Flowers in your hair

I came across a real gem this morning. A piece of film footage taken in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco in the late 60s.

I watched it filled with nostalgia.

Then I read the commentary and laughed. As with all commentary in this age of social media, lots of people use this platform to express their anger and frustration with life. Lots of hostility. And lots of gushing on the other side, as well. That's the extreme I'm more naturally drawn to.

Many complain that there's no sound.  That's like giving somebody a wonderful present and all they can do is complain about the wrapping.

These were my first years in San Francisco, after getting out of the army in 1965. My friend Linda lived three blocks up the hill from the corner of Haight and Ashbury, on Frederick Street, with friend Dora. When Harriet, who eventually became the center of my extended chosen San Francisco family, first arrived in San Francisco, she stayed with Linda and Dora for a couple weeks before finding her own apartment. Dora's sister visited at some point. I remember two things about her sister. One is that she had worked for JFK in the White House and the other is that she really wanted to get to know the hippies, so she used to walk down and sit on the sidewalk with a bag of potato chips and wait for people to stop by and sit with her.

At one point Harriet dropped her wallet somewhere in this area. A young woman found it and found Harriet's ID, which fortunately had Linda's address on it. She showed up at the door one day. Linda and Dora and Harriet were thrilled at the thoughtfulness, so when the woman asked if she could move in they didn't know how to say no. (Even non-hippies had space on the floor back then.)  I forget the woman's name. I think it was Jane. Linda, if you're reading this, refresh my memory. Jane used the word "Wow!" all the time. And "Groovy." And "weird." I believe they started referring to her as "Weird Jane." Linda, I need refreshing on this, as well.

It took some doing, but they found a way eventually to ask her to move on. Which she did. No big deal. It was all groovy.

What strikes me about these images is how white the crowd is, and how thin. And how many people actually walked barefoot. And how many non-hippies there are in the crowd, how hippies and non-hippies shared the same space. And the sheer number of people out in the streets!

The early days when I lived with the feeling that I had found my home. When Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" resonated with me, despite the schmalz. And the line from "San Francisco" - which Jeanette MacDonald made famous and which serves now as the San Francisco theme song, played as the finale of every Gay Men's Chorus concert and other performances at the Castro Theater: 

Open your golden gate

You let no stranger wait outside your door

San Francisco

Here is your wandering one

Saying I'll wander no more...

Three quarters of my life ago now. And it's still my home, although I haven't been to the Haight-Ashbury in at least twenty years, probably.

Strange kind of nostalgia, having lived through the sixties in San Francisco, claiming the hippie culture as part of my own, but never being a part of it.

I did have the hair and I did have the clothes. Walking barefoot in city streets wasn't for me, but it's great to remember how bright-eyed and innocent I was, how positively I saw the world, how I resonated with the song, "When you go to San Francisco, wear flowers in your hair..."

Hope you can relate...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9a8qqUpI8A