Why I Stayed Away From the San Francisco Zen Center When I Lived In The City

I lived in the city of San Francisco for a year or so in the mid 1970s. The Hippie era had passed, of course, but the Counterculture was still very much underway. San Francisco was still providing the heartbeat of many alternative ways of life, most of which proved to be dead ends, quite literally in some cases such as the People's Temple mass suicide in Guyana. That happened after I departed San Francisco for the country at large, but Jim Jones and his operation on Geary were very much apparent and in the news when I lived there. 

As was the San Francisco Zen Center on Post, no Bush, or was it Page (I think! Man, I lose track of locations over the years...) where I was invited to attend zazen many times but never did. No. I stayed away.

Here's the thing. Some of the people I was working with had attended zazen at the Sokoji Temple and had moved with Suzuki Roshi to the Page Street facility in the later '60s. Zen was popular among a certain set of artists and actors and such -- as it still is. 

I'd been practicing on my own for oh, a decade or more, a practice I began after getting in touch with the San Francisco Zen Center when I was a teenager, possibly no more than 15. I forget the exact year, it was either 1965 or '66 -- or in a partial memory as early as 1964. The literature and instruction I received was enough to start me on a lifetime Zen path, but because I was not in San Francisco at the time and could not be and there was no nearby Zen sangha become part of, I was essentially a solitary Zen practitioner in the wilderness and I became accustomed to that state. "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the sangha is among whomever you find along the Dharma Path."

By the time I lived in San Francisco, the Zen Center had become fashionable. In fact, it was so fashionable that people competed for spots in the zendo in hopes of brushing knees and elbows with some of its famous practitioners. This grated on me, rubbed me very much the wrong way. What was the point of sitting zazen among a crowd whose minds were taken up with fame and notoriety. Was this any better than the jostling at the People's Temple or the ever-passing scene at Grace Cathedral? (Note: a friend from my time in San Francisco got AIDS and died and his ashes are interred at Grace Cathedral I learned years later...)

I blamed Richard Baker for the fame-seeking that seemed to overwhelm the San Francisco Zen Center. He had been the one I corresponded with early on. He took over when Suzuki Roshi died in 1971, but he'd been kind of the shaper of the Zen Center as an institution from well before that, and his influence is still strong -- which I don't judge as either good or bad, but it is an influence that shapes the SFZC and many others in this country and elsewhere -- toward an appeal to the rich, famous, renowned, politically powerful and those prominent in the arts and academics. 

That's not in and of itself a bad thing, but when it becomes the totality or near totality of the focus of the institution, it warps it, I think, in ways that do it no service in a Buddhist context and form barriers to the bodhisattva way of life for practitioners. 

I struggle with this a bit in the context of my current Zen practice and setting. The Zen Center I'm associated with is a legacy of Richard Baker, quite directly in fact. He founded a sangha at the facility in the '80s and eventually gave the facility, lock, stock, and barrel, to the current roshi in the '90s when he set out on a different quest. 

That legacy is more than just buildings -- though they are very important to the current sangha. I carry some of that legacy with me, but it is very different because it is earlier, much earlier in origin, more closely aligned to Suzuki Roshi who I keep saying I never met, nor did I ever meet Richard Baker, yet when I see and hear film and video and audio recordings of them, I recognize them immediately, and even the zendo at Sokoji -- the earliest Center in San Francisco -- is instantly familiar. I don't know where these memories come from. I attribute them to having seen films of Suzuki and Baker at the Midnight Movies in the later '60s. On the other hand, maybe I did visit Sokoji and maybe I did meet them somewhere, sometime, and I've just lost track.

This is somewhat similar to my memories of meeting Jerry Rubin in San Francisco in the '60s. I'm more certain of those meetings, and where and when they took place and why, but sometimes I wonder: are they false memories? Did it really happen?

Was I really at the Oakland Induction Center in October of 1967 during the Moratorium police riots? As a potential inductee? Yes, I'm certain I was, and there is film of me there and yet... maybe it's all an illusion... 

Which ultimately is the foundation of Buddhist enlightenment. It is all an Illusion, you see? Memories are real and false at the same time. "Reality" is real and false at the same time.

I didn't want to be part of the fame-seeking at the San Francisco Zen Center in the '70s. Even if I had kept to myself, there wasn't a way I could see to avoid it while in the company of others there. So. I didn't take up the invitations, I didn't go, and I continued practicing on my own in the apartment on Geary with the wonderful garden outside the living room bay windows. It was to me very much a Zen garden.

Where something happened. 

I've described it, I think, in other posts, and I went into considerable detail about "what happened" with one of the Zen teachers I deal with these days. The Void. I entered the Void while sitting zazen in my apartment on Geary one day. I wasn't entirely sure what it was, and after a time, I could not not enter it when sitting zazen. So I stopped regular practice. 

I described "what happened" and I also described an incident in San Francisco that took place while not sitting zazen, an incident that came back in brilliant technicolor detail when I was late for a morning sit during Spring Practice. The Zen teacher I described this incident to said, "You know what? That sounds like you were dreaming." Thinking back about it, it was very much like a dream. Yet the memory of it -- after sitting zazen and entering the Void for perhaps the first time that day in 1970-something in San Francisco -- is crystal clear, even now, and I am certain it "happened", but on what plane of existence? 

Was it a dream? Is it all a dream? Was my avoidance of attending zazen at the San Francisco Zen Center justified or even necessary? Or did it even "happen?" But the zendo at the Page Street Center is not at all familiar to me, whereas the Sokoji zendo very much is. So what happened? Or did anything?

Was I there or was I not there? Or both or neither?

Yes.

When Practicing Zazen

When I sit, I usually let thoughts just come and go the way they do, as someone said, "Like clouds in a clear blue sky." And as I've sat through this practice period, thoughts have gradually diminished to the point where almost an entire sit will take place thought-free. Hard to describe what that's like, but it happens. 

I don't sit generally more than 15-20 minutes at a time, though on occasion, I have sat longer. The shorter sits are for me the more positive, I guess. Practicing zazen is by its nature both ridiculous and useless. So we do it anyway, and sitting is itself the point, not any great gain or accomplishment. You just sit. 

A shorter sit is for me the more positive because like in the Old Days, I've been getting closer and closer to The Void (as I call it) when I sit, and I'm not going back there without a guide or teacher, and that hasn't happened yet in this practice period. 

But this morning's sit that I was late for made me think more about where I've been and where I'm going with this ridiculous and useless sitting. An image came to me early in my late sit. 

More like a movie clip, really. As I tend to do, I just let it come. At some point I figured it would go. Away.

Oh. 

I was walking toward Union Square on Geary, not far from my apartment between Leavenworth and Hyde. I got to the square and saw space on a bench facing I. Magnin and the City of Paris (tells you how long ago it was), and I sat down on the bench.

At the other end was a craggy old Chinese man in clean but somewhat tattered gray pants and jacket and we nodded and smiled at one another, and after a moment or two, I assumed the sitting zazen pose, and he saw and assumed it too, and we sat. He was my sangha for the moment, I was his.

For I don't know how long, we sat together-apart on the bench in Union Square facing I Magnin and the City of Paris while pigeons and people swirled around us, the cloudless bright blue sky overhead, and the sun somewhere shone into the Square. 

After a time, I don't know how long, I got up from my sit and bowed to the Chinese elder sitting in his gray tatters at the other end of the bench. He continued his sit, he didn't bow back. And I walked around the Square, counterclockwise, feeling strangely integrated with everything, everyone, even the pigeons all a part of me, I was a part of them, even the Square itself and all around it, out into the Bay and vastly beyond.

I walked around the Square to Powell, in front of the St. Francis and walked down Powell through the flower sellers and crowds and smelly trash in the street by the curb, down to Market and I thought of taking the cable car to North Beach Fisherman's Wharf but the line was so long and the day was so nice, I decided to keep walking down Market as far as Taylor then up Taylor through the Tenderloin to Geary and back to my apartment between Leavenworth and Hyde. 

As I got to the wrought iron gate of my apartment house, the clip stopped and started over.

It was in a loop and it was going to keep playing, over and over, and it wouldn't let go of me or I wouldn't let go of it, so I stopped the sit and went into the other room and had some coffee and sat for a few minutes before I started writing this. 

That was a memory, strangely complete and colorful and lively, of something that happened when I was living in San Francisco in 1976 or maybe a bit later. That day stayed with me for sometime, and then it faded and eventually was gone, and this morning there it was again.

In my mind and memory, not in "reality."

Buddhism teaches that we create reality in our minds, and that is the only reality most of us ever know. Buddhism teaches us ways to penetrate the mind's reality to reach what I'd call a "ground state." The truth behind the mind's reality. And I've been there. 

It happened in San Francisco, and in a sense it's never left me -- on the principle that once "there" you can't go back. But then the principle is also that you're always "there" -- you just don't know it.

And this movie-like clip that started playing during this morning's sit that I was late for was a kick from behind reminder. As so many things are these days.

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So I mentioned this episode from my morning sit to one of the Dharma teachers that afternoon, someone not quite of my age but close enough who knows San Francisco well enough and saw, in her own mind, some of what I saw, and after some consideration, she said, "You know, that story of what happened during your morning sit sounds more like a dream."

They say in this process you will encounter satori "sudden enlightenment" over and over and over again, and in the past I certainly did until it became almost routine, subliminal. Almost any encounter was an encounter with satori, to the point where I didn't notice it any more.

And then when she said, "You know, that story of what happened during your morning sit sounds more like a dream," it hit me, hard, that's exactly what it was. I was dreaming-awake. I was/am quite sure the incident and others like it actually happened, but at this great distance in time, it doesn't matter whether it had a physical "reality" or not. It was something I dreamed while awake, while sitting zazen that morning, and the instant of that realization, I could start to let it go. I haven't completely let go of it, obviously, because I'm still writing about it, but I don't relive it. 

We talked about many other things and she asked if I had practiced zazen since the morning sit, and I said I had, and it was fine. She just nodded, sagely. Then we shared stories about her brother and my sister, and we both might have choked up a bit. 

Later that evening another Dharma teacher Zoomed in from Illinois, not only an ordained Zen priest but an ordained and working Unitarian Universalist reverend, and she spoke movingly about many of the things I had spoken with the other Dharma teacher in the afternoon. Her topic was ostensibly "Meditation."

I'll leave it at that.

Soooo.....

Nearly every Buddhist teacher I've ever seen or listened to starts most talks with the extended "Sooooo...." often followed by a long pause before offering something along the lines of a koan, a puzzling but universal truth, or contrary-wise, a generous welcome and asking for a count of one sort or another. "How many of you have done X, Y, or Z? Hands?" Usually all three in sequence.

This is standard. It's what you do when sitting on the raised cushion before an assembly of disciples and students. "Soooo........" Even the Dalai Lama does this. Or even especially he does it...

We've been studying the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life which I recall reading some excerpts from many years ago, but I had never read the whole thing, and now that I have, I understand why it was excerped rather than presented whole back in the day. Shantideva wrote in the 800s AD in India, and his audience was pretty clearly other privileged princelings of the region and era like his former self. He wasn't writing for the rabble in the streets -- who couldn't read anyway, so what would be the point, right?

So when we approach this work, we're approaching as if he'd written it for us -- we, the equivalent of the street rabble yet we who believe we are as high and mighty as the princelings of Old India -- when he didn't. I'm struck by how often Shantideva lards his work with line after line of praise and flattery and images of showers of gold and jewels and scented waters that would appeal to the vanity and pecuniary interest of the princes and kings of yore. For us today, this is nonsense, this is bullshit. Manjushri Bodhisattva would cut through all the not necessary bullshit, no? Yet line after line, there goes Shantideva again. What is he doing?

In a flash of insight (sometimes called satori, but maybe it wasn't) it occurred to me he was trying his best to appeal those myriad princes, kings and potentates of Old India and convince them to be better, behave better toward that rabble, themselves and one another and learn to act in the Bodhisattva Way, the way of compassion for all sentient beings (and later, for some, non-sentient and non-beings) and the way of complete dedication to bodhicitta -- bringing enlightenment and end to suffering for all beings and the whole wide world. The basis of Mahayana Buddhism of which Zen claims to be a part.

Shantideva was trying to argue, persuade, and cajole his peers to be better, show themselves as better than they had been, to learn, grow, and unselfishly give and be bodhisattvas themselves.

We are not his peers. This does not diminish his teaching or argument in any way. What it means is that our approach to the Bodhisattva Way of Life must be from a different direction. Most of us are not in charge of much of anything. Few of us have power over many others. For the most part we do not determine conditions of life or death for someone else. Therefore we do not live the lives of princes and potentates -- though our egos may tell us otherwise (smile emoji).

So how should we approach it? What does bodhicitta mean from the bottom up rather than the other way around? What does it mean to bring enlightenment and an end to suffering for all beings when you're not a prince or king or potentate -- and you don't have the power to do it?

So what do you do when you're functionally powerless even over most aspects of your own life, yet you are called upon to adopt the Bodhisattva Way and act on bodhicitta on behalf of everyone and the whole globe?

Especially what do you do when your betters, if you want to call them that, those who do have power and responsibility, act as if they don't. And in many cases behave worse than the worst of the potentates of old?

This is a consideration that I have yet to see enter into this practice period or indeed into much of Zen practice at all. Often enough, even Sakyamuni Buddha doesn't enter into it, either. The Bodhisattvas, on the other hand, are usually everywhere. Oft-times I wonder if I'm practicing Buddhism without Buddha. Or rather All-Buddhas/No-Buddha. (When someone asks me, "What is Zen?" I might say, "I don't know what Zen is. It's a contradiction.")

The class issue, I think, is important, and it runs through Buddhism and every branch of Buddhism from the outset, though often it's ignored today. Or rather it is pretended not to matter. 

After all, Sakyamuni Buddha was a prince, groomed to be king. His rivals and most of his followers were of the ruling class of his time and place as well; according to tradition, he learned from and opposed the Brahmans of his era (though others contend there was no such class in those days).  He may have wanted Enlightenment to be shared by all, and he may have sometimes been seen among the Lesser Orders, but he was not one of them, nor were most of his followers. They were aristocrats. 

Shantideva's situation parallels the Buddha's. He lived many hundreds of years after the Buddha and in a different part of India, but he, too, was a prince groomed to be king who renounced his titles and temporal authority to become a mendicant monk like the Buddha. He wrote extensively, which the Buddha (apparently) did not. He wrote what look like appeals to his aristocratic peers to become Bodhisattvas, Awakened Minds and Hearts, compassionate toward all beings. On the way to Buddhahood.

"All equally empty; all equally to be loved; all equally come a Buddha." The prayer given by Jack Kerouac to Gary Snyder as recorded fictionally in "Dharma Bums" (1958).

That is as concise a distillation of the Bodhisattva Way as I've seen. 

Sakyamuni and Shantideva were arguing strenuously for their aristocratic class to be better, to become bodhisattvas and act with humility and compassion toward "all sentient beings" which includes the rabble in the streets, but except in the abstract, do not become "of" them. The abstract being the realization that all are equal because all are One-NotOne.

And I look around at the others I am among in the Zoom practice period and I see that the vast majority are professional women of a certain age, mostly in the helping/caring professions, and, from what I've seen over time, that is the class (if you will) that this center focuses on. They are the ones to be reached and persuaded to be like bodhisattvas. To follow the Bodhisattva Way and become Buddhas.

They aren't aristocrats in the sense of having much temporal power in the political sense. But actually, they do have a lot of power, indeed power of life and death if they want to use it, in their capacity as healthcare professionals. 

And as I have listened to them talk in Enso meetings, oh, do I hear the same arguments over and over, the same woe is me, the same lack of understanding or rather lack of Enlightenment when they argue with themselves and their beliefs too much. Roshi advises "Don't overthink it..." but I'm not sure that's heard. Or if it's heard, it's not understood, not yet. For the rational argument is often a refuge when the Three Gems aren't enough. 

In my early practice days, I was instructed those precepts ("Buddam saranam gacchami, Dhanam saranam gacchami, Sangam saranam gacchami," or "I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the dharma, I take refuge in the sangha") could be interpreted this way: "The Buddha is within you, the Dharma is you, the Sangha is with anyone you find on the Dharma Path, even if they don't know it."

For me, much of this is old hat. I learned a great deal -- sometimes unknowingly -- as a wandering bhikkhu for so many years. Some of the people in this practice period have long experience practicing zazen -- one of the teachers said she was taught zazen practice at the Berkeley Zen Center in 1971 when she was 19. And she's been doing it ever since. 

Another has talked about her experience at the San Francisco Zen Center beginning shortly after Suzuki Roshi died, also in 1971 I believe.

I go back before that, 1964-65, also through contact with the San Francisco Zen Center, but not through physical presence at the SFZC. No. Even when I lived in San Francisco, I chose not to visit the Center, in fact, I consciously stayed away, though I continued to practice. It had become a very fashionable and "hip" religious institution in the city, as had at the time the People's Temple and other New Age, New Consciousness institutions of Spiritual Growth and Perpetual Development (yada yada.) I saw them all as money-making businesses, some of them outright scams. Cynical, I know. But something had really changed from the early days, pre-hippie, pre-New Age, etc. of Zen in San Francisco and what it became and what it was by the mid-70s when I lived there. It had become so fashionable that people jockeyed to sit zazen at the new location because, you know what, they might be sitting next to someone famous! Damn, at the time, I was working with famous people every day, and I was not inclined to sit with them in the zendo.

So I continued regular practice on my own until I left San Francisco just before the People's Temple disaster.

Then I continued wandering and intermittent practice. Satori. Another instance of sudden "enlightenment:" I realized why I stopped regular practice once I moved out of San Francisco and went roaming all over the country. A long strange trip.

Which is off track and not the subject of these posts... (wide grin emoji)

More on the Latest APD Killing - - and the MLK Weekend of Rage

The police have released a bit of body-cam video of the latest APD killing. It's disturbing from the outset because the officer involved is prominently displaying and using his automatic rifle during the incident.

The dead suspect, John Okeefe, was said to be armed with a replica old west Colt .45 revolver -- which he may or may not have been -- and he was said to be wearing body armor -- which he may or may not have been -- but even if so, the issue to me is that the police brought out the heavy weaponry and were marching around and firing in a populated neighborhood at rush hour. What's up with that?

Really, there was no concern for civilian casualties at all.

And this is all based on a report of "suspicious behavior" of two men behind a beauty salon? Something's wrong here.

The accounts of what happened are distinctly odd, to say the least, and there seems to have been a deliberate effort to obscure the participation/culpability of the other man involved. He was said to have been arrested, but according to other reports, he wasn't. He was transported to the hospital for assessment of dizziness and shortness of breath, and was released without charges.

According to police, the suspect Okeefe ran when confronted by police who were called to the scene of "suspicious behavior". According to police, the suspect Okeefe fired at officers as they pursued him. According to police, they didn't fire back. They say they lost track of the suspect Okeefe for a few minutes, then found him again running along the alley where he was eventually shot to death.

One of the citizen videos I posted links to in a previous post are alleged to show suspect Okeefe firing at officers, but they don't. In fact, it's impossible to tell from that video whether or not suspect Okeefe fires at all, or even if he has a gun.

It is, however, interesting to note that officer Fisher and officer Oates -- said to be the actual killers -- are not apparently the officers seen in the citizen video chasing suspect Okeefe in the alleyway. Officer Fisher is in fact on the other side of the shrubbery -- he starts out on the other side of the street -- and officer Oates (if I'm reading the stories right, and who can say about that, as I do get confused now and again...) is in the SUV that jumps the curb. So if I'm understanding it right, the officers chasing suspect Okeefe in the alley are not firing, whereas two other officers are firing, one out of camera view in the citizen video, and one arriving in the SUV.

[Note: I crossed out that particular paragraph because it was based on my initial misunderstanding of what the citizen video shows.]

Officer Fisher is apparently the officer running at the left of the scene, outside the shrubbery. It's not clear exactly when he fires at Okeefe, but it appears to happen while he is screened from view by trees. Another officer -- unidentified -- who is probably closest to Okeefe at that time suddenly backs away, no doubt due to the shots being fired. Officer Oates is not located, though he is likely in the scene. One report had it that Oates was in the SUV, but I've not found that report again, and I've seen no confirmation.


The one video released from officer Fisher also does not show the suspect Okeefe at all until after he is dead in the alley. It does not show him firing, though officer Fisher says he is firing. This may or may not be true, it's impossible to tell from the video, but given the frequency of police using the line "Stop resisting!!!" on unresisting suspects who have been tased or are being beaten, one would be wise not to take anything an officer says in a crisis/conflict situation at face value.

Officer Fisher's video doesn't show suspect Okeefe until sometime after he is shot dead and his corpse is surrounded by side-arm wielding officers. When we see Okeefe's body in the alley, he appears to be lying face down, what looks like a gun lying on the ground a foot or two away from his left leg.

The police claim Okeefe was wearing body armor, but that's not clear from the video at all. He appears to be wearing a black or gray shirt. That's all I can discern.

From the citizen video shot at a distance, it appears that Okeefe was trying to climb a resident's back wall to escape when he was shot and killed. There are several bullet holes in the wall. Probably more bullet holes in Okeefe, though.

The media has made a great show of "all the mug shots" of John Okeefe in order to make it seem as if he needed killing, and from certain theories of law enforcement and Führerprinzip, that's true enough. Get out of line, the man don't just come and take you away anymore, the man come and shoot your ass as likely as not.

There's a lot of "Darwinism" in the responses to police killings these days. Those who die, according to the "Darwin" fans have failed at survival of the fittest, too bad so sad. It's just "Nature" -- Natural Selection at work. Police are doing their part in cleaning up the riff-raff, "human garbage disposal" as one APD officer notoriously remarked about his job.

Both officers involved in the Okeefe shooting have had, shall we say, issues in the past. Officer Fisher has been repeatedly accused of use of excessive force, and the city has paid out more than $100,000 in settlements. Officer Oates was one of three officers who opened fire and killed a suspect in a carjacking in 2011.

Was this a "necessary shooting?" No, not at all. The idea that "suspicious activity" behind a beauty salon is worthy of a police chase and killing like this is just absurd. There was no threat to anyone at the time of the call to 911, not even a hint of it. When police arrived, one of the suspects ran. (I wouldn't be surprised if the other "suspect" was a cop, but that's another issue for another time.) The police say Okeefe fired at officers as he ran, but there is no concrete evidence it is so. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but even if he did,  does that automatically warrant a death sentence? On the street? Like that?

Many would say yes. They have been conditioned to believe that police are always justified in killing someone in self-defense. But in this case, even if Okeefe was firing -- and there is no proof that he was -- killing him in the alley like that makes no sense and clearly endangered others. It wasn't self defense, especially if Okeefe was trying to climb a wall to get away. The "race card" can't be used in this instance because Okeefe was Anglo, but because he had a long rap sheet, the killing was automatically justified in many people's minds, whether or not it was self-defense. Simply having a criminal record is enough for many to believe killing is the right remedy.

If this incident means that APD has gone back to its innate tendency to kill, it will mean a very difficult period for Burquenos ahead. When it seemed that maybe, just maybe, the killing had stopped, we may find it has been ratcheted up to a new level.

That would be a tragedy.

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Reclaiming the real legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. is a primary objective of this weekend's celebrations of his life and there are militant demonstrations all across the country asserting that Black Lives Matter and that Martin Luther King, Jr. was far from the rather bland pacifist he's been lionized by white folks as.

The Oakland Federal Building was barricaded for four hours and 28 minutes on Friday in a wonderful display of third world and white ally unity with #BlackLivesMatter. It was great.

Simultaneously with the action in Oakland, the BART stations from the Embarcadero to Powell Street in San Francisco were shut down.

In Boston, I-93 was shut down through the city, snarling traffic for hours.

Actions were taking place all day yesterday throughout the country. More are planned for today and tomorrow.

The protests over the egregious killing of Mike Brown -- and so many others -- have become a Movement to end police violence. The lists of demands are growing, and there is no sign that the protests will cease or that the protesters will back down. The issue is as straightforward as can be:

Justice where there is none, and an end to police violence where there is too much.

Whereas last year it seemed that the issue might not catalyze the public to action, this year it looks like the necessary action is almost certain.

Let the Fugs Explain It All For You -- Warfighters' Love Songs

"Kill for Peace"



"CIA Man" (Fuckin' A Man)



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NOTE: Boy does this stuff carry me back. During the Summer of Love, some friends moved to the Haight Ashbury to be part of the hippie scene, and they rented a house on (I believe it was) Haight Street, a large old Victorian place with high ceilings and carved woodwork and all the stuff that people love about those houses. When they scouted the place, they were struck by all the psychedelic murals painted on the walls and the wild colors used on the house inside and out. Come to find out, the house had been vacated by the Fugs who had lived there for about a year. The Fugs were never particularly famous, not like Janis or Country Joe or some of the others, but they were well-known enough at the time to be considered near the top of their satirical and often obscenity laced field. It was kind of neat to visit friends who lived in a house the Fugs themselves (so they said) had painted tho.... ;-)

More Insight and Ironies From "Subversives"

For example, I knew that Clark Kerr (UC President during the Free Speech Movement demonstrations in 1964 and 65) was responsible for coming up with the California Higher Education Master Plan -- which is usually attributed to Governor "Pat" Brown -- but I didn't know that he was affiliated with the Quakers or that he had been elevated to the presidency of the University specifically because of his abilities and reputation as a negotiator.

My memories of Kerr are somewhat mixed but overall they are negative, largely because he was demonized during and after the FSM, by student protesters and later by Reagan and his ilk, as part of the ongoing problem at Berkeley and other campuses, not part of the solution. I recognized him as someone who was trying to maintain control and exercise authority in a situation in which control and authority were being exercised for their own sake, and under the circumstances, it was wrong. I see from Rosenfeld's examination of the documents, however, that Kerr was trying to do something else -- not necessarily what it looked like at all -- and that despite his somewhat ham-handedness and bumbling, he may have been doing more good than harm.

It would be some time before I more or less clearly understood the often tense relationship between the Regents of the University, the University administration, and the Legislature, as well as with the Governor's Office, alumni, donors, faculty, students, and the communities in which the University campuses were placed.

Rosenfeld is saying the situation was even more complex than I came to understand it to be, and the complexity of the relationships between all the moving parts of the University was part of what made it relatively easy for interests like the FBI or, as happened with the FSM, student "radicals" to exert so much control -- at least temporarily.

Rosenfeld has also laid bare J. Edgar Hoover's personal interest and the FBI's general interest in the University of California, dating back essentially prior to World War II. Hoover saw it as a hotbed of Communists and Communism from very early on, particularly the Berkeley campus, and he kept his personal eye on what was going on there, and ordered his agents to conduct covert and often lawless surveillance of faculty and administration, students and staff and provide the Director with reports of their findings as well as disrupting any sign of opposition to the Established Order.

I knew about the anti-Communists witch hunts and purges throughout California's public education system (my 5th grade teacher, for example, was accused) but I was not fully aware of how deeply the purges went nor how destructive they were in particular cases. This is something I probably should have been more aware of, but I wasn't.

After all, even though everyone knew that surveillance and anonymous accusation of "Commies" was routine, we weren't necessarily able to recognize the general effects: curbing or crushing dissent and enforcing conformity of thought and action. Conformity being the key -- I've written about it many times as the fundamental social/political factor of the era, far more enthusiastically embraced and enforced than any of the OUTRAGES!!!!!™ we are privy to and are expected to run around denouncing these days.

Given the technology of the era, Hoover and the FBI were as thoroughgoing in their surveillance and interference in the University as it was possible to be at the time, far more directly and disruptively than we realized, and some ways more so than the pervasive surveillance we are under today.

There's much more, of course, and I'm still in the early chapters, but the way the background of the story of the student uprising at Berkeley is being laid out and the underlying issues, personalities, and events are being detailed is actually quite revelatory  to me. I knew a lot of it, but not so many of the details. In many ways, it was worse than we thought.

Much worse. Which makes the story more depressing than I would have thought.

San Francisco (2)

 

That was interesting.

I managed to injure my left hand Thursday evening around 7:00. It was surprisingly bloody and whatnot necessitating more than a little attention. There would be no show with some Brit geezer at the Fillmore for me.

But that's all right. I got to thinking about the City and my ambivalence toward it. I have to say that I felt surprisingly comfortable there this last time, even with an injury -- or perhaps because of it.

We spent some time at Ghirardelli and Aquatic Park, having lunch at McCormick and Kuleto, walking a bit, checking out the artisans' stalls rather than the galleries, musing over the sour faces worn by so many of the tourists on the top decks of the innumerable tour buses. The Segwayers, on the other hand, all wore silly grins as they roamed and glided the North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf areas in packs.

The line for the cable car turnaround at Hyde and Beach was as long as it usually is, but the passengers were patient as they usually are, and their clanging journey over hill and dale was no doubt the thrill of a lifetime.

At $6 a ride, no transfers, the cable car is only for tourists now, but back in My Day, cable cars were actually public transit means for getting from Market Street or Union Square or wherever you happened to be Downtown over those hills to where you wanted to be by the bay. They were crowded, yes, but that was part of the charm. They got you where you wanted to go. At $.50, it cost more to ride one than a bus or trolley, but if I recall correctly, you could get an all day pass for a dollar or something, ride as often as you wanted, and I believe the pass was good on Muni, too. Those were the days.

The fog was coming in already in the early afternoon and the Golden Gate Bridge was almost completely obscured, but the Marin hillsides stood out proud and golden on the northern rim of the Bay. Then they too disappeared into the enveloping fog. This fog never seemed to come into Fisherman's Wharf and the Marina district, though we could see its tendrils coming over the tops of the western hills. For some reason, the northern end of San Fransisco stayed in sunshine the rest of the day. It was still sunny and even a bit warm when I bashed my hand.

There was an Urgent Care down the street, but I decided not to go that route and toughed it out with some Walgreen's first aid as it was even closer. The staff there was wonderful. You take your chances at Walgreen's (I've had very good and very awful experiences at Walgreen's over the years, and I will not recommend their pharmacy any time soon given atrocious service and screwed up prescriptions in the past.) But this particular Walgreen's had excellent, cheerful and very helpful staff; I got what I needed in short order and proceeded to tend my wounds myself.

After the blood was staunched and I'd calmed down a bit, I went for a walk along Lombard St; it hasn't changed a great deal since I made it my in town overnight destination when I had work assignments in San Francisco -- and I could get a room. Some places hadn't changed at all which is always one of the comforting things about San Francisco. You can rely on at least some of the City to stay the same -- or at least similar -- no matter how long you are away.

The video up top is kind of striking to me because it is so evocative of the City as I first recall it. The home movies the video is taken from were shot in 1941, well before I was born, and even longer before I first visited San Francisco (which would have been about 1957 or 1958.)   I've seen film of San Francisco taken in the 1950's, and the city views don't have the powerful evocative effect this earlier film does (there are others in the series that are just as evocative for me.)  The only things I can recall that appear in later films that aren't in the earlier ones are the Cliff House and Playland At The Beach, but they weren't really "in the City" so much as out at the beach.

I loved going to the beach when I was young; not so much now, though. An exception is Aquatic Park in San Francisco, which isn't actually the beach --s though there is sand so it will do. Aquatic Park is a protected area on the Bay rather than on the ocean, so it's generally not as windy and not as cold as things typically get along the Pacific. When I was younger, the wind and the cold at the ocean didn't bother me at all. Now it does. The perils of age. Things that you once enjoyed no longer seem so fine. Things you never appreciated before take on new importance.

Had a nice chat with Mr. Patel at the place where we were staying. The A/C in our room stopped functioning and I let him know. He said he'd come up to check on it, but there was probably nothing he could do, it being after 5:00pm and "nobody would come out after 5, you know." Yes, well...

He did come up, and by golly got the machine to function, and we laughed over it, and I asked him his name ("Patel," of course!) and we got to talking for a bit. He asked my age, and I told him. He said, "Well, I'm seventy-five, you know." He didn't look it and I told him as much. "Oh yes! Indeed, I was born in India in 1937! I worked in hotels in India for 35 years." I asked him when he came to the United States. "Oh, it must have been about 12 years ago. My sons were already here."

He said he missed India sometimes, "But India can be such a cruel place." I said, "That's true of almost any place, isn't it?" He said that in his opinion, America was much gentler most of the time. "It's so much newer, you know."

He said his family had bought the place where we were staying a few years ago, and they bought the building next door, too for additional lodging space. The buildings were pretty run down at the time, but they fixed them up. They put the fancy suites in the neighboring building. Did I think the room was nice?  It was, actually. Not fancy at all, but quite large, with all the requisite amenities and a few more. It had been fairly recently renovated, obviously, but it was done well. The bed was comfortable. Just needed to make sure that pesky A/C kept working. It was not that hot outside, but the room faced west, and the sun was hitting the room directly. Solar heating! Bonus! He said, "You know the suites don't have the air conditioning at all. They have to open windows and turn on the ceiling fans. So you're lucky!"

Indeed.

It helps to keep that in mind.

Segwayers along Bay St at Polk

Aquatic Park, Marin hills in the distance

Ghirardelli Square from Aquatic Park

Fog obscures the Golden Gate