Heady Times
Apr. 24th, 2005 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythI think there's something about San Francisco. Maybe it's the climate, maybe strange dreams float in on the winds, from nameless places across oceans that don't exist. For me, it's a city of myths and love, for all I've only been there once. But I was in love, then, and that's still there, even if the love and the loved is gone. A city of late night adventures when we got lost, beautiful buildings, and weather that kicks memory into overdrive. But there's definitely something about the city. First there were the hippies, then it was, and still is, a large part of the heart of the Internet. Maybe not in the sense of the data flowing through it, but the dreams.
The late 90s were a heady time, full of change and vigor and excitement. The Internet was a magical place, anywhere you went, there were people doing things and something going on. People to talk to, argue with, about any topic you could imagine. We were going to change the world, there wasn't any other choice. It had to happen. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning . . .
I can't say it better than Hunter did. "And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.” Replace the newspapers, replace the TV, all of human knowledge, right there at your fingertips. All the tools right there to take down dictators and other baddies, and it was going to happen. It had to, if there was any justice in the universe.
The 90s were a heady time for me, even isolated out here in nowhere like I was, maybe it just seems that way since I was young. But the explosion of ideas and opportunities, everything was on our side. Culture jammers and Discordians and weirdoes and freaks and geeks were my companions and mentors, from miles away. And one of the places that was always mentioned was San Francisco. Everything interesting was happening there. Even more than New York, or Boston, or Seattle.
And we changed the world. Not how we expected. The Old and the Evil didn’t roll over and die, they were bigger and cannier than that. They fought back, and money and power are a match for undirected energy. “So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
And maybe so. But the wave isn’t completely gone. And it tossed thing around. So did the one Hunter was writing about. Sometimes waves unearth things better left drowned. Great Cthulhu lies sleeping under the Pacific, as any geek knows. Waves that get too big wake up his minions, who lash their slimy tentacles at new things that make them uncomfortable, and try and drag them down to the depths. But some of the new are too fast, or too many, and get away.
The wave isn’t really gone. That’s not how water works. It infiltrates its way into everything, every gap that’s there. It’s no longer visible, and maybe not pushing ahead, but everything has changed. And San Francisco is still there, restlessly dreaming. It was about twenty-five years between what Hunter was writing about and the Internet explosion. That’s about a generation. I wonder what kind of wave will be coming twenty five years from now. But I’d be willing to bet one of the hearts of whatever it is will be San Francisco.
“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era--the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . .
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning . . .
And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” - Hunter S. Thompson
Tags: Mindscribbles
The late 90s were a heady time, full of change and vigor and excitement. The Internet was a magical place, anywhere you went, there were people doing things and something going on. People to talk to, argue with, about any topic you could imagine. We were going to change the world, there wasn't any other choice. It had to happen. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning . . .
I can't say it better than Hunter did. "And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.” Replace the newspapers, replace the TV, all of human knowledge, right there at your fingertips. All the tools right there to take down dictators and other baddies, and it was going to happen. It had to, if there was any justice in the universe.
The 90s were a heady time for me, even isolated out here in nowhere like I was, maybe it just seems that way since I was young. But the explosion of ideas and opportunities, everything was on our side. Culture jammers and Discordians and weirdoes and freaks and geeks were my companions and mentors, from miles away. And one of the places that was always mentioned was San Francisco. Everything interesting was happening there. Even more than New York, or Boston, or Seattle.
And we changed the world. Not how we expected. The Old and the Evil didn’t roll over and die, they were bigger and cannier than that. They fought back, and money and power are a match for undirected energy. “So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
And maybe so. But the wave isn’t completely gone. And it tossed thing around. So did the one Hunter was writing about. Sometimes waves unearth things better left drowned. Great Cthulhu lies sleeping under the Pacific, as any geek knows. Waves that get too big wake up his minions, who lash their slimy tentacles at new things that make them uncomfortable, and try and drag them down to the depths. But some of the new are too fast, or too many, and get away.
The wave isn’t really gone. That’s not how water works. It infiltrates its way into everything, every gap that’s there. It’s no longer visible, and maybe not pushing ahead, but everything has changed. And San Francisco is still there, restlessly dreaming. It was about twenty-five years between what Hunter was writing about and the Internet explosion. That’s about a generation. I wonder what kind of wave will be coming twenty five years from now. But I’d be willing to bet one of the hearts of whatever it is will be San Francisco.
“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era--the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . .
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning . . .
And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” - Hunter S. Thompson
Tags: Mindscribbles
