Hey lovely People! Thanks for hoppin’ over to the website and hangin out here in Haight Street Voice-land! From our digital version of the Summer 2024 edition, enjoy the video and full transcript of my conversation with Neil Hallinan, third-generation criminal lawyer.
Haight Street Voice: Alright guys, Haight Street Voice! I’m here with Neil Hallinan of the legendary San Francisco lawyer family, the Hallinans.
I screwed up, I went down to his office! Now we’re back in the Haight at my place and we’re gonna talk to Neil about everything! And how I met you, I met you through Brian Rohan.
Welcome Neil!
Neil Hallinan: Thank you, good to be here!
HSV: I was driving around the City before I got to the wrong location (!) and I was like, “What a beautiful City we are in!” I don’t get out of the Haight very much and I was like, “Wow. What an incredible city.” And that made think about you being third generation, and your family defending all the kooks and freaks of this fair city of ours. So maybe you can tap into that, growing up in that family.
NH: Sure! I am a proud, third-generation, San Francisco trial attorney. I by no means intended to fall in the footsteps of my dad and grandfather, but I kind of ended up here and I proudly walk in their footsteps now.
You know, being an attorney in San Francisco is something I’m very proud of because my great grandparents moved here in the late 1880s. My great grandfather was a streetcar driver on Market Street. My grandfather was born in 1896, so when the earthquake struck and the City burned basically all the way West of Divisadero, all the wealthy people from Nob Hill to Alamo Square lost their homes. My grandfather actually lived about a block and a half from here on Page Street, St. Agnes was his parish.
HSV: Wow!
NH: And all the landlords started raising the rents to get out all the working class people, all the poor people, the Irish immigrants, the Catholics, so that the rich people could pay more rent for a place over here once they were displaced. And it was the experience of seeing my grandfather speak about a gentleman who rode his streetcar every day who was a lawyer who got to know my great grandfather who respected him as a hardworking man. And he volunteered to represent him against the allegation of unlawful detainer by the landlord. And the landlord ended up succeeding but only after about 6 months and a lot of money spent on his own lawyers. With the neighborhood banning together, helped my great grandfather come home from work and hop over neighboring fences every day to come home to avoid the process server. And the lawyer represented him in court, and it was the power that this lawyer had to hold the powers that be accountable and make them fight to get every last cent they could out of my family is what inspired my grandfather to fall into the law.
HSV: Shoutout to Vincent!
NH: Shoutout to Vincent! The great Vin!
And so it was natural in his footstep that my father Patrick followed, and I ended up there. It’s an honor to be a criminal defense attorney in this town and have a firm called the Hallinan Law Firm.
HSV: And your father was the first born and they used to call him Patrick “Butch” Hallinan as I recall. And he was one of four and they each had a crazy middle name for the fighting Irish boxing lineage of the family, vibe of the family let’s just say.
NH: He was the oldest of 6!
HSV: Oldest of 6, okay!
NH: Six! And they all had very Irish names that my grandmother gave them, actually! It’s funny because she was raised mostly by the Italian side. Her last name was Moore, but Mr. Moore my great grandfather left the family when she was an infant. She was raised by her Italian family. And for some reason she gave my father and his brothers very proud Irish names: Patrick Sarsfield; and then there was the Terence Tyrone Hallinan, former D.A. here in San Francisco; Michael De Valera Hallinan; Matthew Brennis Hallinan; the recently late Conn Malachi Hallinan, he just passed away last week; Daniel Barry Hallinan.
It was my grandfather who gave them all their very tough fighting names: “Butch” “Kayo” “Tuffy” “Dynamite” “Ringo” and “Dangerous” (laughter)! “Dangerous” never stuck! He always went by “Danny”.
HSV: If that isn’t like an old black and white movie in San Francisco, you know? Shoutout to David Talbot for his amazing book Season of the Witch which opens with your grandfather and his wife. I’ve got a quote: Alioto said this: “The Hallinans were the social conscience of SF and in many ways, the heart of San Francisco.” And David Talbot’s quote was, I think alluding to Vincent: “Don’t just question authority, sneer at it whenever possible.” I love that!
And I guess that kind of may lead us into Brian Rohan — sneering! The great warthog! You and I met because of Brian Rohan. Brian Rohan I met because it was 2017, the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, and of course he was showing up because he there when it first happened!
NH: That’s when you guys first met?
HSV: Yes. We were at some photo show and I was handing out my magazine and he said, (rough loud voice): “Who are you? What is that? I want an ad!” (Laughter) That was my first meeting with Rohan. I also met Peggy Caserta through him, Janis Joplin’s lover who I’m still in touch with. I just talked to her yesterday talking about Terence and I’m sure you know the stories! (Google it, kids!)
NH: Yeah! My 11-year-old daughter is here, so there’s some stuff in there we’ll talk about some another time!
(Daughter NAME SPELLING? waves to camera): Hi!
HSV: Do you want to be a lawyer?
Daughter: Not really, because both my parents are, and I just want to be different.
HSV: Okay! Well, there you go!
NH: Good answer!
HSV: Very good answer. Well, welcome. Thank you for being patient while we do this.
Neil, any words from you about Rohan for you? Obviously, you said he was one of your dad’s best friends …
NH: He was not only my dad’s best friend, he was one of those people I would call a second dad. There were some of my friend’s moms who were like a second mom, kind of played that role when my mom wasn’t around and I was really blessed to have a few people who were close to my dad and kind of played that same role. Kind of took my under their wing when I was a kid and made sure I was taken care of. I mean I didn’t need taking care of, I came from a very comfortable background, but always let me know that whatever was needed, they’d always have my back.
And there was no one who did it more than Rohan. He treated me like his own son. What a blessing to have someone like that, to know someone like that. There was no one more just foul-mouthed and funny and, you know, testy, someone who would push the limits of everyone he met for the first time to find out when their breaking point was when they would finally want to fight him, at which point they found his respect and admiration.
HSV: Just the way he wanted to support the people that needed supporting. And just because they did something wrong, or not wrong, kind of seeing that we all have our, you know — Ken Kesey! We all make mistakes, we all can go a weird direction, everyone is capable of it. And again, your Irish heritage, taking care of the underdog. I think Stepanian too, of HALO (Haight Ashbury Legal Organization) and that whole thing. And I think they founded that in ’64 or ’65 when they were throwing kids in jail for smoking weed or whatever they were doing.
NH: Yeah.
HSV: So god bless that frame of mind from people of your caliber. We thank you!
NH: Yeah, you know I think I’m definitely kind of old school in that respect. I’m definitely in touch with and proud of my Irish heritage from which I kind of have that spark of holding authority accountable and standing up for the poor and the disenfranchised and the least popular among us. Making sure that everyone gets a fair shot in this world.
You know, I have a career, I have a family, I work to bring an income but the thing that’s just a blessing about the whole line of work I’m in is that I can do that and I can stay true to my principles and my morals and my sense of obligation that doesn’t come from any sense of religion but really just a, you know, a common experience. Not one that I’ve even lived in my own life, but one that’s been passed down through generations, the lessons that my grandfather grew up with growing up in San Francisco as a working class Irish kid. The effect that being poor had on him. He made a ton of money throughout his career, and because of that, my dad and my generation have grown up comfortably. But we never really … the lessons that come from that experience definitely were passed down to us.
And also my great-grandfather, he came to the U.S. to flee a murder warrant for taking out an English tax collector back in the early 1880s.
HSV: Wow!
NH: His group was one of the predecessors to the Irish brotherhood.
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HSV: In my notes, I have that this is the Wild West! Hallinan and Rohan were creating — there was no law! It wasn’t even created yet, right? I mean it was a free for all. I just love the idea of the Wild West. Keep pushing forward and keep evolving, right?
NH: In my day now, it’s really compartmentalized and specialized and, you know, everything is online and so it takes a certain kind of imagination.
HSV: Let’s go into the weed thing. Weed is legalized now. And I was also going to tap into Dr. David E. Smith — shoutout to Dr. Dave and the Haight Ashbury Psychedelic Center that he and I are involved in. He’s working with these UCSF doctors who are doing psychedelic-induced psychotherapy and it’s a hundred percept successful. So it’s like “Let’s do it right this time.”
I wanted you to speak to — I don’t want to call you a weed lawyer because that’s just not what you are, but weed is part of it, people getting thrown in jail for the wrong reasons, and now we have psychedelics. A shoutout to Michael Stepanian’s daughter as well because she doing a lot of psychedelic legal stuff. She’s in that weird world of just defining what things are.
NH: Yeah, Jennie! Shoutout to Jennie Stepanian.
HSV: Yes, Jennie!
NH: Yeah I also want to give a big shoutout to people like Tony Serra and Dave and Nick, our friends over at the Pier 5 Law Office who between Prop 215 passed in 1996 and the state actually kind of getting a grasp on what lawful medical marijuana was, those were the people who really kind of blazed a trail and actually made it work, and told the courts how to uphold the right of qualified patients.
And then obviously I think it was back in 2016 the voters passed the initiatives. But it was people like that who paved the way and showed California that there are positive aspects of cannabis and just, you know, stay the fuck out of our houses! (Laughter)
HSV: Ooh yeah! Ear muffs! (To daughter)
NH: In the realm of psychedelics, it’s kind of hard to say how the changes in the law actually are happening in a practical sense because with the decriminalization of drugs, Prop 47 I think it was 2014, generally speaking you just haven’t really seen many prosecutions for the sale of anything that’s not hard, you know? You still see fentanyl and heroin prosecutions, and crack sales prosecutions, but I haven’t seen a prosecution for psychedelics for about almost close to 10 years.
HSV: Oh good, okay!
NH: Yeah. And I think a lot of that is just because the attitudes, generally speaking, have changed. It’s not really a concern for most people these days. And so I think that’s probably making it a lot easier for the use of psychedelics to evolve into a medicinal thing than it was for marijuana. It was kind of like the first test case.
HSV: Right. One of the things they talk about at the Psychedelic SF Gallery — I don’t know if you’ve been over there?
NH: (shakes head “no”)
HSV: Shoutout to them over here on Masonic and Haight. The therapists can get their licenses taken away. I’m sure you know all about it. MDMA didn’t pass. There’s that weird space where psychedelics — not that you have the answer right now in this interview, but it’s an interesting territory we’re in right now, don’t you think?
NH: Yeah, for sure it is, for sure it is. But like you said, it’s more of a licensing issue now, right? I think that San Francisco — it’s hard to say whether we’re still really the vanguard like we always were with things like that because there is a lot of talk about opening safe consumption sites for the use of heroin, which I think would be a great idea because it would prevent drug overdoses and it would offer chances for people to get education and to get the help they need to quit, and to keep their use clean at least and prevent the spread of disease. But the City has some good points in that the Feds can still bust them, the State can still take their licenses. So it’s less of a criminal thing than it is a licensing thing. I think the lawyers involved, the city attorneys, have their licenses threatened and stuff like that, but it’s not something that’s really prosecuted, which is a good thing. That’s obviously my wheelhouse, right?
What I was going to say, we’re not the vanguard that we used to be because you don’t know if the politicians who are in office today what side they’re on, right? It seems like to really succeed as a politician these days in San Francisco you kind of have to have your foot in the past a little bit, which is where you and I seem to exist a little more, for better or for worse, and then your foot in the camp of the tech community and the “Safer SF” people — which is not the City I grew up in, it’s not the community that we’re a part of.
HSV: Yeah, we like a little grit.
NH: Yeah. So I don’t know what the City — how to trust what the politicians say about whether they’re really motivated by concerns about the licenses of the attorneys and doctors.
HSV: Yeah, we won’t even go down that road because Haight Street Voice is talking more about the pioneering spirits, the light that lit the ‘60s. People like the lineage of your family, you are keeping the light that lit the ‘60s — it kind of got stolen or thrown in jail — you’re keeping it going. You’re helping the people not get thrown in jail for the wrong reasons. And again, thank you for that! Oh, and thank you for your beautiful ad on the back of the magazine that has been on the I think past 4 editions. We thank you Neil Hallinan!
NH: My pleasure! My honor.
HSV: Seriously!
NH: Thank you for hosting us!
HSV: Oh man, it’s a a good crossover! I have a feeling a lot of my audience is a lot of people that don’t know the law or they might get a little mixed up in the wrong place or something like that.
Speaking of the wrong place at the right time, or the right place at the wrong time or the weird time of the right places (laughter): The Sphere! Tell me about your experience at the Sphere. You are a Deadhead, right? Are you open to talking about it?
NH: I’m open to talking about it. I’m no Deadhead, but I am a San Franciscan, okay? And like I said, the Dead are part of my community and I’m part of the Dead’s community, okay, and I grew up in San Francisco. I’ve been listening to the Dead since I was a kid. I was born in
’78, I was 16 when Jerry passed away, just shy of 17. I didn’t follow them around. I did see a couple shows. But I did decide that I wanted to the Sphere. For two reasons: Because it’s the Sphere, and if I’m gonna see anyone there, I want to see Dead & Company.
HSV: Had you ever seen Dead & Co?
NH: No, I had never seen Dead & Co.
HSV: Wow!
NH: So it was my first Dead show since I was about 15 in 1993 or 94. So yeah, for lack of a better word, it was a trip! (Laughter)
HSV: And this is a great bridge because when I was driving around when I went down to your office and we got mixed up on where to meet and I’m driving around the City — hang on, looking at my notes … do you take these kind of notes? I take really strange weird notes. [to daugther]: I have a feeling your dad takes better notes!
NH: I think everyones notes are strange and weird. Otherwise it’s not notes, it’s a novel.
HSV: I was going to ask you what’s your line of questions, well here’s my line of questioning. Do you ever get nervous before you go to court?
NH: Yeah, but it depends on the situation. You know what it really depends on? My level of preparation. My level of preparation is usually going to be my bandwidth.
HSV: Right, right. I think it was Sir Lawrence Olivier who’s said, “It’s okay to have butterflies, you just have to teach them to fly in formation” instead of having them be all over the place. I won’t corner you on that one! (Laughter)
So anyway, from the Sphere to the fact that: I was thinking, okay, from the Grateful Dead into the Sphere, that’s a big jump, right? What about Neal Cassady, who your Dad and Rohan defended, driving the bus versus driverless cars all over the City. What do you think of that parallel?
NH: Don’t even get me started!
HSV: What do you think? From Neal Cassady to AI — let’s talk in that area.
NH: I don’t know if I want to pass judgment yet because years from now maybe I’ll think it’s the greatest thing.
HSV: It doesn’t have to be a judgment, just how does it make you feel?
NH: It just makes me feel weird. I mean it’s funny cuz my daughter always wants me to call, instead of an Uber or a Lyft because it’s just cool, you know what I mean? It’s cool. She’s 11, she was born in 2012, that’s cool. There’s no doubt it’s cool. I personally want to make sure my money goes to a human being for doing the work, and that’s why … that may be completely naive because I don’t know if Uber or Lyft is safe with a driver. But that’s where my heart is.
But I will say this: one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life happened a few weeks ago when I was driving down 10th Street from Market and as we reached the intersection with Stevenson, a car coming out from Stevenson slowly crept out, and the car to my right slowed down to let that car in, and the car pulled in front of the car on my right which I looked over and saw was a driverless car, and the car that crept out, the guy put his hand out the window and waved a thank you. I looked at him, I looked at his car and I thought, “That guy has no idea he just waved at nobody. (Laughter)
HSV: The whole thing when they’re going to fast and somebody pulls them over and there no one in there.
NH: See I don’t think they drive fast enough. They bug the shit out of me. (Laughter)
HSV: I work on the corner of Haight and Ashbury at the shop on weekends and they go zipping by down there. Anyway, we don’t have to go down that road. I just think it’s an interesting parallel. That Jerry and Ken Kesey would get a kick out of it all, like Neal Cassady driving, you know the stories of Neal Cassady clearly — to this. Either nobody at the wheel of a kooky dude at the wheel.
NH: Yeah, I know, but it’s like look at everything that’s happened since then right? It’s all just — it’s exponential how fast everything has changed. It’s like my grandpa was born in a world without flight and by the time he died, men had gone to the moon for 30 years. It’s crazy how it happens. There’s no way we can foresee it.
HSV: Alright. This is good. We’re at the 20 minute mark and that’s perfect. My last question … let’s see did I forget anybody? Peggy Caserta says hello, by the way. A friend of your uncle.
NH: Is she who came to my office with you that time?
HSV: No, that’s Cynthia. Peggy was Janis Joplin’s lover.
NH: Cynthia!
HSV: Shoutout to Cynthia. She writes for the magazine — Sports Desk.
NH: (Holds up peace sign): Hi Cynthia!
HSV: Alright, so this is the question I always like to ask everybody at the end of the interview. So Haight Street Voice is hyper-local with a global perspective, so it’s about this community, the light that lit the ‘60s, the essence of music and creativity and being yourself and letting your freak flag fly and trying to make the world a better place hopefully. So if you wanted to say hello to the Haight Ashbury community and communities everywhere in the world really, what do you want to say?
NH: I want to say, yeah, keep your global perspective, keep it local, make that global perspective a reality, make it outside of the computer, keep it outside the computer. Let’s king of keep everything for its particular use. Let’s keep in touch with each other, let’s interact with each other, let’s continue to show love for one another, let’s be neighbors and friends instead of, you know, faceless personas you meet in a fake world. I mean there’s so much beauty and joy to get out of reality, and there’s so much ugliness there too out of which you can find beauty and joy, and it’s the real thing. So to the Haight Street community, this is where I went to high school, this is where I used to hang out growing up, the is where my best friend lived back in the day, my whole group used to congregate and get into trouble. I’m still blessed and honored to still be part of you. And thank you.
HSV: Do you feel the vibe here? Do you still feel the vibe here? How do you feel about it right now?
NH: I mean, it’s kind of nostalgia, and it’s kind of a novelty, but I just know that with me, it’s organic, you know, and there’s nothing fake about it. It’s the real deal. It’s one that has roots and history. But you know at the same time we can’t live in the past, right? So take all the memories with us, incorporate them into who we are and then continue to live it every day. And that’s — I think as long as people do that then I think the Haight will keep being the Haight.
HSV: And spread the love all over the world. Let’s keep it goin’ people!
[to daughter]: Do you have anything you want to say to the Haight Street Voice? [to Neal]: I put her on the spot, huh? (Laughter) You want to say “peace”?
Daughter: Peace! [holds up peace sign]
HSV: And keep the spirit alive. Your dad and your mom are keepin’ it going! Thanks for being here, Neil! Sorry about the mixup for the meeting spot.
NH: I want to add that my wife is a native San Franciscan, so my daughter is a full-blooded San Francisco.
HSV: Yeah! Rare, kind of rare these days.
NH: Fifth generation! Still a public school student, just graduated from 5th grade last week.
HSV: Alright! Well, keep goin’!
Thanks Neil!
NH: Thanks Linda!
HSV: Thank you Brian Rohan, really, and Stepanian.
NH: Yes!
HSV: Thanks to the pirate lawyers who have stolen the light back!
NH: Yes, thanks to all my inspirations! Props to Stepanian who’s still here with us.
HSV: Ahh, yeah. Peace y’all!
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