"But Where Is What I Started For?"

I think the place has gone crazy " said Assemblyman Willie Brown, coming out of the city hall, where Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk had just been murdered. Slipping from the City Lights bookstore, Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti lamented the "pathogenic industrial civilization" and then wrote a poem: "A hush upon the landscape/ of the still wild West/ where two sweet dudes are dead/ and no more need be said." Cyra McFadden, whose book The Serial lampoons the insecure laid-back life in rich Marin County north of San Francisco, observed: "I had a good time with the kooks. Now I find I'm less and less amused, and more fearful." Usually ebullient Columnist Herb Caen mourned: "What is it about San Francisco?"

The record of terrorism in the San Francisco area in the past decade is undeniably remarkable.* In 1969 Charles Manson recruited his obsessed family from the flower children of Haight-Ashbury and led them to the slaughter of Actress Sharon Tate and seven others. Police still have not caught the self-proclaimed "Zodiac" killer who preyed on young lovers in the San Francisco area, claiming responsibility for 37 deaths between 1968 and 1974.

In 1973 the Symbionese Liberation Army murdered Oakland School Superintendent Marcus Foster with cyanide bullets. The S.L.A. went on to kidnap Patricia Hearst and involve her in an armed bank robbery. Four of the group were killed in a fiery Shootout with police in Los Angeles, televised live. During the same period, twelve whites were randomly shot by Black Muslim gunmen in the "Zebra" killings. Lynette ("Squeaky") Fromme, a former Manson family member, and Sara Jane Moore both tried to kill President Ford in 1975. The home of San Francisco Supervisor Dianne Feinstein, now acting mayor, was the target of a bomb in 1976. District Attorney Joseph Freitas' car was bombed the following year.

One explanation for the tradition of terror in California, and particularly in San Francisco, is that the area is a mecca for restless dreamers. The mark of the 1849 gold rush is still pervasive. Writes Kevin Starr in Americans and the California Dream: "The state remained, after all, a land characterized by an essential selfishness and an underlying instability, a fixation upon the quick acquisition of wealth, an impatience with the more subtle premises of human happiness." Of the 1960s, when some 1,000 people a day fled west, Joan Didion wrote in Slouching Towards Bethlehem: "Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together . . .San Francisco was where the social hemorrhaging was showing up."

Half of all Californians were born out of state, usually in places where they felt confined by traditions and roots. Says Stanford Psychiatrist Donald Lunde: "Many who come west might have been in trouble at home, lost their businesses or lost their families. They come here for a new start --or a last chance." San Francisco Examiner Editor Reg Murphy puts it: "This is every misfit's favorite city."

What the wanderer finds upon arrival is unsurpassed tolerance for every lifestyle, a bracing climate and stunning beauty. Most newcomers flourish; in fact, to the more inhibited East, there are signs of overflourishing. Proclaim ads for $1,500 redwood hot tubs: "There's laughter, playful splashing, quiet conversations . . . it exactly fits the spirit of our time." Other new products include portable solar water heaters for backpackers, and organic dog food.

But despair in a paradise can be even deeper than in places where there are more concrete enemies or elements to fight. Walt Whitman ended his poem Facing West from California 's Shores: "But where is what I started for so long ago?/ And why is it yet unfound?" Nathanael West's classic portrayal of California madness, the mob scene in The Day of the Locust, shows the rage of those who fled the ordinariness of their lives. "Where else could they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?" he wrote. "Once there, they discovered that sunshine isn't enough."

As a consequence, some reach even further out, discovering Far Eastern religions, sensitivity training workshops or holistic body maintenance. There is an emphasis on shops or holistic body maintenance. There is an emphasis on self-fulfillment that spawned what Tom Wolfe called "the Me Decade." Says Sex Counselor Nora La Corte: "Respecting the wisdom of the body leads to responsible hedonism and nurturance of the whole person by recharging one's energy for self-healing."

California has long been fertile ground for cults. As early as 1840, William Money, who claimed to have met Christ on the streets of New York City, came to California preaching the world was shaped like a fish. He offered miraculous healing powers, treated 5,000 patients, became involved in politics, and was finally exposed by the press.

Some never find salvation or happiness. San Francisco has the highest suicide rate and one of the highest alcoholism rates in the nation. Despite constant closed-circuit television monitoring, there have been 642 known fatal leaps from the Golden Gate Bridge. Last week, after the horror in Jonestown, the Suicide Prevention Center reported that the number of calls from desperate citizens had increased by 50%.

* Although San Francisco is plagued by terrorism, its overall violent crime rate last year, according to the FBI, was surpassed by 16 U.S. cities.

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