[HN Gopher] Kids who ran away to 1960s San Francisco
___________________________________________________________________
Kids who ran away to 1960s San Francisco
Author : zackoverflow
Score : 119 points
Date : 2025-12-02 17:22 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fieldnotes.nautilus.quest)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fieldnotes.nautilus.quest)
| ChrisbyMe wrote:
| Very cool. If you're interested in things like this you might
| wanna checkout CGP Grey's videos on tracking down various stories
| from books through archives.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEV9qoup2mQ
| breckinloggins wrote:
| I am happy the author followed her curiosity. I remember feeling
| much the same "pull" when I moved to San Francisco in 2013.
|
| Those of us who really vibe with the place seem to share a desire
| to get behind the city's strange magic and discover the past
| souls and events that make San Francisco what it is - that make
| it _feel_ this particular way that it does.
|
| To the author and everyone else who has arrived here recently:
| welcome to San Francisco!
| supportengineer wrote:
| The pull of San Francisco never goes away!
|
| It is indeed a Side Quest City
| dyauspitr wrote:
| San Francisco is the amazing. Can't beat the vibe and history
| of that city.
| intrasight wrote:
| A good friend of mine ran away to San Francisco in the mid 80s
| when he was 15. And his parents flew there and brought him back.
| autotune wrote:
| I moved to San Francisco to become an open source developer and
| get my first job doing DevOps at a consultancy in my mid 20s. I'd
| be open to moving back there to work in Emeryville, I know Pixar
| is hiring out of that location for starters.
| aj_icracked wrote:
| I loved my time in SF. For those that remember Detour GPS guided
| audio tours in 2015 that Andrew Mason founded, the audio tours in
| SF were next level and so special and showed a side of the
| history of SF I hadn't seen. Luckily they're preserved on Spotify
| (although without the GPS guided part) -
| https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/detour-podcast/
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I have a great uncle that moved to Haight Ashbury to chase the
| whole spiritual open your mind idea. He said it was nothing like
| the media or nostalgia portrayed it. Lots of homeless drugged out
| kids who were completely lost. No jobs, panhandling for food and
| money, no direction, just spaced out druggies. Said it was fairly
| sad and he left within a year. He is an old hippy type as well,
| it was not what I was expecting to hear. I remember seeing an
| interview of George Harrison saying something similar.
| asveikau wrote:
| George Harrison went to the Haight with his then-wife Pattie
| Boyd, and walked around, eventually finding people recognized
| him and followed him around. He played guitar in the park. He
| wrote a large check to fund the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic.
|
| IIRC he said he had expected some kind of alternate hippie-
| economy based on genuine values and having ownership of the
| neighborhood, and was disappointed that he didn't see any
| evidence of that. Just a bunch of idle people.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yep, pretty much. Found it - https://youtu.be/_I-
| ThafU1e4?si=dwZfCpNkDtnz2onb
|
| My uncle had the same description. Disappointed that it was
| just stoned people and not a lot of real substance.
| caycep wrote:
| kinda of the idea that I got from reading Phillip K Dick
| novels...
| asveikau wrote:
| I have frequently walked by the "OG Huckleberry House" depicted
| in the photo near the bottom, and knew its history. It's near the
| stairwell and garden that connects Broderick St with Buena Vista
| East. You can actually see, on the northern side of that incline
| that is a steep ramp with no stairs, that the house goes pretty
| far back, probably had lots of room for boarders.
| harywilke wrote:
| Read a good book from a hippy about her experiences on a commune
| in Oregon. http://margaretgrundstein.com/index.php/naked-in-the-
| woods/
| benbreen wrote:
| I read Ulysses Grant's memoirs awhile back, and loved his
| description of being in San Francisco in the 1850s. (Another
| tidbit I loved is that he imagined an alternate path for his life
| where he would have settled down in the Bay Area and become a
| math teacher):
|
| "The immigrant, on arriving, found himself a stranger, in a
| strange land, far from friends. Time pressed, for the little
| means that could be realized from the sale of what was left of
| the outfit would not support a man long at California prices.
| Many became discouraged. Others would take off their coats and
| look for a job, no matter what it might be. These succeeded as a
| rule. There were many young men who had studied professions
| before they went to California, and who had never done a day's
| manual labor in their lives, who took in the situation at once
| and went to work to make a start at anything they could get to
| do. Some supplied carpenters and masons with material--carrying
| plank, brick, or mortar, as the case might be; others drove
| stages, drays, or baggage wagons, until they could do better.
| More became discouraged early and spent their time looking up
| people who would 'treat,' or lounging about restaurants and
| gambling houses where free lunches were furnished daily."
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Same. Never lived there- though almost moved in the 1990s- and
| now feel a pull to learn/feel the history. Did also just finish
| Grant's memoirs- and would strongly recommend Sherman's if you
| haven't read those, not only for the SF parts. Some of his
| letters are incredible and dare I say relevant today.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Disappointing to see him spread the modern Republican myth of
| pulling oneself up by their bootstraps, as to who succeeds.
| Everyone deserves a good life, even gamblers.
| troad wrote:
| Terrible, no good, upsetting, false class consciousness-
| derived take.
|
| The point of the left is to bring prosperity into reach for
| everyone, not to stroke the hair of able young men in poker
| dens who refuse to work, and whisper "You're valid."
|
| That's what capital _wants_ the left to degrade into. Don 't
| let it happen.
| treis wrote:
| Bit of a disappointing article. I kept looking for a revelation
| or insight from the letters but it never came.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-06 23:00 UTC)