The end of civilization as we know it
Bookworm on May 18 2008 at 2:55 pm | Filed under: San Francisco
Everybody around me was having fun, but I was not. Instead, I found the whole thing very depressing. Oh, I forgot to tell you what I’m talking about.
We went to see the crowd at the San Francisco Bay to Breakers race — a race that was started 96 years ago to commemorate the San Francisco Earthquake and that, until about 25 years ago, was a fairly normal affair. Since then, though, it’s become an occasion at which San Franciscans celebrate their joie de vivre, with many of them turning the event into a giant costume party.
What’s interesting about San Franciscans is that, when they get into costume, so many of them opt, not for charm or cleverness, but for perversion. Of course that doesn’t go for 100% of them. It probably applies to only about 10% 3% — but 10% 3% of 100,000 is still about 1,000 3,000 people parading the public streets celebrating their peculiar sexual fantasies.
That’s why, within seconds of entering Golden Gate Park, my children were confronted with the fascinating spectacle of an aged gentleman who had wrapped rings around himself, hugely inflating his scrotum, which he then proceeded to shake at the crowd. In a normal environment, he would have been arrested. Here, he was just part of the scenery.
This man wasn’t the only naked one. There were lots of naked people. Probably 90% of them had embarrassingly ugly bodies. Why is it always those with the most avoirdupois, the most pendulous breasts, the most bizarrely tufted body hair, the most mottled skin, and the smallest penises who feel this peculiar compulsion to parade around well-attended public spots in the altogether?
Was it any surprise then, that it was these exhibitionists, despite the vast array of porta-potties, who also felt the irresistible compulsion to pee in the bushes?
There was also a lot of drinking, lots and lots.
So, in the space of one very painful hour, we were confronted with public nudity, public urination, and public drunkenness — and the cops did nothing. (And please don’t ask me why we didn’t leave sooner than an hour. There were reasons.)
San Francisco has abandoned the law books and decreed that these behaviors are normal. And we’re not talking about confining these behaviors to the few block stretch of the Folsom Street Fair, an occasion widely known for public debauchery. This was an event that spanned the City for seven miles, from Bay to Ocean, and that ended up, not at a bar or brothel, but in Golden Gate Park.
I’m depressed. But I can tell you it was thrillingly wonderful to drive away from the City, to my clean suburban home in my 1950s morality suburban neighborhood. Whew!
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9 Responses to “The end of civilization as we know it”
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Not that I’m a math whiz BW, but 10% of 100,000 would be 10,000.
Still, even a 1000 people would be too many.
I honestly don’t know how the good people in SF can tolerate this behavior.
I’m not a math whiz either, rock, nor am I a typing whiz. I don’t know now whether I meant 1% = 1,000 or 10% = 10,000. Thinking back to the crowd, I’d say about 3,000 people, so I probably meant 3%.
Why religion is a necessity for civilization…
San Francisco is still one of my favorite U.S. cities. That the lunatics define the asylum - anywhere else, the kind of behavior you describe would invite serious psychiatric intervention - is only part of its charm. Other highlights, watching the homeless defecate or upchuck in front of you and your guests during a nice evening stroll. Lovely.
I have a friend whose parents visited from Kansas during one of these debauchery events and he’d forgotten it was that day and they ended up stuck in some crowd - they were ready to drag him home with them.
Charming and eccentric only when exceedingly rare. When it becomes commonplace, it is called a cesspool.
I’m mindful of what happened to the real hippies of Haight-Ashbury once their movement took off. What was once, in the early to mid 60’s a relatively small group of free-love, free-thought experimenters turned into something else just a few short years later. 50,000 homeless, drug-addicted teenagers and young adults, penniless, thronged in and were immediately lost on the streets, with disease and a host of other problems quickly mounting. At first free-love and free-drug parties reigned peacefully, but then the free-drug scene died as pushers moved in with determined great violence to rule these defenseless (by choice) children and adult children. It wasn’t long after that when the original hippie community organizers declared, in a march, that the scene was dead, the entire dream was dead, time for everyone to simply go. The alternative lifestyle experiment succeeded and then it failed. Kudos to them for realizing what had happened.
Now, San Francisco isn’t collapsing as quickly, but it’s clear that it is collapsing. I wonder if the originators of the current city movements are taking a look around and not liking what they’re seeing. Perhaps because it is a city and not a neighborhood, it won’t be so easy to declare a dream over once the dream has become a nightmare. Somehow I think that this time, the city council and the determined political movers have too much vested in the game, and too little honesty besides, to declare their dream over. I see a horrifying hell-hole not too far in the near future.
Then, just as New York had to experience actual hell on earth before Giuliani, San Francisco will experience its hell. Will there be a Giuliani to emerge to lead the city back from the brink, when that occurs?
No one who imagined the Light that was New York City in the 50’s could imagine the collapsed, bankrupt, decayed, hopeless blight it had become by the late 70’s… nor the amazing turnaround to be seen everywhere by the year 2000. Those who love San Francisco, such as Danny, will be shocked at what they’ll find there in ten years (or perhaps at what they’ll find even now, if they’ve not been there in a while). But certainly I give it no more than ten years. Then we will see if there will ever be a renaissance for the once uniquely beautiful city.
Greetings:
So, you were OK with the five minute head start for the womenfolk?
Mike, I was a kid in SF in the 60s, and vividly remember the complete collapse you describe. I have some good memories: lots of rainbows (before they got entirely coopted by the gay political movement), people wearing flowers, and pretty tie-dies. Mostly, though, what I remember is the stench; the young people lying on the street in puddles of their own urine and vomit; and the hairy guy who offered my nine year old self acid as I walked down Haight with my parents and some of their tourist friends (an experience that may explain why I don’t like long beards on men).
Perhaps that’s why I, unlike my husband, reacted so negatively to what I saw in Golden Gate Park today. For me, it wasn’t a bunch of happy people getting in touch with their inner child, with the leavening of a few random perverts. Instead, it was the same ugly slippery slope I remember from almost 40 years ago, when the little moments of color and beauty degenerated into something unutterably foul.
Wow, Book, I didn’t realize you had San Francisco roots going way back! That’s neat.
The documentary I saw on the hippies and the 60’s scene in the Haight Ashbury district of San Fran seemed very fair and comprehensive. Something in me responded to the naivete, innocence and optimism of the original (real) hippies, and to their sadness when they later reflected on it all crashing down.
Of course, I also noticed that they couldn’t connect the dots, couldn’t accept that some semblance of order is necessary; or that the predators’ arrival - thus totally tipping the scales - was inevitable, that it was just a question of WHEN they would arrive.
That if you want to be sheep, make sure the sheepdogs surround you and are themselves well taken care of and know that you honor them in their role of protecting you from the wolves, so that you can comfortably wrap yourself inside your Dream.