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 back then.  Now in June of 2013, I was finally able to visit the birthplace of hippiedom's flower children. I rode a crowded city bus up from downtown San Francisco which let me off right there at Haight and Ashbury. Today the area is 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 were tourists like me, and still others were young people backpacking their way there 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 observations were that many young people seemed to be living off the land and living on the streets of San Francisco. Some of the young people hanging out there were trying to look hip but they seemed scruffy and their clothes were threadbare and tattered. I heard some of them talking and I could definitely hear a hard street edge.   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 San Francisco 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. 

My research into the area concluded that it is very expensive to live in San Francisco. The average house there will cost you 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 went there in 1977 and twice more since then. But beware of going there to stay if you don’t have a well paying job or at least very good prospects because homelessness awaits you there.