When Hippies Grow Up

So if hippies who have dropped back in, tuned back out, and finally turned it off after the bedlam of their youth, do you think they remain sympathetic to the next generation of hippies that are infesting the hippie mecca of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco? Or do they become one with the corporate machine? Its definitely the latter.

This funny article here at Boing Boing, quoting the LA Times:

(Arthur) Evans, 64, says (the punks) should get help, clean up or go home…

“I used to be a hippie. I wore beads and grew my hair long,” he said. “But my generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior….”

Oh Really? It wasn’t that long ago that I heard of starving hippies eating stray and homeowners’ cats in the Haight Ashbury district during the “Summer of Love.” They called that civilized?

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.”

(Carolyn) Mckenna said she was tired of being criticized for the “crime” of owning a home. “Haight-Ashbury is not synonymous with anarchy,” she said. “It’s not fair to homeowners with their entire net worth tied up here. I’d be disingenuous if I said I wasn’t worried about property values.”

Property values are threatened, huh? I guess they need a neighborhood watch and stronger police enforcement. Or would that be fascist?