The Family Dog After The Fall

The long - suffering Family Dog, closed for four days in January by the Internal Revenue Service, has reopened again but this time Chet Helms, who is the spiritual if not titular leader of whatever community combine runs the Dog at this point, has a little different perspective now; that perspective, Helms feels, is a direct result of the changes San Francisco and San Franciscans went through in the wake of the Altamont disaster.

“Up to that point (Altamont) I had gone through a six, eight month, maybe a year bag of not really valuing my opinions about things. I think that that taught me to value myself and my attitudes. The only way that Altamont and things like that happen is by a lot of us being in that insecure place.”

Altamont was a particularly decisive event for San Franciscans because of that, he thought. “I read the I Ching the day after and I threw the Turning Point, which is what Kesey threw a few years ago at the Death of the Haight thing. The Turning Point says that darkness forces reach the pinnacle of their power in late winter, the darkness before the dawn.”