Pitting San Francisco’s Haight Street versus New York’s St. Marks Place is a fair contest; after all, the streets serve as twin coastal magnets for rebellious youth, and—given the fickle nature of adolescent tastes—the length of their respective reigns as the preferred catwalks for the weird and wonderful among us has bestowed upon these places a pedigree that no other American street can match.

Only London’s Carnaby Street possesses the same mystique in the popular mind. But are any of these streets’ reputations still merited?

Haight, St. Marks and Carnaby ruled as a triumvirate over hippy consciousness in the 1960’s. But since then their priorities have diverged. St. Marks’s beatniks turned to punk, whereas Haight’s hippies turned to surfing, and it shows. This at least was my impression from last weekend’s jaunt down both streets.

Haight is cleaner, wider, brighter, with more dainty boutiques selling hip skimpy things and bags and shoes. Especially shoes. St. Marks has a GAP store too now, but otherwise its consumer offerings are predominantly stall-based and of a certain sensibility—a perennial best seller is “I fucked Mick Jagger” T-shirts. Haight’s eating and drinking is done inside airy diner-like contraptions with more than one kind of mineral water. St. Marks offers dives and ethnic food and terrace cafes. It’s hard to find a smoker on Haight, while on St. Marks it’s de rigeur.

Dress on Haight is surfer casual. There a hint of dot com preppy affectation, though maybe only because those are the clothes finding their way into second-hand stores now. On St. Marks, dress is approached more studiously: Kids flock together after school to curate their latest punk fashion creations. The other zealots are Japanese tourists, whose relationship to punk ranges from slavish to obsessional. Either way, it’s a visual treat.

Haight Street is solving its homeless problem by denying the vagrants toilet facilities—or so it seems from the signage prominently displayed by every establishment you enter. This approach betrays what is perhaps the biggest difference between the two streets: Haight’s small business owners are eager to put a respectable face on their street, one where its hippy pedigree is served up as nothing more than a viable shopping theme. But while the collective memory of Haight Street fades in the few remaining drugged-out minds of aging hippies, St. Marks remakes itself with every 15 year-old’s first Mohawk proudly paraded across 2nd Avenue.