Payback's a bitch, isn't it.

From his second-floor apartment at the counterculture crossing of Haight and Ashbury streets, Arthur Evans watches a new generation of wayward youth invade his free-spirited neighborhood.

The former flower child was among the legions of idealistic wanderers who migrated here during the Vietnam War to "tune in, turn on and drop out."

But Evans, who has lived at the same address for 34 years, says he has never seen anything like this crowd, who use his flower bed as a bathroom and sell pot outside his window.

They're known as gutter punks, these homeless kids with dirty dreadlocks and nose rings, lime-green mohawks and orange spray-painted faces, who panhandle with cardboard signs that riff on their lifestyles. "Please Help Us Get Un-Sober," one reads. Another: "Please Give Us Weed, Beer or Money."

Sometimes aggressive, they block sidewalks as they strum guitars or bang on bongos. Gangs of them skateboard down the middle of Haight Street. Some throw used hypodermic needles into a nearby pond they call Hep-C Lake.

Evans, 64, says they should get help, clean up or go home.

"I used to be a hippie. I wore beads and grew my hair long," he said. "But my generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior."

Panhandler Jonah Lawrence, 25, insists it is residents who need civilizing. "They say, 'Get a job!' " he said. "And I say, 'You got clothes for me? Or a place I can take a shower so I can look for work?' It's so bogus to tell me to get a job if I have nothing."

I'd think that an aging liberal hippie would want to help such folks out by giving them clothes and opening his home to them to shower. Instead he wants them to move on.

After all, long-haired, dope smoking, dirty, smelly ne'er-do-wells are part of the hippie tradition.

H/T Malkin

Posted by: Greg at 01:06 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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1 I just come back from a trip to LA, We stayed in Santa Monica. I was amazed at the bums that had set up camp all along a beautifuly garden pathed park paralleling and overviewing the beach. Dirty clumps of debris and mankind were actually encouraged to stay there. Strange that they actually took possession of some of the most valuable acreage in the country. Santa Monicans actually take pride in the way they care for their bums. Meanwhile, just down the road, in Malibu the beaches are walled off and inaccessable. Clearly no tolorance for the bums or even common folk there. Its a strange world we live in.

Posted by: Liberty at Sun Jun 3 02:06:54 2007 (IFhkr)

2 Funny that he happens to be a wealthy real estate developer, who stands to get wealthier if he can jack property values up higher. Doesn't sound like a liberal to me.

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3 Hey, RWR - looks like you called this one right, and I was wrong. The only campaign donation I can find from this guy was to Patrick Kennedy, and most of his business deals are profitable, but focused on urban development. I think you're right to call him an aging liberal.

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