PROLOGUE

Finding “hip” young residents of San Francisco's Haight- Ashbury district, who are willing to speak with sociologists, is not an easy task. The community is quite suspicious of and hostile toward university-based social scientists. In the eyes of these young people, sociologists are not only members of the “straight” community – they are “spies” for it as well.

Lincoln Bergman, who conducted a series of interviews in the Haight, was able to partially break through this barrier. He was able to do this through the good offices of his sister and brother, who lived in the community. All three were raised in the district; Lincoln's brother and sister still lived there. Lincoln has a number of qualities that evoke confidence in him. He is a quiet, thoughtful person and a good listener. He is someone who apparently evokes the confidence of the people he interviews.

Lincoln had other qualities as well. He was raised in San Francisco and was quite familiar with the city – its politics, diversity, and temperament. He had been a civil rights activist in San Francisco during the early 1960s and had a feeling for the difficulties hip young people were experiencing in the closing moments of the decade. But Lincoln did not participate in the various struggles that gripped the Haight. He was now a graduate student in the school of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, across the Bay.