November 22, 2004
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MONDAY BOOKBeneath the Diamond Sky – Haight-Ashbury 1965-70
Barney HoskynsI’m almost done writing Chapter 8 of my life story which covers this period. We actually moved to the Haight in January 1967, my baby daughter and I, just in time for the famous Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, which she attended riding on my hip. We lived at 221 Downey St., the street just next to Ashbury and up the hill from Haight. It was the year of the Summer of Love, and there was plenty of that heady substance to be found as the sun shone down on concerts in the Panhandle, visits to the Free Clinic by teenagers far from home who had never taken care of themselves in their lives before, and communal living par excellence. For a few months we did wear flowers in our hair and traipse around the streets at night on acid with no fear, but by August of that year a shadow fell upon us and glided slowly across the scene, bringing dealers with guns, slick marketeers of the hippie look, and angry cops in riot gear. Something was definitely “happening here…..” An excerpt from Hoskyns’ book:
If you looked at the city soberly…it was turning into a pressure cooker of malevolent forces–a frightening, paranoid community ot the kind depicted in Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. In August, the dealer John Kent “Shob” Carter was stabbed to death by a disturbed acid casualty. His hand had been amputated, probably because his money briefcase had been cuffed to it. Three days later, the body of another dealer, “Superspade,” was found tossed over a hillside in Marin County. In September, Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising was screened at the Straight Theater, with a soundtrack by “Bummer” Bobby Beausoleil and his Chamber Orkustra.
On October 6, 1967, a year after the “Love Pageant Rally” in the Hashbury, the Diggers organized a “Death of Hippie” march along Haight Street, a parade that concluded with the burial of the sign which had hung outside the Psychedelic Shop. “The media cast nets, create bags for the identity hungry to climb in,” the Digger press release ranted. “Your face on TV, your style immortalized without soul…the free man vomits his images and laughs in the clouds…” Within months, the Thelin brothers had departed the Haight, along with Allen Cohen and Michael Bowen. Emmett Grogan returned to New York, while other Diggers moved up to the Morning Star ranch (a.k.a. the Digger Farm) owned by Lou Gottlieb.
A general exodus from Haight-Ashbury was beginning, as people left to “get it together in the country” in the hippie communes. What Bill Graham called the “general hope” of the Haight’s heyday had died. In the words of Derek Taylor–who’d enjoyed a blissful trip at Monterey on Owsley’s “Purple Haze”–”people always fuck up in the end.”
And so, I took my daughter and my now brand new son of a rock musician and after a few false starts we moved across the bridge to Marin County, where we lived for a time on welfare in the second richest county in the United States after Westchester in New York before we began to follow the arc of the future back to “responsible, productive” American life.
Deep Thought: “The first time I ever saw the ocean, I was real disappointed. “That’s the ocean?!” I said. No, said Mom and Dad, that’s just the parking lot. When we pulled into the lot, I was real disappointed in it. It was hard to find a spot, and the spaces seemed way too narrow, in my book. The ocean was okay, I guess, but I still can’t get over how disappointing that parking lot was.”
Today I am grateful for: Everything good I received in those magic months of the late 60′s
Guess the Movie: “You can’t just blurt it out like that! And quit moving around, because you’re starting to make me dizzy. I’ll just tell her in my own way.” Answer: Ghost, 1990.
Winner: thenarrator.
World Eschews Rice
by Eric Margolis
Condoleezza Rice may be the apple of U.S. President George W. Bush’s eye, but in Europe her nomination as Secretary of State is being met with disappointment and dismay. (Rest of article here.)
End of Day: 8:49 pm
+ = Survived trip to beauty salon AND vet.
- = Both cost WAY too much money.
Comments (6)
I’m dying for all the details of this. I always complained that I was ‘born too late.’
Utopias might be hard to create, but they’re impossible to maintain.
Ghost? perhaps. I’m not sure at all.
Ghost is for sure the answer. Can’t remember now, by the way, if I was disappointed with the outcome of Garden State too, just thought it was a nice fresh breeze in terms of the new lead actor and the oddball script.
There were so many great scenes at the beginning of Garden State (including my two favorites, the tiny one in the airport restroom with the faucets turning on – something I try to do all the time – and the old-friend-the-cop). I think he’s got awesome potential but desperately needed a script editor. He was trying to tell every North Jersey story in one movie. It would have been fantastic if he’d stuck to one or maybe two.
My aren’t you the brave one! I’m excited to know that you are about my age. When you mentioned Adele Davis, I wondered.
I went with my boyfriend and his partner in crime to “the Haight.” I was a freshman at the University of Oregon and they picked me up in the middle of the night in a van. I was so excited and scared I threw up. They planned on doing a big drug deal but the hash turned out to be cut with something. We came home, humiliated. But not before I had to use a communial bathroom in a run-down hotel. I wish I’d had more nerve in those days.
Two years ago I stood on the very same corner with my 20 year old daughter. She asked if I’d been there before and I just said “yes.”
You know, it sounds like predators following the migration of their prey, doesn’t it?
As you wrote, the Haight Ashbury area epitomized the 60s. To have someone who lived the experience tell us about it is a wonderful history lesson from a primary source! Thank you Miss Lionne.