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 never seen anything like this crowd, who use his flower bed as a bathroom and sell pot outside his window.
"Duuuuude. They're, like, underpricing me by 10%, and that really harshes my mellow--and my profit margin."
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.
Evans, 64, says they should get help, clean up or go home.
"I can't understand what's wrong with today's youth."
"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."
"Sure, we did pot and LSD and never bathed, but our music was 'way better. Who'd you rather listen to? Hendrix or Nine Inch Nails?"
Panhandler Jonah Lawrence, 25, insists it is residents who need civilizing.
"F------- squares! They sold out to the Man, man!"
"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."