#haight-ashbury

[mudwerks]

(via Haight-Ashbury Portraits: Teenagers in The Summer of Love, 1968 - Flashbak)

Katrinka Haraden (Trinka), 19, Haight Street, 1968

photograph: Elaine Mayes

[amoebasareverysmall]

from San Francisco Oracle No. 7 (1967)

[1960somethings]

Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury District. Circa late 1960s.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

John S. Simon - The Sign Of The Fool - Ace - 1971 (cover illustration by Gene Szafran)

[harrisonarchive]

Haight-Ashbury, August 7, 1967; photo by Bettmann/Corbis/Getty Images.

“Harrison was leading a pied piper march through Haight-Ashbury when someone, embracing him, said, ‘You are our leader, George.’ ‘No, wrong,’ said George. ‘Oh yes, man,’ said the hippie, trotting to keep up with the crowd that was marching eight abreast up Haight Street, a thousand or more. ‘You know where it’s at, man.’ ‘It’s you who should be leading yourself,’ explained George. ‘You don’t need to be following leaders, me or anyone else.’ [...] A purple pill was thrust toward George, the voice behind the hand saying, ‘Here, George. I got the stuff to lay on you man. STP, man. Blow your mind.’ Harrison said, ‘No. Take it away. That’s bullshit, man. Karma Yoga, remember? It isn’t the answer. The answer’s in your own head. Isn’t it? I don’t want that. Get away and thanks anyway.’ The kid with the pill faded away for just a moment, appearing again as Harrison and company were back in the car and attempting to leave. Running along beside the car, hurt and angry, he shouted, ‘Hey, George. I tried to give you a gift that would turn you on, man, and you put me down, man. I don’t like that, man. That was wrong, man.’ ‘No it wasn’t. You don’t need it,’ George said. ‘You put me down!’ Later George said, ‘It’s soft. He’ll have to help himself. He has a choice.’” - Melody Maker, August 16, 1967

“I want to get high and you can’t get high on LSD. You can take it and take it as many times as you like but you get to a point that you can’t get any further unless you stop taking it.” - George Harrison, Melody Maker, September 2, 1967 (x)

[emu888ema]

The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers (1649–1650) who had promulgated a vision of society free from buying, selling, and private property. During the mid- and late-1960s, the San Francisco Diggers organized free music concerts, with music provided by bands like the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane. They also staged street theater events, such as driving a truck of semi-naked belly dancers through the Financial District, inviting brokers to climb on board and forget their work.

The Diggers' central tenet was to be "authentic," seeking to create a society free from the dictates of money and capitalism. They organized free food and medical care, transport, and temporary housing and opened stores that gave away stock. One of their events was the Death of Money Parade, held on December 17, 1966, in which they carried a large coffin full of fake money down Haight Street, singing "Get out my life, why don’t you babe?" to the tune of Chopin's "Funeral March" (or "Death March").

The Diggers also opened numerous free stores in Haight-Ashbury, which offered discarded but usable items, free for the taking or giving. The first free store was in a six-car garage on Page Street that they found filled with empty picture frames; they tacked these up outside the building and called it the Free Frame of Reference. The Diggers skillfully used media relations by staging events like "The Death of Hippie" happening in October 1967, in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which was meant to mark the end of the hippie era. Masked participants carried a coffin with the words "Hippie—Son of Media" on the side. The event was staged so as to make any media outlet that simply described the happening to unintentionally transmit the Diggers' message that hippies were a media invention. This was called "creating the condition you describe".

The Diggers also provided free food service in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park every day at four o'clock, feeding about 100 people with a stew from donated meat and vegetables that was served from behind a giant yellow picture frame, also called the Free Frame of Reference, which people were required to step through before being served. They also opened a free medical clinic, initially by inviting volunteers from the University of California, San Francisco medical school up the hill from the neighborhood. The free food and medical clinics were immediate responses to conditions caused by the enormous influx of young people during the heyday of the hippie scene, conditions that the San Francisco government was ignoring.

[thefandomentals]

‘Reluctant Immortals’ Is a Satisfying Vindication Story

IMPORTANT CONTENT WARNING: One thing to consider before you pick up this book is that it deals with heavy topics such as  emotional and phys

Alejandra reviews 'Reluctant Immortals,' a new book from Gwendolyn Kiste that re-examines a pair of forgotten gothic heroines: Lucy Westenra and Bertha Mason.

[gypsymood]

Woman with white kitten

Baruch, Ruth-Marion, 1922-1997

Haight-Ashbury, 1967