on love and haight

On my way home from Golden Gate Park, and the 420 festivities on Hippy Hill, a clearly terrified older man escorting his middle school aged daughter through the park asked me the way to Haight Ashbury, and I told him what I knew to be true.  Ashbury crossed Haight about 4 blocks up.  But as as he wondered off into the 90-degree-air moving like a man suddenly realizing the air was made out of jello I started to wonder if I had misdirected him. Did he mean the actual intersection?  Or was this man asking in which direction he might find the 60s? And if it was the summer of love he was after, his best bet was probably to head back into the park, join a drum circle, and sell his daughter for LSD.  But since it was clear that he was only confusing his quest for lost youth with her spring vacation, I doubted he would go that far.  She couldn’t have cared less about any of this, not that I blame her.  Like the sharp sting of a used hypodermic needle piercing your elbow, there’s something annoying about watching 12-year-olds dressed in hot pants and headbands, talking about how high they are. 

As for the Haight Ashbury that the guy was looking for, it was either 4 blocks up or gone forever.