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About the time that Michael Douglas and Karl Malden were busy saving the righteous neighborhoods and upstanding citizens of San Francisco from the scourge of the drug-fueled, satanic-worshipping, longhaired dropouts, also known as hippies, my friends and I were busy setting up sophisticated underground distribution networks to sell marijuana.

As a San Francisco native, I knew the territory well. My earliest recollections as a two-year-old were walking down California Street with my mother holding my brother Richard’s hand and mine as we went to meet my father at his office downtown. Little did I know then the role that California Street would play in my life thirty years later.

In the heady 1960s, my neighborhoods were the Haight, parts of the Mission, Excelsior, and the alleys that run through the now chic South of Market area known as SoMa. California Street was where “legitimate” corporations full of “the enemy” conducted capitalist chicanery that helped to support the Vietnam War. Who would have thought that our underground pot-based economy would one day become a multibillion-dollar industry with fancy storefronts in the trendiest of San Francisco neighborhoods?

Marijuana was, and still is, a federal Schedule I controlled substance, for which possessing or selling less than an ounce was punishable by years in prison. San Francisco has always been a wide-open melting pot for eccentrics, going back to the days of the pirates on the Barbary Coast, the Beats, and then the hippies. In the 1960s, it almost seemed a civic responsibility to turn the place upside down by creating a cultural revolution, complete with music, unbridled sexual freedom, and radical political awareness. The best part was that the whole thing was self-funded by our burgeoning underground economy. God love that place in those times!

In 1980, after coming off a summer of touring part-time with Willie Nelson and his Family, I decided it was time to become a responsible, legitimately employed father of two small children. After accidentally bumping into an opportunity to pursue a career in corporate sales—even though I had no idea what I was doing—I cut my hair, bought some shiny shoes and two dark suits, and hit the streets. My experience as a music promoter and nightclub owner, plus my many years in the pot business, turned out to be the perfect background to succeed in the corporate world of the 1980s and beyond.

Within two months of starting that new endeavor, I was back on California Street, selling corporate relocation services to Fortune 500 companies, one of which was the Chevron Corporation. Corporate jets lay in my future, and I don’t mean little ones. Financial District accounts were very good to me for the next thirty years.

Today, I’m still selling office-moving services downtown. In the digital age, the new worldwide revolution in commerce is once again headquartered on the streets of San Francisco. Millennials scurry around in a smartphone daze, with the men wearing buns held together by chopsticks, and the women wearing high-fashion yoga outfits and every assortment of expensive footwear. God love ’em, they’re my New Age clients!

Because I’m a rare old bird who offers a service those young people desperately need as they gut the interiors of the Financial District’s high-rises, I have gotten to know many of them, who couldn’t care less that I’m 71. Last month, I had a meeting in the old Chevron Building on Bush Street, which is now occupied entirely by millennials. As I sat in the conference room on the top floor, waiting with others for the Worldwide Vice President of Technology of a major software corporation to arrive, I realized that I had been in that very room, forty years earlier, as a retired dope dealer in a suit and tie, negotiating worldwide contracts with Chevron.

When the Vice President finally burst through the door, having just arrived from India, he was wearing cargo shorts, a Grateful Dead t-shirt, and old thongs, with a week’s stubble on his chin. The conference began as soon as he plopped down next to me. After a moment, he put his bare feet up on the table, so that I was now viewing the big monitor on the wall through his toes—bringing me full circle.

What a long strange trip it’s been!

ANDREW “ANDY” BERNSTEIN was born in San Francisco and raised in Palo Alto since the age of three. As a college student, he studied English and Multimedia, but his passion always lied in music and social causes. With his music career now behind him, he now serves as the Vice President of Corporate Sales for Crown Worldwide Moving and Storage in San Francisco. In his 32-year career, he’s brought a rock-n-roll attitude to his clients and business. He keeps in touch with his bandmates from Willie Nelson and Family, and considers them brothers. Connect with Andy Bernstein on Facebook.

California Slim is available for purchase on Amazon.