic sense but maybe some of them were the sons and daughters of hippies.

My observation was that many young people were living off the land and in the streets of San Francisco. I noticed several local young people hanging out on Haight Street, trying to look hip but who looked scruffy and also their clothes were tattered. I heard some of them talking and I could definitely hear a hard street edge to their speech.   It would be unfair for me to judge the whole area by just a few and I am not doing that. I'm just saying that I did observe an unusually large number of young homeless people hanging around the area on two particular summer days in June of 2013.

Haight street dead ends at Golden Gate Park. I looked towards the park from across the street. I could see that there were many young people congregating in that park but I was too far away to see what they were about. Overall Haight- Ashbury is a historic, well maintained  and clean area, with beautiful old houses. But there were numerous young homeless people all over the place but they did not seem to be unfriendly.

My research into the area concluded that it is very expensive to live in San Francisco. The average house there will cost about a million dollars and that is allot of bread. I explored several other parts of the city of San Francisco and it my opinion that as a whole the city is very beautiful and I am in love with it and have been since I first came there in 77 and twice more since then. But beware of going there if you are planning on staying; homelessness waits for you there if you don’t have a well paying job or at least very good prospects to get one.