[roadcat]

In the late '90s and early 2000s, the gun shows at the Cow Palace were full of some of the most intelligent, in your face conservatives I've ever met.

I miss those Cow Palace gun shows. Fondly remember walking out of there with rifle bags and ammo boxes and met with smiles in the parking lot. The libs in SF kept trying for years to shut it down despite it being in San Mateo county, until it ended. My Dad was career military and would sometimes park an Army Jeep outside our home in SF and walked around in uniform and everyone was friendly - but that was the 1950's when SF was Republican. It went downhill in the late 1960's with an influx of Democrats from eastern states (Pelosi, Willie Brown, etc.).

[PerConPat]

Yep...I met some wonderfully eccentric, died-in-wool SF old-timers hawking their wares at those Cow Palace shows. Many of them were selling books about freedom and civil disobedience that they had published. One guy had enough boxes of SKSs to stack and stand behind as he sold them, while the SFPD was hassling him for not having an FFL. He stood his ground and told them the heaters were part of his personal collection, and he didn't need “no stinking FFL”. I never heard how it turned out... They were great shows in a once great city.