Marxist primates

The after-work crowd has filed into the Monkey Bar wearing compulsory black clothing. Cell phones are answered. Martinis are shaken and then swallowed with abandon. At 6:30 on a Friday evening, the conversations are mostly about the workweek.

The former inhabitants of Apartment 6 upstairs would dismiss these working-class drinkers as bourgeois, and they’d be right on. Back in 1975, the revolutionary residents of the apartment at 28th and Capitol were bent on a radical overthrow of the government. They’d have little use for the middle-class conformists downstairs in the Monkey Bar. Socializing and drinking liquid anesthesia were not part of the plan.

Patty Hearst and Kathy Soliah of the Symbionese Liberation Army shared the dwelling on the April day that few in the bar remember. It was the day the band of urban guerillas shot a suburban church lady for the revolution (see ‘Obstruction of Justice”). Patty Hearst says she knows who pulled the fatal trigger that brought down Jon Opsahl’s mother in a Carmichael bank. Opsahl is determined that no one forget, especially Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully.

When a current resident of the apartment building hears that Patty Hearst once lived next door, he says, "Wow, no way." Way. She lived here during a crime spree 25 years ago. He says, "Cool," adjusts his ball cap and climbs into an SUV.