SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- Ten years ago, nobody in San Narciso would have given Hart Garrity a second thought. He relocated to the North Viaduct area of the county from Venice Beach in the mid-1980s to make a new start. Garrity admits that in his wilder days, he was a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, coke-snorting, motorcycle-riding, heavily tattooed rebel whose arrest record contained more information about his life than his resume. But today, much to his chagrin, Garrity has become a local folk hero for the counter-culture youth of Bennington Vale. And he wants it to stop.

“I came here to be left alone,” Garrity said, “not for a bunch of spoiled yuppies to idolize me or make fun of me -- I can’t tell which it is, but I’m getting goddamn sick and tired of being called a ‘hipster douche bag’ every time I leave the house.”