I kept noticing the hair. In the front of the room around the semi-circular dais were eight council members and the mayor: all gray. The three men were lucky to have hair, for like their colleagues they were born in the late Forties or early Fifties (their female member from District 3 has thinner hair than any of them; her scalp shines through her gray wisping curls like the moon in mist). All of the council were veteran protesters from the Sixties, at least liberal and maybe libertarian. They were confronted last night by a mess of thin white kids with dreadlocks, pierced homely people with chain tattoos around their narrow calves and thread friendship bracelets around their wrists. The boys have beards like armpit hair and the girls have armpit hair like beards.

The kids all filled out speaker cards and dropped them into the wire drum. They effectively stuffed the thing, and were awarded ninety percent of the public comment time, to describe the horror, to question police procedure, to demand more rights for cyclists, to mourn (in silence) the couch. They sat up straight on the wooden chairs in the council chamber, their gnarled dusty dreads like snakes Medusa would envy, frizz-twisted ropes of yellow, tan, red, brown, black, blue and green, indignant-bouncing about the ham-handed cops, before the unstyled gray heads of the council.

So the old folks acted wise. All six women and three men leaned forward and appeared to be listening closely; then each one who spoke advised caution, early cooperation with the police, reasonable patience, and several other qualities of which they’d been entirely incapable when they themselves were young.

Personally, I thought the kids were remarkably restrained. They simply walked out of the meeting. Now here they were, discussing it on the train. Like a coincidence.

“Dude: it was bunk.” The young man slapped his own thighs for emphasis. His companion threw her leg over his. For the first time it seemed like sex. “Man,” she said.

The train accelerated as it plowed beneath the bay. I settled into the backwards feeling.

Last night the kids were fresh and passionate, but I could imagine their incipient maturity: lines without wisdom. I envisioned scalloped chins along with the glazed look of romantic amnesia, just like I could still see the youth in those stale council faces. I almost recall the councilmembers young, thin, hairy, horny. Their eyes then were like ponds; now they looked like holes in walls. Their hair then was thick and middle-parted, and their clothes were baggy and blue or tie-dyed. They were passionate about changing the world, and look: they stayed with it enough that they are now the city council. Flat-assed, weary and nostalgic, advising patience and cooperation (why, when they were your age, they walked miles to and from the demonstrations, uphill both ways). The mayor seems to have forgotten the two times she was arrested in 1970 for destruction of property. Or the almost pornographic affair she then had with the current councilmember from District 5, who at that time was married to (an older woman!) his erstwhile English professor.

I wondered how long it would take before these kids lost their memories. Imagining them cynical and sagging, I noticed them again as the young man raised his voice above the scream of the wheels on the rails.

“…a bigger couch next month,” and his companion nodded encouragingly. “Tony and Chris are meeting with the mayor this afternoon.” Those were the two held longest in jail.

The young woman leaned back, pushing her head into the high train seat. There was something about the confidence in her movement that telegraphed how strong her personality was while also exhibiting the silver ring in her navel. She led the awkward silence well last night; she might be a person coming into her own. I knew these kids were raised in the pale matriarchy established by my generation, our suburban culture of coffeepot feminism and Valium divorce. He was hitched on her for the moment like a card clipped on a bicycle spoke, but he’d probably be flung off by the force of her maturing will. That’s how it seemed to me, as I listened to their conversation and learned that it wasn’t just the couch the group lost; stuffed in its belly was nearly a quarter pound of weed and the $400 they’d collected for a new sound system. Outrage mixed with grief, till I heard the young woman ask the young man if he wanted to go for a bike ride. With a smile. Later.

For a few minutes more they sat opposite me, facing forward. I rode backwards into the day and into the city. I wouldn’t do it any other way.