Half a century after the summer of love and hippie harmony, California is experiencing a summer of loathing and hipster-bashing.
Not just hipsters. Artists, techies, realtors, business owners, developers, all are feeling the wrath of a burgeoning and in some cases radicalising anti-gentrification movement.
In the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Boyle Heights, protesters are targeting a new cafe with placards, chants and intimidation, tactics which ousted an opera and a gallery.
In Venice, on the other side of LA, residents picket the palm-fringed home of Snapchat, branding it a coloniser for taking over local real estate.
In San Francisco, activists blast Airbnb and bicycle-sharing initiatives amid nostalgia for a “yuppie eradication” project. And in Oakland non-profits stand guard against Uber’s plan to open a giant office downtown.
“We’re in a war,” said Leonardo Vilchis, a leader of Union de Vecinos, an LA-based activist group. “It’s happening across the state. A war to defend our homes and our culture.”
Such rhetoric is quite a change from the flower-power vibe of 1967 when hippies took over San Francisco’s Golden Gate park and kick-started the counter-culture.
But the hippies, after all, just pitched tents. Today’s perceived interlopers rent, buy and flip property. And that’s a problem.
A housing crisis is making homes unaffordable for the poor and middle class, uprooting communities and condemning families to sleep in vehicles, shelters and under tarpaulin.
Gentrification – the process of affluent people moving into and transforming lower income neighbourhoods – was a term once confined to urban planning seminars. Now it has become a howl across California.