Chapter 1- I Left My Past in San Francisco
June, twenty hundred and eleven, my head is full of acid...and I'm driving. I sympathize when a person first takes acid, the beasts and apparitions you come across with a head full of acid, can leave a man traumatized for life. Take me for example, driving to San Francisco I've already come across my grandmother holding a knife trying to stab me and my grandmother is dead. It was only once the acid began to calm down, the beast beside me was actually a fat American, where did I get him? I don't know. Maybe, before I started visioning my dead grandmother I saw him as a playboy model, flashing her parts to get a free ride to the next city. Being a humble gentlemen you can understand I wouldn't allow a playboy model to stand on the streets alone, cold, topless. However there is no model in my car, just a fat American who hasn't shut up about how wonderful San Francisco is going to be.
Oh yes, San Fran is a wonderful place, for today's traveler at least, you have sights to see, happy people to meet, bars and clubs to drink away your woes and find some unlucky woman who is so drunk she can't pull her own skirt back up, so she gives you a free quickie in the toilets. Yes the wonders of San Fran, many proud Americans reside in this city I'm sure. No, I'm not here to find myself some tramp for a one night stand or make myself some new friends, I'm here to conduct an experiment and there is no better place to go, than San Fran. Where it all seemed to evolve and manifest into something great...the sixties. No other time on this planet I can think of, where everyone gathered together to fight not with guns, but with words. Whatever it was that was happening, it felt right we were fighting against it, we believed in America, we believed in peace, love and the american way. Unfortunately it's not all love and roses with the sixties, San Fran also holds the worst of the decade, the deprivation of the law system.
Those who don't understand, who never lived it, will walk on a San Francisco street and see just that, a street. Anyone who does understand, who did live it, or dreams the same dream we did, will see it all around. That street full of cars and pedestrians was once a place where men and women stood on cars holding signs which said "Love, not war". These streets were the same streets where people gathered, got high and had unbelievable orgies with each other, because they thought it was right. These same streets were the streets where men, women and children were beaten, arrested, raped and killed because they were against the government.
Some say the day JFK was assassinated was the day we all gave up hope in the american government, me personally. It was when I saw a child fall to the ground dead, with his skull cracked wide open, because a police officer hit him so hard with his nightstick it killed him. The corruption of the people who were supposed to protect us, because the president told them to jump, they said "How high?" America, land of the drunk, home of the depraved. World center, for grade A garbage.
"I suppose I should give you some background information" I told my fat, American friend, whose name I really couldn't give a damn about. You see, when the swinging sixties finally died, so did the dream. The American dream, peace, love and the American Way. The thought that you could go to any major American city and make it big without a trouble coming your way. The thought that, if we all stood up against the government, they would listen and the wars and deaths of innocents would stop. That's humanity for you, even when we're fighting for the right thing, we're hopeless, we are doomed to fall by our own hands.
I wanted to at least prove to the world that, the dream isn't dead, only the dreamers who first thought of it. A dream never dies, it fades away, maybe it becomes a nightmare to some...but when another dreamer comes along, with the drive and the heart, they can revive it, they can relieve it. They can have one last hump at the dream, one last shot at success.
Call me fickle, say it's futile, but the experiment I wish to perform, is a Sixties experiment. Bring love, not war, to the american public. I want to walk to the white house one day and say "Mr. President, your people want peace...are you going to deny them of that right?" His answer will probably be yes, but we were denied that right before...and we still fought.
There it is, San Fran. I'll drop my American hitchhiker off and make my way to the nerve center. I can see it now, the place where it all manifested and evolved, those streets where men and women stood on cars with signs reading "Love, not war" Those streets where orgies of unbelievable proportions took place, because we thought it was right. Those streets, where men women and children were beaten, arrested, killed and raped. This is San Fran, this is my Sixties Experiment...
