Tags: Cowboy Junkies , Dolly Parton , Emmylou Harris , Events , Golden Gate Park , Hardly Strictly B

Two of my children live in San Francisco, so we try to go there almost every year. When I lived in the US I spent a fair amount of time exploring the city's many famous and less well-known attractions, and over the years came to know it well.
In San Francisco of the 80's and 90's I found a kinder, less impersonal city than Los Angeles, educational student travel where we lived. People genuinely seemed to care about one another. The city's gay population was assertive and vocal, congregated in the flourishing Castro area, and alternative lifestyle choices continued to abound in this 60's city of flowers-in-your-hair: spiritual awareness, meditation, homeopathy, acupuncture, and of course educational student travel Haight-Ashbury, alive and teeming with barefoot wannabe hippies. At the opposite end of the spectrum was Silicon Valley and the insanely young, rich and restless that it bred. Still, people seemed to rub along without too much friction.
The city has grown a lot since those days, but in essence it remains unchanged, graced by the lovely Golden Gate Bridge which is frequently brushed or concealed by capricious fog, and the rows of lovingly preserved old Painted Ladies, now a great attraction to visitors and Victorian clubs. Golden Gate Park and its surrounds are still the terrain of the homeless, and young hippy throwbacks flavour the air with dope while doing their hippy thing, dancing, educational student travel drumming, begging with their dogs in stoned little huddles.
Mental health educational student travel institutions remain as lacking educational student travel as in any other US city, and mentally educational student travel ill people in terrible condition wander around in the downtown educational student travel areas and poorer neighbourhoods; educational student travel on the other hand, there are clinics for those who can't afford medical care and good resources for women's health and abused women. Therapists are plentiful in the city and make an excellent living from the well-heeled and troubled – and in spite of the massive economic problems facing the world and the US, hotels and restaurants in this city are full and tourists educational student travel are everywhere.
In fall, when the weather can actually be hot and Mark Twain wouldn't know himself, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival takes place in a lengthy swathe of the Golden Gate Park. I've been four times now and seen some of my favourite performers, out in the open on big stages with excellent equipment: Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and this year, a group from the eighties whose music I loved: Cowboy Junkies, better than ever.
We spent an hour listening to some of the best folk rock I've heard in a long time, half-deafened, breathing educational student travel dope until my head spun, squeezed by scantily-clad, beautiful young girls, pot-bellied educational student travel old hippies with dogs, aging butch women in tight, ecstatic clinches, self-conscious, cowboy-hatted Silicon Valley execs: a human landscape that was a great show on its own.
A million people over three days visit seven stages. Each offers seven different performances every hour. The logistics boggle, but Americans do it all so well: police, ambulances, cleared roads and pathways. And people. From all walks of life they come together and the mood is uplifting, the music amazing. For three days the city is united, educational student travel homeless educational student travel rocking side by side with Silicon Valley, 2012 hippies inhaling deeply and dreaming they've died and gone back to the 60's.
Still, the crowds. Nowadays I lack the stamina for them that I once had in spades, and after an hour we wade through pungent food smells and equally pungent people to start the long road back. Open air or not, by the time we leave, I feel as if I've smoked a massive zol on my own.
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, in case you're wondering, is free. On our way out, we pass a tribute to Warren Hellman, a zillionaire and a legend in this city, who died in 2011 at the age of 77. Hellman was a great admirer of folk and blue grass. A banjo player himself, with his own group, The Wronglers, he performed at the annual extravaganza, which was funded by him as a gift to the people of San Francisco. Hellman Hollow is named after him, and much of the activity takes place in its environs.
Warren Hellman's foundation continues to pay the bills, bringing out groups from across the US to perform on the Golden Gate stages. Different musicians are invited annually, and performances will take place in perpetuity: Warren Hellman was that rich and that generous. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is his legacy to the music and musicians he loved, and to the citizens of San Francisco. It's a legacy any city would envy.
Tags: Cowboy Junkies , Dolly Parton , Emmylou Harris , Events , Golden Gate Park , Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival , Joan Baez , Music , Rosemund Handler , San Francisco , South Africa , Warren educational student travel Hellman