I’m sitting at the top of Strawberry Hill on a picnic bench overlooking the Sunset, thinking about Joan Didion, police brutality and the insurgents of 1967 — the dropouts who descended upon our Golden Gate Park 50 years ago and changed the city forever. And while a copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem does rest on my lap — the corners of the well-thumbed pages all curled and sullen like the dorsal fins of depressed orcas — I’m thinking less about the dropouts themselves and more about how what lingers of their influence — the impact they made in their moment — affects the lives of those of us here now, slouching towards Bethlehem today.
I’m thinking about this because ahead the houses sprawl in Eastery plots of plaster and stucco, and in the fizzy afternoon light they appear vaguely resplendent, like pastel fixtures of an abstract painting. This has a way of making the city feel suspended in time, like something I could pick up with my hands and examine, study and, ultimately, understand. And for this reason it feels like an opportunity has availed itself — a vague instance of clarity, a pause in the constant tidal momentum of things.
And maybe because I’ve been reading a lot of Bethlehem, or maybe because lately…
