San Francisco Culture

Forget the sun. Forget the North Pole. For one brief summer back in 1967, the world revolved around the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets in San Francisco, the Hollywood and Vine of Hippiedom. It was the Summer of Love, a time when youth flowed to San Francisco hoping to remake the world with flowers, innocence and LSD. Much has changed since the "turn on, tune in and drop out" counterculture burst into the public consciousness 20 summers ago.

"Something wonderful and free is happening every day in this city," my friend Liz Polo said, carefully selecting a double-latte truffle from the silver tray. It was Saturday afternoon, and we were at Neiman Marcus on Union Square. We'd just come from a Chinese cooking lesson and were headed to an elegant lunch at the Four Seasons. "My philosophy is this," Liz added. "Have dessert first." Her point of view appealed to me.

Every day, as she watches thousands of drivers nose their cars up the freeway onramp that curves just a few feet beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of her downtown loft, Toni Lee counts herself lucky to be in San Francisco. "I love it," Lee, a graphic artist, says of living and working alongside the noisy, crowded sweep of concrete. "It is an urban forest. It captures the energy of this city." Energy. The word most commonly used these days when San Franciscans describe their city.

Poor America, goes the supposed California viewpoint. So unenlightened. So full of fat people and smokers and energy hogs. So much bad feng shui . So little good Pinot. Surely it's no wonder that the other 49 states can't even say the word "California" without feeling vaguely put down. They don't realize, though, that Californians also suffer--at the hands of other Californians, in a manner that has been refined to an art in key areas of the Golden State. Actually, one key area. This one.

San Francisco in 1965 was the best place in the world to be. --Hunter S. Thompson * Two sweaty, balding, 200-pound men in leather masks and super-hero underwear fling each other around a 20-foot- by-20-foot ring as an unsatisfied fan yells, "Where's the beef?" While the "The Unholy" slams opponent "R-U-R 2000" on his back, another worked-up fan screams, in vein-popping-football-coach voice, "Get up! Get up! you [expletive]!"

There's Michael Mouse, the warm, funny, generous gay guy looking for love in all the wrong places. There's Mary Ann, the strait-laced Midwesterner who comes to loosen up and love the wild, anything-goes atmosphere of San Francisco in the '70s. There's Brian the womanizing waiter, Jon the gay gynecologist and, of course, Anna Madrigal, the infinitely tolerant, kimono-clad landlady of a certain age, who tapes a joint to new tenants' doors--just to make them feel welcome. . . .

Maybe it's the men in nuns' habits. Or the women racers masquerading as human breasts, 5 feet tall, complete with nipple rings. Or the competitors pushing beer kegs in shopping carts. Or the gleeful runners waving huge model body parts on poles, alive thanks to the grace of organ donation.

From Saturday through Oct. 8, more than 200 performances and 50 attractions will be presented at 30 locations around the city. Screenings, exhibits and interdisciplinary performances involving 1,000 performing and visual artists crowd the schedule. The expected highlights include: "Praise House," a new piece by the New York dance-theater company Urban Bush Women drawn from the life of the rural Southern folk artist Minnie Evans. At Theater Artaud, Oct. 10-14.

A proposal for an arch emblazoned with the words "This Is a Nice Neighborhood" has received mixed reviews at its first public hearing. "We want to continue working with these artists," sculptor Anne Healy said after the Arts Commission hearing. Healy, head of the commission's visual arts committee, called the $500,000 proposal "brilliant" and "wonderful." Critics, however, outnumbered backers during the two-hour hearing.

New Yorker William F. Noonan was a candidate for a San Francisco-based position with his public relations firm earlier this year. He didn't get it. "But if I was offered it tomorrow I'd still go," he said Wednesday--with the memory of Tuesday's earthquake still fresh. "I wouldn't go there next week," said Detroit attorney Michael Sharpe. "But after this situation has blown over, I wouldn't hesitate."

California's last two-newspaper city is poised to become a one-newspaper city, and the result is a civic free-for-all rife with celebrity bashing, a federal investigation, a state investigation, two city investigations, seething self-interest and a welter of resentments. The storied San Francisco Chronicle was sold this summer to the Hearst Corp., owner of its bitter rival of 100 years, the equally storied San Francisco Examiner.

Face it: Automobiles rank mighty low on the tourism food chain of this steep and gridlocked city. The Golden Gate Bridge--absolutely. Alcatraz--sure. Flotillas of barking sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf--OK. But a car? Three electric autos that hit the streets this fall are becoming tourist attractions in their own right. With bright colors and a goofy shape that looks more cartoon than car, the four-seaters turn heads as they zip silently through the city.

Bicycling here is not for the faint of heart. You've got those urban Alps that residents sportingly call hills, wide boulevards dominated by speeding cars, neighborhoods riddled with bewildering warrens of one-way streets and a citywide obstacle course of potholes, grates, curbs and train and trolley tracks. Yet it's not enough to stop San Francisco's cyclists, a dazzlingly diverse and determined group.

Maybe it's the men in nuns' habits. Or the women racers masquerading as human breasts, 5 feet tall, complete with nipple rings. Or the competitors pushing beer kegs in shopping carts. Or the gleeful runners waving huge model body parts on poles, alive thanks to the grace of organ donation.

When I think back on the 1967 "Summer of Love" it's amazing it could even be called that. The first generation raised on television and rock 'n' roll came of age that summer and there was much for them to be negative about. John F. Kennedy had been assassinated only 3 1/2 years before. A huge U.S. military buildup was underway in Vietnam. The antiwar movement was roaring. Martin Luther King Jr. urged massive civil disobedience and Stokely Carmichael was calling for a black revolution.

Every day, as she watches thousands of drivers nose their cars up the freeway onramp that curves just a few feet beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of her downtown loft, Toni Lee counts herself lucky to be in San Francisco. "I love it," Lee, a graphic artist, says of living and working alongside the noisy, crowded sweep of concrete. "It is an urban forest. It captures the energy of this city." Energy. The word most commonly used these days when San Franciscans describe their city.

In the military vernacular used by his hymn-singing, check-writing "prayer warriors," a Texas television evangelist came and saw, but could not conquer. The Rev. Larry Lea sought to "exorcise sin" from San Francisco on Wednesday night, but had to do it from inside the Civic Center Auditorium while 1,500 vocal demonstrators chanted outside and San Francisco engaged in its usual raucous and lascivious Halloween festivities.

After nine years of Dianne Feinstein's moderate politics, Art Agnos, a liberal former social worker, became this city's 39th mayor Friday with a Populist pledge to keep it from becoming an enclave for the rich. In his inaugural address in the ornate City Hall rotunda, Agnos echoed his campaign themes: affordable housing, protection of neighborhoods and small business, and fighting AIDS and homelessness.

San Francisco in 1965 was the best place in the world to be. --Hunter S. Thompson * Two sweaty, balding, 200-pound men in leather masks and super-hero underwear fling each other around a 20-foot- by-20-foot ring as an unsatisfied fan yells, "Where's the beef?" While the "The Unholy" slams opponent "R-U-R 2000" on his back, another worked-up fan screams, in vein-popping-football-coach voice, "Get up! Get up! you [expletive]!"

Perched on their respective harbors, they are like civic jewels in the Golden State's crown, port cities of great beauty and great promise, cities that have remained livable while much of urban America appears in rapid decline.