Protesters and Tourists enjoy San Francisco's hospitality simultaneously
Tourists from Norway take "we were there" pix
What ever happened to the Sixties "love in" fad?
Protesters block a store's doorway before taking the police suggestion to move along.
Massive numbers of tourists, shoppers, protesters, journalists, and officers from the San Francisco Police Department converged on the Union Square area of the famed city by the Bay (dubbed "Baghdad by the Bay" by columnist Herb Caen) to partake in the city's annual celebration of Black Friday. There were some heated discussion between the compassionate conservative Christian conspicuous consumers and the Native American style philosophers who believe that the Public Service Announcement featuring Iron Eyes Cody (it's on Youtube) had things in accurate perspective forty years ago.
Occupy San Francisco used the day to protest the philosophy behind America's conspicuous consumption by those who have an excess of purchasing enthusiasm to point out that today's frivolous gift is just grist for tomorrow's land fill garbage dump.
(Didn't Charlie Manson produce a Christmas Carol titled "Oh, Garbage Dump!"?)
The world's laziest journalist (combining columnisting and photography) observed the annual Black Friday events for four hours before succumbing to a bout of fatigue, but the next generation of "record the event for posterity" in the "first draft of history" manner continued their vigil for potential dynamic still and video images.
San Francisco's legendary Laughing Squid man was present as he is for almost any and all San Francisco events tinged with political overtones. (Where is San Francisco columnist Freddy Francisco, when he is needed most? Will it be up to the World's Laziest Journalist to track him down and do a profile of the ubiquitous protester?)
San Francisco's nude protesters were conspicuous by their absence Friday.
Is it true (as some conspiracy theory lunatics would have us believe) that San Francisco in 2011, will be vying to regain the highly coveted Hippest City in the World Award that it previously had captured in 1967 -- 69, as did Paris in 1926 -- 28?
Is it true that the trophy has engraved upon it, the classic passage by Hunter S. Thompson: " . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world . . . ."?
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