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well by 'Love,' and all we wanna know from you people, you who're using the Haight-Ashbury as a marketplace to sell your cheap artifacts of the so-called New Consciousness, is what and how do you intend to affirm your responsibility to the community? Huh? How?"

A bearded shopkeeper muttered something about the HIP Job Co-op being affirmation enough of their responsibility to the community.

Emmett remained standing and shot back, "Yes, the HIP Job Coop! That's a fine example of what's going on here. Sure, it manages to get some helpless runaway girl a job. A job in an attic-sweatshop making dresses for a dollar an hour! Say it takes her two hours to make a dress. That's two dollars, right? Well, then the people who employ her--the incense-burning hippies--take that dress 'n sell it for twenty-five or thirty dollars. After a while she gets disillusioned about this kind of short action and she drops further into the street. Then, we end up with her. An' that's where your HIP Job Co-op's at, motherfucker!

"You HIP merchants and some of you other people around here have done the most to build the myth of the Hippie-Longhair, the incense-burning, bead-stringing freedom, and now you ain't doin' a goddamn thing to cope with this immigration crisis you ticked off. You ain't concerned about it, are you? What are these kids goin' to do, when they get here 'n find out that the myth is just that--a myth? There are already enough hungry confused people on the street and now there's going to be a lot more. An' you clouddwellers better come up with some alternatives about what to do about 'em 'n cut out all this metaphysics shit you're all so fuckin' fond of 'n quit playin' Monopoly or someone's going to take it personal 'n stuff an I Ching up yer ass like a suppository!"

As soon as Emmett sat down, the two brothers who owned the largest and most successful of the HIP shops agreed that the hippie world was being marketed without conscience, and promised they were going to limit their commercial operation and turn the back half of their Psychedelic Shop into a "calm center," so that the kids could wander inside off the street and meditate in pleasant surroundings. The proposal made Emmett bow his head in disgust and hold it with both his hands, wondering what preposterous, lunar logic could inspire anyone to think that a "calm center" would even slightly alleviate any of the problems which had to be faced in the district. He looked up after a moment at Tumble, who was flexing his mouth and jaw muscles with contempt for the silly proposition, [end page 293]