"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime...San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of...

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons nobody really understands at the time--and which never explains in retrospect, what actually happened...

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost SEE the high water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Say what you will about Hunter, but he was a fine writer and a counterculture icon.

Here we are almost 50 years later and I feel like the tide finally turned again. The water went out so far, for so long, that it looked like it would never come in again. The water is rising now, though, and it'll keep coming in for the next 50 years. We might not ever be able to pinpoint the low water mark but things will just keep getting better and better until someday, 2 generations from now, our grandsons and granddaughters decide to stick it to the man, and rightfully so.