Jelly's bar had a rustic quality to it and we figured that if we were 41 years younger, maybe it would have been just as good, if not better, than the other one from the past.
The scoreboard didn't feature the TV feed all the time and it seemed like taking a portable radio would have been a good idea.
Seeing the fighter jets flyover during the National Anthem was a thrill. We know that President St. Reagan espoused the philosophy "Once you've seen one; you've seen them all" about redwood trees, but that point of view doesn't seem to apply to being buzzed by a quartet of jets.
As we walked away from the China Basin area, we overheard a newsman talking to a fellow who had traveled many miles to attend the World Series, but the ticket he had bought on the street turned out to be bogus and his money was gone, he was outside the stadium, and (allegedly) all the police could do was listen sympathetically.
When, in 1969, this columnist was called into the office at the aforementioned public utilities firm and informed that the "selling out to the establishment" experiment was, in their eyes, an abject failure, we hightailed it out to the previously mentioned gravity defying bar and contemplated a life devoted to becoming: a digital beatnik (we'd never heard that term at that time), a gonzo wannabe, and/or a columnist roaming around San Francisco looking for material to be used in a column.
As we peered into our glasses on that fateful day in 1969, and contemplated the future, little did we know that it would all come down to betting everything on the results of the 2010 midterm elections. The war has changed. The music has changed. But can a hippie seriously assert that the times, they are a changin' or is it more like the French say: "The more things change; the more they remain the same!"?
It seemed, back then, like things weren't working out as we planned. Would we ever get to Harry's New York bar in Paris, Skimpy's in Kalgorlie, or the Sandbar in Venice? Nobody bats a thousand and two outta three ain't bad. The bikers' bar in Venice was just too intimidating and so we never did have a diet soda there. It's too late now. That place has changed into a fancy restaurant. As they used to say in the Sixties: "Maybe in another lifetime!"
Yogi Berra once (famously) advised: "When you come to a fork in the road; take it!"
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