It’s been ages since I’ve checked out the Haight Street Fair, which is kind of odd considering I try and ride my bike to the Haight and back at least once a week so I’m somewhat of a regular on that street. We’ve had some great times here. Winnie went one year when Primus was playing and ended up hanging out with them in a local bar afterwards. I was there when DJ Tracy spun a set all day at Amoeba (The old raver store before the record store moved into the Bowling Alley) and then they locked the door and let the party go renegade after the Haight Street Fair ended.
We’ve both had good times there but lately I’ve just associated that block party with crowds and claustrophobia. I’m not sure what’s happened in the Bay Area, if there are more people here, more people going to events, or if it’s just my senile mind playing tricks on me. But it was a sunny day yesterday and my moods are a slave to the weather, so I decided to do the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair for the first time in over a decade.
This Mexican kid in the green shirt looked like he just walked out of a Jimmy Kimmel skit. This house was blasting Funkadelic records and the kid kept trying to crash the party. Without much success. Snoop Dogg looks happy to see me though.
Frank Chu was out on patrol.
We exchanged pleasantries and conspiracy theories.
The award for the third greatest rock shirt of the day goes to –
Misfits kid on Hippy Hill.
It’s the combination of the shirt, his antenna dreadlocks with the antenna goatee, the SF Giants hat, and the humpty-dance pose that makes it an all-around classic Haight street look.
The number two greatest rock shirt of the day goes to the 1991 Jane’s Addiction.
It was all pretty much a downhill ride from there, huh Perry?
If only all the rock shirts that I bought 18 years ago still fit me.
And the number one greatest rock shirt of the day goes to the straight edge dad with a kid in a stroller who zipped past me in a heartbeat.
I have no idea which band that is, but anyone wearing a California Straight Edge shirt and taking their kid out to the Haight Asbury Street Fair wins the contest, any contest, as far as I’m concerned.
The Outer Sunset 