Once upon a time there was a girl we called Yesyes. And I had a crush on her.
In February 1982 I was in SF for the first time. I’ve always wanted to be there, I’m just a child of the hippie generation.
I took the overnight Greyhound from Los Angeles. It was five in the morning and after leaving my bag in the locker at the station, I went out to explore the city. It was Saturday and the streets were empty. In a certain square I saw firemen, police and ambulances. On the roof, there was a man who wanted to jump down. He was pulled down within half an hour. I was later told by friends in NY that he was lucky because the place was empty. Here in NY, in a similar situation in the middle of the day, the crowd started chanting, jump, jump. And the guy jumped. This is America.
Rain was dropping all three days while I was there. I stayed in a seedy hotel in Market Street not far from the Warfield Theatre. And to my disappointment, the Grateful Dead performed here the night before. What a shock to miss something like that by just a few hours. Years later, when I was walking around Haight-Ashbury, the birthplace of the hippie movement, I noticed graffiti on a wall, we still love you Jerry (Garcia).
Anyway, I was so excited to be here that I kept mumbling Scott McKenzie’s song San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair). And I wrote a letter (classical, yet there was no internet and e-mail) to Yesyes. Since she was not with me, I put in the letter a flower that I picked in a park at Union Square in front of the famous St. Francis Hotel.
Of course, I was at home before the letter. And you can only imagine how much and what kind of gratitude she showed me when the letter finally arrived…