THE GREEN SNAKE
If you lived in San Francisco during the sixties then you know that the reason why Haight-Asbury became the focal point of a sociological movement was its status as a transitional neighborhood, having a neighborhood of well-bred intellectuals and professional off one end, and at the other end a neighborhood where the poor and the destitute of society cohabited. Where these two cultures met ideas often times contradictory to both cultures were born. You probably also know that good jazz musicians, particularly flutists, could be heard most afternoons on the boardwalk at North Beach. There you probably took walks along the curved pier that stretches into the bay and talked to fisherman who caught sand sharks and what they called sea trout. Of course you were living there before the tall ugly buildings of later date were constructed, and you know that Golden Gate Park is so distinct in its beauty as compared to any other park in the world that it must be considered separately from all others, a fair comparison not being at all a near possibility. Sunsets dropping behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Cloud banks hanging over hills above Sausalito. All of these things you know if you lived in San Francisco during the Sixties.
I was working as a bartender at the Green Snake, where one of my customers knew Eric Hoffer, which every one there thought was a big deal and I let on that I did too even though I had no idea who he was. Still don’t. My biggest challenge as bartender was trying to keep the guns of the guards from an armed car service holstered and if they were taken from these holsters, which happened a lot, preventing them from discharging them inside the bar. They never did no matter how large a quantity of alcohol they had consumed. There was no entertainment at the Green Snake but one got the feeling once inside the bar that it was a night club. Perhaps it was the nearness to Broadway and the tourist traps, but unbeknown to the thirsty patrons of the Green Snake, they were the entertainment.
We of course would get the overflow from the topless joints. Tired, beat up looking sailors would stumble in at two a.m., order a beer and perk up. Italian immigrants who had made San Francisco their first stop in this country and now lived a few blocks from the Green Snake came in, some just after a big Italian dinner. Many of the neighborhood’s single residents also stopped in. These were school teachers. Loan officers at banks. Artists. A rather disproportionately high number of the area residents were artists. Clerks who worked in the office buildings downtown. I often wondered what it must be like to be a clerk in downtown San Francisco. The sophistication. The intellectual overburden seemed somehow to dismiss any possibility of clerking in that grand city. Anybody who worked in the offices of downtown San Francisco must be a high level something or other. Yet people would come up to my bar and ask to be serviced who were no more then mail room supervisors. Within the splendors of the flowered city someone was a time card records keeper. It seemed incredulous to me with all the artists and musicians and poets one could find there. The explanation I found, to this disparity, was that San Francisco was a city of artists, musicians, and poets, and those who wished to be artists, musicians and poets.
In the morning our customers were old timers, retired city workers, men who had worked as printers with the newspapers, some who had spend their working lives on the Stwo p.m. they were all gone and we started getting workers who left the jobs early. Telephone guys sneaking a beer. Building inspectors. Food salesmen, and there would always be a few sailors who got off the ship at noon and wanted to drink cheaply and put a buzz on before going over to Broadway where the drinks were double the price of the Green Snake.
Outside there was a canopy over the entrance to the Green Snake which extended to the street. We kept a spotlight on out front, and on Friday and Saturday nights the effect was theatrical, with motorcycles parked outside and their owners milling around, going in and out of the Snake, and other people, all kinds of people stopping out front to talk , cabs pulling up and discharging patrons, and sometimes when the entrance door was held open for a while the overflow of talk amd glasses and cash registrars from inside would invade this impromptu stage. An early Spanish American mission must have been very much like the inside of the Green Snake with masonry walls, some structural wood visible, oak furniture, and wrought iron fixtures here and there in just the smallest amount. The lighting was minimal with no hint as to where it came from; it could have come from candles off in an alcove or hidden by one of the pillars that served to hold the rest of the building up.
If you lived in San Francisco during the Sixties you may have been walking around North Beach on a Sunday or Saturday afternoon without much on your mind except what a strange and exciting place this was and, noticing the green snake on the door, came in and ordered a scotch and soda which I may have served you in my customary pleasant manner causing you to comment on the lovely fall weather. And as more people came in on that Sunday or Saturday afternoon you may have elected to have had another scotch and perhaps a third . Soon you might have gotten up and went outside to find that it was dark out now and that a walk through the artificially lit sections of Broadway and Chinatown with two or three drinks in you always served as stimulus for the imagination.
That’s how it was back in the Sixties. But then came the Seventies and the war was over, and Watergate, and the energy crisis and everything started to blur. There was a great distortion. The vision was lost. It seemed the poor and destitute were growing in number. And this after The New Deal, The New Frontier, and The Great Society. Somehow with all the various assimilations of great intentions society had had a short fall. The impressions of mankind for centuries were invalid. A New Beginning was being called for and the anger and despair of the people at having their lives once again thrown into disarray was rampant. I could see it in my customers at the Green Snake. They would quarrel with each other and fist fights were often the solution. My benign apothecary of good sentiment was becoming a diseased organism. And when the quiet bloom of the dream of a wonderful land finally died, I went home to Allentown, Pennsylvania where I took a job as a high school history teacher Oddly enough, I have since been asked to be the chairman of the Teachers-Parents Committee on Alcohol. I told the principal I was uniquely qualified having worked for a green snake in San Francisco, to which he simply raised his eyebrows and said thank you and that I could leave now.
Copyright JJW
