I’ve always had a bit of a love/Haight relationship with San Francisco. (Eh? Eh? See what I did there with the pun? Oh screw you, it was clever.)

On one hand: Allen Ginsberg. Haight-Ashbury. Free Love. Jefferson Airplane. Big Brother & The Holding Company. Ken Kesey. Monterey Pop. Flower Children. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Hot chicks in sundresses. Grass… lots and lots of grass. Rice-A-Roni. Jerry Fuckin’ Garcia!

On the other hand: The 49ers. D’oh!

I’d have made one bitchin’ hippie. I’m talking full-on barefoot, lawbreakin’, guitar-strummin’, freak-flag-flyin’, Grace-Slick-bangin’, Democratic-Convention-protestin’, parent-disappointin’ son of a bitch. Unfortunately, I was born about 20 years too late for that.

Instead, I grew up in the age of Mickey Thomas-era Jefferson Starship. Steve Perry-era Journey. The hippies were replaced by plain old vagrants. Mind-expansion was replaced by tie-width reduction. Grass was replaced by blow. Oh sure, the Rice-A-Roni was as tasty as ever, but you would have hoped that San Francisco could have resisted the urge to join the rest of the world in its newfound hopeless infatuation with crap. But nope. San Francisco had sold its soul. 

And in walked a couple of guys named Montana and Rice to regularly thereafter crush mine.

So fuck you, San Francisco. You suck.