Summer of Love 40 years on

Yesterday a massive free concert/festival was put in San Francisco and ex-hippies flocked to it. In the center you could tell fairly easily who was going to the festival, there were plenty of ex-hippies wearing flowers in their hair who had dug out old frayed jeans and shorts that had patches on them, not forgetting the tie-dyed t-shirts. Some of the costumes were most impressive, one guy was dressed as Jimmy Hendrix and there was another in John Lennon glasses, black top hat and and tails, long hair and a stoned expression on his face. There were plenty of famous bands who had supposedly reformed for this event, but I knew none of them (Canned Heat anyone?). The music was good, but it was more the music to sit and get stoned to, not to dance to. Unfortunately a lot of people were dancing, very badly. I think that drugs had a lot to do with it, the scent of weed filled the air, it (and acid) was being sold openly. The attempt to recreate the summer of love was being carried through as far as possible (all be it with the grandkids in tow).

The only real difference was that they were handing out free condoms, the pill will no longer do. I decided to stay well clear of the bushes.

It was a great atmosphere, but I only stayed an hour or so, it was packed and not really my sort of thing. I'm glad I went though.

On the way there on a very crowded bus I witnessed my first Jerry Springer moment. It was caused by the bus driver asking everyone to move back down the bus and was initially a disagreement between passengers about whether there was enough space to do this. The loud argument between a young black girl and a white man got out of control when the black girls mother decided that he was disrespecting her daughter and all hell broke loose. She was the stereotypical angry black woman, repeating phrases loudly, "Who said that? Who said that? I'm coming up! I'm coming up!" They just couldn't let it drop and the white guy refused to apologise the whole bus witnessed their argument and some other people got involved as well. The guy who shouted "shut up!" at her was unfortunately stood by me, so I experienced her rage first hand, however the irritating girl who decided that it was helpful to shout "Jerry! Jerry!" was ignored, I could of bloody strangled her, talk about escalations. I felt so sorry for a tiny Chinese woman who came up my end of the bus to get away from the scary black woman only for the scary black woman to move up to the same end of the bus. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when it was their stop and the exited the bus.

People in America are a lot more confrontational, in England we don't air our grievances in public, just slag them off behind their back. For example at the festival there was very little space to sit down and some hula hoopers were taking up a lot of space, an (American) woman asked (politely) that one of the hula hoopers to move his bag so her family could sit down, however this guy was clearly off his face and rambled on about saving some space for his son. This wasn't a good enough excuse for this woman, "I've got three kids! We just need to sit down, can you please move your bags!" and she tried to forceably move the bag, at which point almost flung himself on it. I was with two other people and sat right next to this whole scene and we offered them our space and vacated it, not only did they not thank us (we were giving them more space than they would've had) they did not use it. I mean for goodness sake! You help someone out and they ignore it, but when it comes to a confrontational argument they leap at the chance. Give me England with our politeness and our not wanting to get in someones way. Actually the Scientologists asked me whether I talked behind people's back, to which I replied, "Of course, it makes life easier", he seemed dead against this idea, clearly it is not the American way.

I'm going to the Mission today, which is a Roman Catholic area of San Francisco, I'm hoping to see lots of weird religious stuff.