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The Street Kids of San Francisco

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Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#91

Post by pnathan »

edmundhuber wrote: post #37
nthitz wrote: post #17

Went for a walk through this area about two weeks ago. As you near the park, lot of dealers pop up. In the park, on every corner of the paths people offered to sell me drugs. Marijuana, LSD, Mushrooms were all offered. I could sense different groups competing for territory in the park. I felt uncomfortable.

If you live here, you have to harden yourself against constant harassment for money and offers of drugs, and you have to get used to stepping around garbage and shit in the street. As much as SF should strive to be tolerant, at a certain point it must be recognized that if you don't want to be taken advantage of, as I believe is the case here for "authentic" residents of Haight-Ashbury, i.e. people who pay local taxe…

I visited SF not too long ago and I found the filth appalling. And the beggars were quite aggressive vs. other cities. It did not leave me with a positive impression.

I don't mind sellers of various good (incl. drugs) so long as they are peaceable and not... in your face.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#92

Post by hnal943 »

jquery wrote: post #45
learc83 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's why I get irked when people talk about housewives becoming "braindead" from being outside of the economy. Every housewife I know has some kind of mentally stimulating hobby, and most of them make some amount of income from it (photography, crafts etc...). In fact most of them shouldn't really be called "housewives" any more than male remote programmers should be called "househusbands".

Let's get real, most homemakers are simply indulging their bourgeois fantasies. Not that I blame them, I'd do the same thing if I thought I could get away with it, but I'd probably get served divorce papers.

...or they are providing their own childcare and managing their household.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#94

Post by eli_awry »

moxie wrote: post #63
eli_awry wrote: post #16

I'm a 23 year old with purple hair, but I'm also a PhD student at a top 10 university for computer science. I've hung out in tons of squats and punk houses, and briefly been a street kid, but I got a 2380 on my SATs. I lived in a non-residential warehouse for months - months when I was taking Physics, Linear Algebra, Computer Science and Sociology 321 - Class and Inequality. I've dug through dozens of dumpsters, and…

Radical punk rock literally saved my life. As someone who's been a part of both of these worlds off and on for 16 years, I couldn't disagree with you more. I see the aesthetics of the hacker and punk scenes as being extremely similar, where as the underlying motives are currently lightyears apart. For instance, "hacker houses" and "collective houses" have a similar aesthetic. Both are about people living together, an…

I haven't had exposure to the hacker houses on the West Coast, so I can't really speak to that.

The motives of hackers I've known usually have to do with impacting the world and making it better for more people. I've been in punk houses with hackers, but we mostly had parties with art people, and collaborated with anarchists. I'm not talking about the Silicon Valley startup scene, which I know nothing about. I'm moving to MV in a month (to intern with an educational nonprofit), so I guess I'll find out.

I think I was probably wrong when I said 'startup folks', and I meant some other demographic - but it's a demographic of hackers that I've actually met in various places - Baltimore, Seattle, rural Washington state and Austin. And I (perhaps naively) thought that my various and scattered friends with a common ideological thread were representative of the makers of interesting things.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#95

Post by yid »

dewitt wrote: post #50
dewitt wrote: post #40

Like another commenter on this thread, I've lived in the Haight for the past nine years. And while the article is interesting and informative, it doesn't quite paint a full picture (literally—the pictures aren't representative, that girl is not a typical street kid by a long shot, she hasn't slept a day outside in her life. Think camo and combat boots and pit bulls, not peace signs and hacky sacks) of the underside o…

And judging from the other comments, people who have no first-hand exposure to this enviroment are simply eating the article up, believing they have the full story. I'd invite anyone who is prepared to generalize about street kid culture based on this one article alone to spend just one /evening/ walking around Haight and Stanyan. Head into the park a ways. You don't have to go more than 50 yards. I guarantee you tak…

Reading the article, I pretty much had the exact same thoughts. It really seemed like the writer had a particular feel-good story in mind ("hippies still live in the Haight!") and went out there trying to find it. The error in the article is casting the entire scene as the same slice of peace-n-love that is espoused in the story, leaving aside -- as you say -- the things that happen after dark. Serious mental illness, the sexual risks inherent in being homeless, run-ins with gangs, disease and the worsening of any future prospects as the "tree of life" is embraced.

I was once similarly enamored with the hippy scene and dated a flower child for quite some time, even visited the commune in Lake county that she grew up in, etc. There is a distinctly darker side of the whole experience whose surface is not even scratched by this article.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#96

Post by nkurz »

dewitt wrote: post #77
nkurz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Dewitt -- I presume Moxie's genuine. I'm not quite sure how to interpret his question, but I'd like to hear more of your thoughts. --nate

Hey Nate! The way I see it is that we're all guests in any new environment when we first get there. Over time, after investing love blood sweat energy tears, these places gradually become our homes. Sometimes it feels like it happens fast, sometimes it feels like it takes forever. Sometimes we are embraced by whomever is there before. Sometimes we're not and we displace (ask me how I felt moving to Avenue D back in t…

Thanks, this is excellent insight. My current role is as a business owner in Oakland. Many of the "transients" are fixtures of the neighborhood. Some we allow to charge their cellphones in the store, with others we call 911 as soon as they come in. The guest metaphor is interesting, but difficult to apply in the case of overlayed and possibly incompatible subcommunities.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#97

Post by [deleted] »

moxie wrote: post #84
Locke1689 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because he either pays property taxes or pays rent to someone who uses it to pay property taxes. Fundamentally, one can see people living on the street as belonging to a complex subgroup in our society: one which can be both symbiotic and parasitical. It is symbiotic in the sense that it provides a culture with which many can identify, especially those who have experienced hardship or difficult home lives…

There's an old wobbly story: A wobbly was riding a freight train across the midwest one summer, in between jobs. The train sided out in the middle of nowhere, and it was scorching hot, so the wobbly got off the train and started walking down a dirt road. After a couple of miles, the road passed by an apple orchard. The wobbly hopped over the fence, and sat down to rest under the shade of a big apple tree. The wobbly…

[deleted]

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#99

Post by gtani »

I would have written a different story. I lived 2 blocks from Haight and Stanyan for a long time and I was connected to street kids by skateboarding and guitar and being someone who talks to anyone (e.g I gave away a lot of Dunlop jazz3 guitar picks). While there may be a few people on the streets willingly (the new arrivals), and some are talented musicians/artists/artisans, the author chose to ignore the violence and the scourge of alcoholism and meth, the ones who have no family or safety net or options. He didn't look in the backpacks and see pepper spray, sawed off baseball bats, golf clubs and rocks (Skateboards are capable weapons also), he didn't see people lose most of their teeth in a year, or the armed guards at Whole Foods, stuff like that. The homeless are in the Haight becuase they wouldn't last long in the Mission, South of Market, Potrero, places like that

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#100

Post by Macsenour »

U sed to work at the Round Table in Albany. It is quiet and not much happens there. At that time the same owner owned my store, and the one in downtown Berkeley. One night I was asked to fill in at the Berkeley store.

Tacked on the wall where you give your order is an "86" list. These are the homeless that are asked to leave the instant they appear. All others are allowed to stay as long as they don't disrupt the business.

I saw that list and laughed, but 10 minutes later a homeless man stood outside the window and screamed obscenities at me as I worked. He was on the list, so 911 was called.

A little while later a "street kid" walked in and asked if we had spare slices. I was about to say no, when the manager said sure, and handed over a slice. When I asked I was told that when they made mistakes, put onions on a pizze that called for no onions, they saved them and handed out slices to those that asked nicely.

I guess it all depends on who and how you act.

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