'Compassion fatigue' sets in at free-spirited Calif. neighborhood
SAN FRANCISCO -- From his second-floor apartment at the counterculture crossing of Haight and Ashbury streets, Arthur Evans watches a new generation of wayward youth invade his free-spirited neighborhood.
The former flower child was among the legions of idealistic wanderers who migrated here during the Vietnam War to "tune in, turn on, and drop out."
But Evans, who has lived at the same address for 34 years, says he has not seen anything like this crowd, who use his flower bed as a bathroom and sell pot outside his window.
They're known as gutter punks, these homeless kids with dirty dreadlocks and nose rings, lime-green mohawks and orange spray-painted faces, who panhandle with cardboard signs that riff on their lifestyles. "Please Help Us Get Un-Sober," one reads. Sometimes aggressive, they block sidewalks as they strum guitars or bang on bongos. Some throw used hypodermic needles into a nearby pond they call Hep-C Lake.
Evans, 64, says they should get help, clean up, or go home.
"I used to be a hippie. I wore beads and grew my hair long," he said. "But my generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior."
Panhandler Jonah Lawrence, 25, says it is residents who need civilizing. "They say, 'Get a job!' " he said. "And I say, 'You got clothes for me? Or a place I can take a shower so I can look for work?' It's so bogus to tell me to get a job if I have nothing."
In the 40 years since 1967's Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury has remained a beacon for drifters, dreamers, and dropouts. Most are drawn by the Haight's reputation as a safe place to hang out, experiment with drugs, and search for life's direction.
They come expecting a warm welcome, but their presence has become increasingly divisive in the gentrifying neighborhood, where old-timers now rub shoulders with newcomers who are buying the old Victorian houses for $2 million and more.
Empathetic residents say homeless kids deserve as much respect as those with roofs over their heads. "People suffer from compassion fatigue," said Pam Brennan, owner of the Haight-Ashbury Flower Power Walking Tour. "If they're fatigued, they should go take a nap so others can work to help these kids."
But many ex-hippies-turned-homeowners are weary of the youthful intruders.
"I'm sick of stepping over gangs of kids, only to be told 'Die, yuppie!' A lot of us were flower children, but we grew up," said Robert Shadoian, 58, a retired family therapist.
It was easier not to ask for help here in the 1960s, when communal crash pads rented for $40 a month. Back then, many young new arrivals were middle-class.
Today, young people who spend their days in the Haight spend their nights in Golden Gate Park. Many are blue-collar misfits fleeing broken homes, sexual abuse, parents with drug and alcohol problems. Some are addicted to hard drugs. Proud to live on society's fringes, they rely on a tribal closeness for survival .
Sarah Thibault is a suburban outcast. She was raised in Colorado, where her father went to prison and her mother went on welfare when Sarah was 12.
The straight-A student began ditching school and doing drugs. One day, a boyfriend said, "Let's go to Haight-Ashbury."
"I believed the '60s attitude, when people were intentionally kind to each other," she said.
What she found when she arrived in 1999 was decidedly different. The only people who were kind to her were other homeless people.
For years, she bought and sold drugs, using so much heroin that her health began to fail.
She felt invisible. "The only connection you have is with other homeless kids. No matter how tired, hungry, or lonely you are, people just pass you by."
Now 25, Thibault works at the Homeless Youth Alliance, a storefront outreach center that offers a no-questions-asked refuge from the streets. 