A tableau above the entrance to a hipster bar on the corner of 17th and Guerrero in the Mission. San Francisco will be a noisy hopeful place on 01-20-09. I'd lay money that it has been about a century since the last time this particular bar was decked out in flags, and that would have been back in the days when it belonged to working-class immigrants, mostly Irish. Today's young inhabitants seem not to believe they belong to any class at all, but it's clear they needn't work much, and at the same time are seldom short of cash, and their parents all tend to be psychiatrists or dentists or bankers or diplomats or indeed the occasional, genuine, genial capitalist – all these discreetly invisible parents sharing at least the one common trait of the remittances and other assets they supply. So this present-day flag-waving is something different, something to note.