I’m calling on all the cool cats and hip chicks of the Beat Generation to give us a hand. Those of you that hung out at the coffee houses in San Francisco and Berkeley, reciting poetry, sipping java, smoking cigs, playing guitars, and giving the finger to the man.
Caffe Trieste in
the city, along with Caffe Med across the bay in Berkeley were among your
favored hangouts. Caffe Med is now gone, but you still have Peet’s.
You flocked to the
original Peet’s Coffee in Berkeley when it opened in 1965, just as beatniks had
begun to morph into hippies. Different names, but with many shared values. Drop
by any day and you’d find Mr. Peet talking coffee and brewing cups for a
variety of question-the-government hipsters and university professors alike.
Personal freedom figured high on your list of priorities in life.
So where are all
of you now? Possibly gone from this world, but I would have thought that some
of your ideology had been retained. Regrettably, I fear it has all been lost to
sheer panic over a false medical emergency.
The other day I dropped by the original Peet’s on Walnut and Vine to pick up my beans. And this is what I found on the door:
The citizens of
Berkeley, the original Stand up to Government Overreach city, are now required to
show papers to purchase coffee. And they obediently follow orders. It is only a
matter of time before one will not be allowed into supermarkets. (To their credit, no one at Peet’s demanded my papers.)
This is what happened
in apartheid South Africa and the Bay Area locals protested against it. Much later,
they protested against the marginalization of those with HIV/AIDS. Yet now it
is completely normal to ostracize people who refuse to fall in line with masks
and vaxxes.
According to the
Rules of Berkeley, the un-vaxxed are now second class citizens. As far as I can
tell, the only venues that do not require a vax card are supermarkets and
possibly libraries.
In a city with, according to public records, only 55 dead from the virus since the beginning, Vax or be damned is the mandate. Even the Vaxxed-Clean, aged two and above, are still required to wear masks indoors, and most wear them when outside.
The poets of the coffe houses are long gone, along with all common sense. They have all lost their way.
