but almost. Read the entire article and tell me you don't intuit a creepiness about this town. Is that banjo music I hear? Maybe its dueling sitars.
It sounds to me that although the town is described as being populated by liberal hippies, that it is also highly xenophobic. I found a good number of the back-to-the-earth hippies I met back in the day to be extremely conservative and reactionary rather than liberal types.
They may have been into communal ideas and peace-niks and so-on, but they were quite rigid in their sense of what ought to be and were distrustful of people who didn't exactly fit their social moral codes.
Vicious assault on homeless man shakes up hippie haven
BOLINAS, California (AP) -- Ricky Green wandered into this town some months ago, a stranger just a bit stranger than most.
He had shed his middle-class respectability -- a job as a graphic artist in the 'burbs -- strapped a guitar over his shoulder and landed here on what he told people was "a spiritual journey."
Bolinas seemed like a good fit.
The unincorporated town of 1,600 on the Pacific coast is Marin County's most blatant throwback to the Summer of Love, a hippie haven that is bent on stopping tourists from spoiling its laid-back groove.
The 33-year-old Green, prone to age of Aquarius-speak about the moon and the stars, already looked sort of like a local.
As one resident, Bill Boman, put it, "He had this Jimi Hendrix vibe."
But Green never quite meshed with the Bolinas social fabric. The night of June 23 proved how much he remained an outsider, in a liberal enclave stubbornly averse to strangers.
Six young people -- including two juveniles -- allegedly attacked and stabbed Green with a viciousness that is forcing Bolinas to search its soul for meaning.
The attack also underscores what advocates for homeless people say is a growing problem across the country: attacks on society's most vulnerable members, almost as sport, especially by young people.
"I'm not surprised that an incident like this happened in Bolinas," said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "We have found that these kinds of incidences happen everywhere. There was an incident just last month in Cleveland. It's no longer a big city thing."
The typical attack involves a mob of youths that beats a homeless person with blunt objects, sometimes setting the person on fire, Stoops said.
In the first six months of this year, 13 homeless people have been killed across the country, he said, a pace on par with last year's, in which 28 homeless people were killed, up from 20 in 2006. Nonfatal attacks also are rising, Stoops said, up from 142 in 2006 to 160 in 2007.
"Why are these attacks happening?" Stoops said. "The main reason is that you can't go anywhere in society without coming across homeless folks. And there is this antipathy or scorn towards them." Add the boredom young people face in the summer, drugs or alcohol and a group mentality, Stoops said, and the mix becomes dangerous, if not lethal.
Detectives are still investigating the Bolinas attack. But by all accounts, Green confronted a group of young people that had been drinking. He was angry about an altercation another homeless man had the day before with some youths.
The attack happened on the beach. Green was stabbed multiple times and pummeled with a skateboard, flashlight and bottles. While he was down, the mob kicked and jumped on him.
Sheriff's investigators said up to 20 witnesses watched the beating, but no one stopped it.
Green, found semiconscious and bleeding profusely, was airlifted to a hospital in Santa Rosa, 50 miles away. He spent nearly two weeks there recovering from lacerations to the head and body.
Five people have been charged with attempted murder.
In Bolinas, where everyone knows, or knows of, the victim and the suspects, the attack is raising hard questions. Bolinas wears its xenophobia proudly. For decades, a group known as the Bolinas Border Patrol has torn down all signs pointing the way to the enclave from Highway One. But now, some wonder whether Bolinas' inbred hostility to outsiders exploded the night of Green's attack.
Others are pondering whether the attack means that Bolinas, despite its barefoot youth, loose-roaming dogs and ponytailed, tie-dyed 60-year-olds, is more like the rest of society than it wanted to admit.
That thought is especially jarring. Bolinas fancies itself special. The town keeps a "free box" outside the natural foods store for anyone to donate or pick up clothes or household items. A few years ago, it passed a ballot measure officially declaring itself "a socially acknowledged, nature-loving town" that likes blueberries, bears and skunks. The town saloon has the word "peace" outside, written in seashells.
"I knew of Bolinas as a peaceful place," said Boman, a musician who moved to Bolinas several weeks ago. "What has happened to the children of the revolution?"
Almost no one else approached for this story wanted to talk, be quoted or have their name used.
Still in shock, Bolinas is trying to understand what happened and make amends. Anguished town meetings are taking place, with discussions focused on finding solutions to disaffected youth.
But there are some hard feelings for Green here, too.
Derek James, a bartender at Smiley's saloon, approached a reporter to say Green had been causing trouble in town for months. He had been barred from Smiley's for harassing people, James said.
"He was getting into people's business," he said. "I really felt like something was going to happen."
The other day, fresh out of the hospital, Green was spotted back in town. (He proved elusive, always a step ahead of visitors trying to find him. The Associated Press was unable to reach him.)
Many were relieved to see him back on his beat. But James could not believe the news.
"I know a lot of people in this community," he said, "are not really happy to see him back."
I don't know what prompted this type of behavior, but it really is sick. I can't think of any reason that would explain it away.
When I was young (eons ago) we used to respect "the Hobos" and often times sit down with some of them at night outside of town near the railroad tracks and listen to their stories.
I know it's a different world today, but what they did to Green was inexcusable - especially in a town with that attitude. I've known some asshole Hippies in my day too. Nothing's ever cut and dried... (well you know what I mean) ;)
Peace,
=RD=
It was the same for me in terms of the hanging out under bridges or along river banks with the hobo types. It was different then, more of a Jack Kerouac "On The Road", Bohemian sort of camaraderie. There was a kind of admiration for the deliberate societal "outsiders". There was also a sense of self-development and seeking to raise the consciousness. Plus I wasn't hanging out with a group of people when visiting the rubbies and derelicts. It was something I sought out and in that I guess there was a kinship.
Socratic sterno.
Now the atmosphere its self-centered, opportunistic, with a dangerous "wilding" edge. The hippie child rearing technique of setting little Willy free to do whatever his little ego dreams up and not calling him to task for exercising his normal youth ruthlessness has frequently populated our unsupervised (and even supervised) areas with undisciplined pack brats who have developed their own amoral or warped moral peer driven social credos that are too often lacking action-to-consequence and even rudimentary empathy skills.
And the drugs have changed. There's always been alcohol, but now its mixed with script narcotics or worse, rough speed. Nothing like a jacked-up drunken testosterone-ed peer pack to ruin a solitary evening stroll.
Youth groups, especially highly intoxicated youth groups, have always been dangerous for the wayward stranger, but now its become a badge of celebrity to be violent and cruel. Now the attacks are coordinated and published on YouTube or MySpace. Homeless people are simply easy targets viewed as unlikely to either defend themselves or get help.
Welcome to the not so brave new world.
You have the science down to a "T". (or lack of science, I should say) The new bogus "reality" bullshit has instilled a sense of stardom in committing these obscene acts of violence - It's so cool to be cruel. Funny ha-ha.
It's still no excuse and it makes me sick.
I fear the atrocities will never end.