Cohorts and I from the theater wanted to press the envelope further and founded the Diggers, an anarchist group dedicated to imagining and then acting out a culture that offered us more compelling adult options than “consumer” and “employee.” The Diggers decided that those homeless, hungry kids were “ours” and needed to be looked after. To that end, we devised a way to feed six hundred people a day in Golden Gate Park. We also created a free medical clinic, where UCSF med students saw patients at the Digger Free Store once a week. We did it to prove that the city’s excuses for inaction were lame. In our Free Store, one could find anything required for an urban life—clothes, bicycles, tools, furniture, TVs, radios, books, shoes. The Italian farmers at the market gave us food they couldn’t sell that day. We scored more behind Safeways where ripe-­ that-­day fruits and vegetables were set out for the morning garbage pickup. We repaired and restored castaways and throwaways and put them on display in a clean, bright storefront that implied, by its very existence, the question: “Why become an employee to make the money to become a consumer? We’ll give you the stuff. Now, what do you really want to do?”

Young people and freedom seekers of all ages were streaming there from every corner of the country, seeking a permissive social space in which to explore their authenticity. The city capitalized on this hegira by selling bus tours through our Haight-­Ashbury neighborhood.

San Francisco’s fate may be sealed. Her lovely weather and views, her small size that can be fenced off by a great wall (or uniformly high property values) may finally allow the wealthiest to claim it in its entirety. The new owners will get rid of the trash, the homeless, the poor, and the unsightly. The workers will live in the suburbs, be forced to use cars, gas, and oil to enter Malibu North and serve. The city inhabitants living on trusts, investments, inheritances, and fiscal good luck will glide through the open, no-­traffic zones, from one fabulous wine tasting to another exquisite dinner, displaying their multi-­thousand-­dollar investments in tattoos-­as-­displays-­of-­disposable-­income, stopping en route, perhaps, for a bit of upscale shopping.

The dream of the sociopathic class that never shares will be fully realized. The corpse of the lovely girl dancing in the ’60s has metastasized into a frozen photo—stilling the heart and leaving only the sparkling body of the city as beautiful as ever. Her body is stressed trying to raise the cash for her cancer treatments. Beauty is a rare commodity. It sells designer clothes, expensive perfume, and extraordinary performance. It’s always for sale. And so, alas, is my beloved San Francisco.