Bad Ass Bay Area Women When I look around San Francisco today, I am struck by how much things have changed and yet seem so familiar. There have been a slew of articles as of late, from as far away as the New York Times even, about the demise of San Francisco and of who is to blame; from the recent arrival of the seemingly all pervasive phenomenon of the tech bro and their babes, to the sudden influx of big money and high real estate values, down to the urban plight of the homeless and the derelict sleeping and defecating on our streets. But when taking a good look around, S.F., in some ways, it’s exactly how I remember it; it’s still a city of neighborhoods and families, of schools and parks, and of streets filled with shops and exotic wares bustling with commercial activity. Everything is the same as it has always been, but there is a new iteration unveiling itself; it’s the same place, for sure, but different. Wildly different. I don’t know when you got here, but when I was a kid, this town was fomenting with insurrection as if the Bay Area were some sort of ground zero for the coming world wide revolution. The music scene was first class, for sure, but the streets were still dirty and abandoned from the white flight that swept through the City in the late nineteen sixties. As it is today, San Francisco was a place in transition back then and, I suspect, it will always be a city of change. But in the 1970”s, in particular, S.F. was a magnet for young people, not unlike it is today, casting their lots into the possibilities of what may come and with just as much enthusiasm and belief in some small part of changing the world. There was a antiwar movement raging in the Bay Area in direct response to what was happening in South East Asia at the time. I can only imagine how that sense of change, of moving in a new direction, felt like. There was a social experiment happening and a lot of young people wanted to be a part of it. And, although SF may be best known for the Summer of Love and for the Hippies, in the years after and within the next decade, or so, unfolded an era of remarkable lunacy that seemed to arise like an explosion from everywhere. A signature stamp of outrageousness that has always existed in the town. For instance, and the most fun in my memory, although there is nothing funny about it, where the days of Patty Hearst, or Tanya, as she is better known in some circles. I know that most of you have heard the story yourself and don’t need a recap, but for me, looking back and as a child at time, that was some crazy shit unfolding, in realtime even, practically right down the street. Poor little rich girl gets kidnapped, she’s reprogramed via Stockholm’s Syndrome, and the next thing you know she’s on T.V. every night, for weeks on end, all dressed up in a black commando uniform, carrying a machine gun.... Okay, just stop right there; she was carrying a machine gun. It was truly unbelievable. In a famous picture, she appears both blond and pretty, as expected of the debutante that she was raised to be, but she was also sporting a Che Guevara cap and a tortured grimace, all the while holding a semi-automatic weapon in her hands. Patty Hearst was transformed into a revolutionary right on screen, in front of me and my family, and as well as a whole generation of other S.F. kids my age. Kidnapped in February of 1974, by April of the same year she was a gunner and an outlaw. She robbed the Hibernia Bank in the Sunset District at Noriega and 21st Avenue. We lived on 10th and Clement, in the Richmond, so less than a mile or so from home Tanya and her cadres were holding people hostage in return for cash. Can you imagine? The robbery, in what I can only guess, was a means to fund a rag tag team of urban would-be guerrillas who went by the name of the Symbionese Liberation Army (or the SLA), was successful and they got away with about 10k that afternoon. But what a failed lot they turned out to be, eventually unable to survive a shoot out with the LAPD which, it has been reported, is the largest police shootout on record with over 9 thousand rounds believed to have been exchanged between the SLA and the swat team from the City of Angels. Patty eventually returned to society, which is a remarkable feat in and of itself, and married a 15 year SFPD veteran and VP of corporate security for the Hearst Corporation, Bernard Shaw, and had two children with him. They were married for 34 years and I am sure that Patty considers herself more than just Tanya, at this point, but in my estimation, I believe that she is a testament of the resilience of the human spirit. I can’t ever imagine what it was like to be her. On the flip side, you had someone like Angela Davis, a well spoken and beautiful black woman from Birmingham, Alabama, and a close family friend of the 4 little girls who were killed in a infamous racial church bombing of the same city in 1963. At the beginning of her career as an activist and as an assistant professor at UCLA, she somehow was connected to an August 1970 courtroom kidnapping and shootout in Marin County where a Judge lost his life and where most of the shooters were killed. Apparently, the guns used in what is called, “The Marin County Courthouse Incident,” were purchased and were owned by Angela who, at the time, was known to consort with the Black Panthers and was a self professed radical herself. Being forced underground, she was on the lam for 2 months only to emerge in New York City, where she was then arrested and finally arraigned here in California under the charges of being complicit, up to the murder of the judge, in relation to the Marin courthouse incident. Surprisingly, she was eventually declared innocent by an all white jury, believe it or not, and in all actuality, I agree that she was. I think just being vocal and a participant of the times, one would encounter dangerous connections here in the Bay Area that could slip out of control well outside of your own sphere of influence. Although and with that kind rocky start in modern political activism, Angela Davis went on to have a esteemed career in her own right having recently retired from UC Santa Cruz as a Professor in Human Consciousness and as the Director of Feminist Studies. Not to mention the Zodiac Killer, the Zebra Killings, the People’s Temple and Jim Jones, the Golden Dragon massacre, or the Dan White murders of Harvey and the Mayor. San Francisco has certainly changed a lot since then. So, when I read the opinions of others, like that of the NY Times, or even the SF Gate for that matter, complaining about why San Francisco is ruined, or different, or if I overhear someone in Noe Valley talk about how much this city is changing, or they mention high rents, google buses, yoga studios or gluten, I can only think to myself, “Yeah, I know. But do you?” For me, San Francisco is a living relic of the wild west almost begging to be tamed and subdued. Which, if anything, is exactly what’s happening now. There’s a permanence to the current sense of privilege and wealth around town, isn’t there? I’d imagine, like most influential cities of the new millennia, that S.F. will become too expensive for most people and will be taken over by the corporate sharks and those seeking to find their fortunes. But then again, that’s how the City started during the Gold Rush anyhow. In essence, it’s the same City I knew as a child, only it’s different now.
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 22:31:19 +0000
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