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that same lord may look like. Don't worry. When I left, the street was extremely dangerous. Several murders and, uh, radio molesting and a lot of street hassles. But that's changed completely. There's a shopkeeper. I'm primarily concerned with shops that are opening up on

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the street. I think it makes a great deal difference in the temper of the neighborhood. Ah, year ago, even six months ago, people wouldn't come down to Haight Street to shop because there was nothing here to shop for. And that's changing tremendously. Working together waken change

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our neighborhood, make it a place of brotherhood would make it turn out good. Changing our neighborhood well is she slowly will change in the neighborhood. That seems to be more responsible people trying to open businesses, trying to get the neighborhood you clean up. I

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believe that the fear that existed about three years ago is greatly dispelled. People so called straight aren't nearly a scared of longhairs they used to be. I'll tell you what's not happening, which is drugs. There's a lot less drugs and a lot less. A late selling

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drugs right on the street crime rate doesn't seem to be a that hard to assess that. E feel safer for chicks, it's a little safer than it was a couple of years ago. Like we could walk down the street at night without worried about getting nice.

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Well, I haven't been mugged yet. People are beginning to settle down and find that they have to live together with each other, since the flower with urine is gone, where they've been building up, restoring these old houses painting and that sort of thing is really coming

00:03:00.270 - 00:03:17.450

back to life. I think the community itself is basically getting together for itself and welcoming. It's a few of us that are older in, so that we can all work together to bring the area back to what it was at one time for such a A

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spirit of brotherhood here in this in this neighborhood that it's overwhelming to us, really. It is old houses, dirty old houses, papers on ground, old houses, dirty. Your house is a short thio. Bring me down Old house is dirty old

00:04:03.950 - 00:04:28.490

house. The speculation which was occurring in the Haight Ashbury was very destructive. It was speculation that rested on deterioration of the building stock. It was speculation that said, Well, let this building run down for the next five years and just collect the rents and not make

00:04:28.500 - 00:04:43.330

the improvements because after five years, we can tear the building down and build something bigger, and we can have higher rents and all that. Ron June Ashes, an architect who lives in the hate and as an alternative to military service, works as an urban planner for

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the city of San Francisco. In the spring of 1972 a coalition of hate residents succeeded in getting virtually the entire neighborhood rezoned downward of feat unparalleled in city history. Joe Nash, who helped make it happen, recalls how neighborhood people first became aroused about the zoning issue.

00:05:04.140 - 00:05:31.020

They learned that the neighborhood was zoned to allow densities 10 times in some places. What the present density of the community waas. This was very frightening to everybody concerned, and consequently a movement developed to get the density is reduced. They had all the rational arguments, but

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they needed the political support. The impression of the community by both the commission and the Board of Supervisors had always been one of a community divided against itself and destined to be taken advantage of by outside interests. But for once, the community got together and unified

00:05:49.820 - 00:06:13.570

itself against those suppose it outside interests and was able to come through and get the job done by reducing the allowable density by two thirds. It certainly encourages owners to rehabilitate rather than to wait for the building to deteriorate and eventually be replaced by a much

00:06:13.570 - 00:06:29.820

larger building, and that the only real way to to stabilize the neighborhood would be to get people to fix up the buildings and to have faith that the neighborhood would continue as a family neighborhood in San Francisco. Well, I think I see sort of a general

00:06:29.820 - 00:06:47.190

interest family by family in the property that Ramadi, the whole house. It was a condemned building, Andi, and took $23,000 to put it back into shape. I think it had hit his bottom and it's coming up. There's a lot of new businesses opening on. My husband's

00:06:47.190 - 00:07:02.990

a painter here, and he's pretty busy. Yeah. Notice sold signs on buildings, been sitting there for a long time, with for sale signs on him. I have myself. I have customers coming in for painting up on redecorating his old Victorian buildings, and they're looking really shop.

00:07:03.440 - 00:07:43.910

The city and the neighborhood have stated unequivocally in policy now that the neighborhood should be preserved fairly much in its present scale on character and president. Density levels way around the Hey, give it a woman I loving face. People are great naked, a

00:07:43.920 - 00:08:06.400

better play. One of those who organized the rezoning effort and continues to play a leading role in neighborhood politics is Calvin Welsh. In a very real way. The hate has traditionally been, uh, split amongst roughly, and it's very rough difference. Uh, three groups in the Haight

00:08:06.400 - 00:08:31.530

Ashbury white longhairs, uh, white property owning fairly long term residents and black people. Uh, what has been happening in the Haight Ashbury has been a Siris of times, fairly painful on a times very pleasant, kind of growing together of those three elements and discussing in such

00:08:31.530 - 00:08:51.390

a way problems issues in such a way that individual personality clashes air kept minimized. And the focus is on problems that we all feel in this community and that are fairly plainly visible to everyone in this community. And there are many such issues. Health care is

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such an issue. The Haight Ashbury is literally ring by hospitals. We have ST Mary's and hardness to the north. We have ST Josephs Hospital to the east, and we have you see medical center to the south and west. Each hospital sees itself is a separate entity.

00:09:05.320 - 00:09:25.260

None of them sees themselves as a community or neighborhood hospital, and the only way that they could grow is to destroy the housing in those surrounding neighborhoods. The biggest and most difficult and most unresponsive of the hospitals, of course, is a University of California Medical Center.

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That hospital in a residential district lines in the last 10 years has built the floor space equivalent of 2.5 Transamerica corporations, mainly along Parnassus. This has caused extraordinary hardship in this neighborhood in terms of traffic and most importantly, in terms of the destruction of low and

00:09:44.600 - 00:10:06.760

moderate income housing units. Par NASA's now looks like Manhattan. Ah, a very real way. The struggle is between the people, the existing residents of this city and corporate interests, both private and public governmental and non governmental, that really want to redo the face of San Francisco.

00:10:12.540 - 00:10:32.950

We're very lucky in this neighborhood, that we have is our representative as our assemblyman, Assemblyman Willie Brown, who happens to be chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Well, the Haight Ashbury is a yeah, kind of a mixed bag of many neighborhoods. There are straight hippies

00:10:32.960 - 00:10:50.110

there, short hairs, longhairs there, black people and classes within the framework of the black people there, educators and their uneducated people. And they're people who look at it as a speculators paradise. Some parts of it would be classified as a very poor neighborhood, and other parts

00:10:50.120 - 00:11:07.970

be classified has a very wealthy neighbors. And so the Haight Ashbury constitutes, I think, a small city within a city, except that it has one quality that I guess most of these never develop and, uh, which, apparently most of these will have to develop if they're

00:11:07.970 - 00:11:22.000

to survive as urban units in America. And that is that the people have begin to look at each other with some degree of trust, some degree of respect in some degree of confidence and some degree of interdependence. And then all of a sudden, City Hall and

00:11:22.000 - 00:11:37.580

some of the other agencies of city government decided to turn their attention on Haight Ashbury. And it made the citizens, uh, rather angry. It's an invalid commission. You ain't gonna hold it the way you want it. It ain't gonna be your way no more. Get a

00:11:37.580 - 00:12:01.830

lot of people that live here and you're gonna have to recognize them now. We would like at this time e o let everybody speak or else nobody else Fake hate Ashbury is is a an area made up of people who are capable of developing their own

00:12:01.830 - 00:12:26.320

views, capable of doing things for themselves. They don't need anybody to tell them who the leaders are in the Eight Ashbury. The withdrawal Today, the Mayor's committee lives in some free office space in a bank building on Market Street, safely removed from the neighborhood. It was

00:12:26.330 - 00:12:40.430

created to restore one governs best when they governed from a four. Well, that's that's really joke. And we don't govern the hate. Certainly that's not our intent. Um, but I think it was a very practical reasons for locating down on Market Street. I just think that

00:12:40.590 - 00:12:54.000

to have located in the office in behavior for climate being what it was, I don't think we could have been allowed to function, I think, would have been hassled constantly. I knew that there were some segments of the community, particularly some of the longhairs and more

00:12:54.000 - 00:13:07.440

hip part of the community that was not part of our original operation. I think this was a mistake, and I think it caused us, Ah, lot of problems and a lot of traumas after that. We have been a catalyst in the community, some positive, some negative.

00:13:07.450 - 00:13:21.180

I think the potential of being Bible is still there, but I don't think the mayor's committee was organized to remain indefinitely in business. So maybe it's time to really look at ourselves is the mayor's committee and ask ourselves very hard question. How can we continue to

00:13:21.180 - 00:13:39.030

justify our existence, or should we continue to exist? Recently, the mayor's committee returned to Haight Street, which Paliotta offered to beautify with a quarter million dollars in revenue sharing money. The committee also acquired a new chairman, Reverend Andrew Juvenal. We've come back to neighborhood because we

00:13:39.030 - 00:14:07.010

are interested in all paying to find jobs for the under employed and the unemployed in improving quality of education, assisting and improvement of housing, helping Thio make Haight Street more viable area for the business men, the customers, the whole community. It's not. Before the mayor's committee,

00:14:07.010 - 00:14:22.810

there was the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council. It had been formed in the early sixties to stop the Panhandle Freeway, but didn't seem to know how to respond to the summer of love and its aftermath. Today, the Neighborhood Council is generally accepted is the most broadly based

00:14:22.810 - 00:14:39.610

and effective organization in the hate. It was the Neighborhood Council, after all, that spearheaded the down zoning drive, and the very people who made it impossible for the mayor or his committee to function in the Haight Ashbury now sit on the council, along with neighborhood homeowner's

00:14:39.620 - 00:14:58.050

merchants and institutional representatives. The membership of the Neighborhood Council is a remarkable coming together of previously hostile factions that coexist in the Haight Ashbury. On one end of the spectrum, there is Steve Cheever, a member of the Good Earth Commune. Justice isn't something that you receive

00:14:58.060 - 00:15:13.480

because it's right. It depends on who's got the juice. If we had known people in the Church of the Good Earth Commune is a loose and ever changing association of people living in an assortment of houses and flats, most of them near Panhandle Park. Since it

00:15:13.480 - 00:15:32.100

was formed, police have suspected the commune of dealing drugs and harboring underage runaways. Numerous raids have swept through the good Earth houses, usually turning up some marijuana but little in the way of hard drugs. Commune members charged that the police are harassing them because of their

00:15:32.100 - 00:15:53.580

political activities. The Good Earth commune calls itself a work collective and dabbles in various enterprises, including a painting company in an effort to become self supporting. The commune also operates a recycling center and free store on Haight Street. Hauling away the weekly tons of glass cans

00:15:53.580 - 00:16:10.260

and paper dropped off by people in the neighborhood provides a small income for good earth and a service to the community. Steve Cheever is an ex con and one of the founders of the Church of the Good Earth commune. He and fellow commune member Ron Landberg

00:16:10.260 - 00:16:35.160

are well known. Neighborhood activists were experimenting are dealing with neighborhood self determination in an international community which is bringing hip, black, white straight landowners and the poor together to deal with their neighborhood. We're exploring the possibilities of being as free as possible and understanding that that's

00:16:35.160 - 00:16:51.520

tempered with as much self discipline as possible on the Good Earth family commune was a place to tries to live out that concept. We have guidelines on drugs, and it seems to be one area where we have anything approaching rules because communal living situations have always

00:16:51.520 - 00:17:10.660

gone down the drain when hard drugs air around. So no needles and no hard drugs. Sorry. Oh, like you, you gotta put e suit. There's several people on welfare in most cases, mothers who have Children and have special needs outside of what we can seem to

00:17:10.670 - 00:17:42.360

get together from our work collective. So we're not completely self supporting at this point, but it's better than it's ever been. It's going to continue to get better waken, change the atmosphere way community with fear. People from far near You are welcome here. A. For a

00:17:42.360 - 00:17:57.350

long time there was two groups. There was us and them, and at one point somewhere in the late fall of 70 I think we started fighting with each other. The liberal started fighting with long hair is longer. Area started fighting with police always around the circle.

00:17:57.840 - 00:18:14.800

The Good Earth commune represents one end of the spectrum encompassed by the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council at the other end of that spectrum includes people like John McCauley. What they're doing now finance a city wide policy. Edgewood Avenue on the slopes of Mount Sutro, is one

00:18:14.800 - 00:18:34.210

of the most exclusive residential addresses in the city. The average value of a home here is $90. Yet Edgewood Avenue is part of the Haight Ashbury. However, some who live along the street might wish it otherwise. John and Rina Macaulay live on Edgewood Avenue, and both

00:18:34.210 - 00:18:52.060

are active in neighborhood affairs. John McCauley is a Republican, a Montgomery Street businessman and an American aristocrat who proudly traces his family tree back to the Continental Congress. Ostensibly, it's difficult to imagine what the Macaulay's have in common with the people of the Good Earth commune.

00:18:52.230 - 00:19:09.910

Things that should be ostensible that should be obvious are what we do have in common with the Church of the Good Earth. That is, that we feel that the body politics, particularly as faras this city is concerned, has gotten a long ways away from serving the

00:19:09.910 - 00:19:34.410

people. I felt that the only way to save the neighborhood was to appeal to the various groups and various individuals and make them realize that this, despite the fact that they may be of a different, different, varied politically and political beliefs, that they had one thing

00:19:34.410 - 00:19:51.050

in common. That was the place they lived in. Because the thing that connects us is not an agreement on how many people live in your house and how many people live in my commune or, um, you know, do you work 9 to 5 on? Do I

00:19:51.050 - 00:20:07.880

not work 9 to 5 now on those kind of things that will continue to divide us? Or that you're older, younger? I smoke marijuana, you drink, uh, booze. We have a different lifestyle, but we recognize their lifestyle is valid for them. I think they recognize our

00:20:07.880 - 00:20:30.570

lifestyle is valid for us. We come together specifically on the thing that says, there's gotta be room in this neighborhood and therefore the whole society for them, for us, for all of them's in us. Is that air in this neighborhood? There are few urban neighborhoods anywhere.

00:20:30.570 - 00:20:48.560

Mawr, thoroughly integrated than the Haight Ashbury. Over 40% of the population is black. Some are middle class homeowners who have been there a while. A greater number are recently arrived from the Western edition, where they were forced out by urban renewal on no one is sure

00:20:48.560 - 00:21:02.770

to what extent the black people of the hate feel a part of the neighborhoods. New sense of unity. Black people of neighborhood are part of it. Uh, I think the only difference is is the priorities that they have as compared to the, uh, the white citizen

00:21:02.770 - 00:21:19.140

in the hate black people are as this united as the white section of the community has been and continues to be a Most of the activists in the community, uh, happen to be young, have to be long here. Black people, uh uh for instance may go

00:21:19.140 - 00:21:36.460

to a community meeting and get turned off because they feel that these people don't relate to them, nor can they relate to them. I think we've got very good in, but from the black black community in the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, they don't really understand that

00:21:36.470 - 00:21:59.660

how black peoples concern might beam or getting the toilet fixing demonstrating downtown because somebody got busted for pot. Some of the most conservative people in this neighborhood or what we might call middle class black people. They are still striving for that traditional American dream. It's not

00:21:59.660 - 00:22:17.280

up to me to tell them that I feel that that's a bankrupt dream. The thing that I feel that's happening between the black and the white community is that is probably one of the first places where black people have been able to see a sustained effort

00:22:17.480 - 00:22:56.050

on the part of white people to change the politics. It takes a long time. It takes a long time to educate people as to who the friends is, who the enemies are. Oh oh, the establishment is. I see it is supposed to be against the waves

00:22:56.550 - 00:23:16.850

against high taxes it's supposed to be for people doing for themselves. The establishment used to say that the least government is the best. Government doesn't say that. Now you have a sort of colonialism in San Francisco, James Stretch, who's head of the Chamber of Commerce. But

00:23:16.850 - 00:23:35.180

he lives in Hillsboro, the man in the downtown association, Mr Pflueger. He lives in Orinda with newspapers. Air controlled by people who don't know who live in the suburbs, do not live in San Francisco, and City Hall rips off the neighborhood for the tourists. For the

00:23:35.180 - 00:23:54.030

commuter, we are becoming column. Where are these people going to really hide? After they squeeze the last drop out of the urban neighborhoods, where they going to run from the violent elements back to the suburbs, they'll find the same violent elements will be there to meet

00:23:54.040 - 00:24:17.590

them in grief on. I feel that these kind of of autocratic and paternalistic policies with government using government money as a club, our sewing are doing more to sow the seeds violent revolution in this country than any other thing. I'm not even sure what revolution means,

00:24:17.600 - 00:24:35.370

except in its most academic sense. It's a profound change in the social situation. It seems to me we're talking about a profound change. Yeah, I think getting people residential people, the neighborhoods of this city, more power is very revolutionary. I don't know anything more revolutionary than

00:24:35.370 - 00:24:49.490

that. I really don't. So up there what? What? The movement that they have now with the youth of with youth movement. I'm trying to be unity and togetherness. Hey, I think is gonna be four hours. You know, I think the Haight Ashbury is the example of

00:24:49.490 - 00:25:21.960

what the rest of America is gonna be about ways people are way