4 ms·

You can't go home. Not ever. Forever burned into my memory is some stupid hippie liberal (disclaimer: I am also a stupid liberal) professor type talking to som

You can't go home. Not ever. Forever burned into my memory is some stupid hippie liberal (disclaimer: I am also a stupid liberal) professor type talking to some NPR-voiced reporter shortly after 9/11. Very shortly, like a few weeks. "I think this will be a good thing for our culture in some ways. We'll see an awakening of youthful counter cultural movements, art, and music inspired by these difficult times. It will be like the late 60's all over again." Something like that. Never mind how vile of a viewpoint it is that 9/11 may be good because some anthropology professor misses the 1960s. It simply never happened. Wars occurred. Freedom contracted. Culture moved forward, not backward. New small renaissances did occur in that time. I'd consider the ~2005-2015 internet to be a pretty special moment and place, for example. But the 1960's never came again. Nor will the renaissance of the early internet. Nor will the bands of San Francisco. Special moments of the future belong to different people, located elsewhere, doing different sorts of things.

brundolf 6y ago
> And it won't be a regression to the romanticized scenes of the past. North Beach won't suddenly fill with Beat poets, the Fillmore won't regain a jazz scene that was desecrated by crooked urban development. The Haight won't be teeming with rock-and-roll bands again. But after the unprecedented chaos of 2020, San Francisco will change again.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  A distinction needs to be made between the Zeitgeist of a time and the Genius Loci of a place. Is it part of the Genius Loci of the Bay Area to be Bohemian? I get the air for sourdough, and terroir for wine, but culture? It’s a deep question, and requires a comparison with other US cities. Zeitgeist-wise, I’d note that San Francisco is an infant from a world culture standpoint, reaching all the way back to the...1950s? Maybe include Carmel to go all the way back to the early 1900s. All the rest of the world yawns. And the Spanish colonial and indigenous cultures are at best window dressing on the SF vibes...another costume to wear. Most other cultures would probably think that SF doesn’t have enough Zeit to be able to support much of a Geist. But I agree personally that the attempt to intentionally physically and socially recreate an imagined past is a recipe for disaster. That past can be a powerful inspiration for future exploits since, although the physical elements of past visions are gone, the essential visions underlying the imagined past remain today in some real, if not physical sense, to be revisited, refined and perhaps manifest, or perhaps rejected. Now I will take my staff and robe and be on my way...

brundolf 6y ago

> And it won't be a regression to the romanticized scenes of the past. North Beach won't suddenly fill with Beat poets, the Fillmore won't regain a jazz scene that was desecrated by crooked urban development. The Haight won't be teeming with rock-and-roll bands again. But after the unprecedented chaos of 2020, San Francisco will change again.

onecommentman 6y ago
A distinction needs to be made between the Zeitgeist of a time and the Genius Loci of a place. Is it part of the Genius Loci of the Bay Area to be Bohemian? I get the air for sourdough, and terroir for wine, but culture? It’s a deep question, and requires a comparison with other US cities. Zeitgeist-wise, I’d note that San Francisco is an infant from a world culture standpoint, reaching all the way back to the...1950s? Maybe include Carmel to go all the way back to the early 1900s. All the rest of the world yawns. And the Spanish colonial and indigenous cultures are at best window dressing on the SF vibes...another costume to wear. Most other cultures would probably think that SF doesn’t have enough Zeit to be able to support much of a Geist. But I agree personally that the attempt to intentionally physically and socially recreate an imagined past is a recipe for disaster. That past can be a powerful inspiration for future exploits since, although the physical elements of past visions are gone, the essential visions underlying the imagined past remain today in some real, if not physical sense, to be revisited, refined and perhaps manifest, or perhaps rejected. Now I will take my staff and robe and be on my way...