INNOCENCE RE-LIVED: THE MAGIC SUMMER OF '67
All those who go
to San Francisco....
Summer time
will be a Love-in, there.
-Scott MacKinzie
***
INNOCENCE RE-LIVED: THE MAGIC SUMMER OF '67
More than just "love" was in the air in the San Francisco summer of 1967!
On the streets of Baghdad by the Bay, there arose a gentle zephyr, a child's breath of pervasive and exotic magic.
A heady mix of rose oil, incense, peppermint, and THC.
We were all so young!
And so it was, that with the reckless strength possessed of all youthful generations at the threshold of maturity, that the seed of Franklin Roosevelt came of age.
But in those narcissistic days, to most of us, FDR was an ancient and irrelevant footnote in history, though, in retrospect, it had been less than five years since Adolph Hitler's world had been finally consumed in flaming diesel.
What mattered was already known to us. What inconveniences lay beyond or behind that knowledge was of no importance in the immediacy of our here and now.
At last, our moment had arrived. Our generation's soliloquy would command the stage!
Finally, our medium was to be the message.
It was the dawning of the age of Aquarius! In this eagerly anticipated age to be, the fetters of the old were to be riven. They were to be cast into oblivion by the superior magic and equality of a restructured, visionary social order. From these bonds would be forged a new age, based on rejection of what had come before. After all, was that not the true meaning of "revolution"?
And so it came to pass, in a quiet residential neighborhood of San Francisco, that a new kind of human age, defining itself in an exciting collage of forbidden pleasures and escaped inhibitions, was perceived to be born.
It is always much too easy to be unfairly critical in hindsight.
It is important to keep that in mind when diving in the shallow middle class waters of the late 1960s.
Some of us may have had an inkling, but most of us indulged ourselves with abandon to the inebriating luxury of our new and untried wings. We were free to fly, fall and fly once more, on the winds of a freedom bought and paid for by the efforts of those that had come before us.
We instinctively knew that we could afford to be prodigals.
"Tune in, turn on, and ... drop out."
As the decade of the sixties grew in tenure, we began to test our strength. Many among us soon learned that we could create or at least direct our own reality.
And what a reality it was!
Has there ever before been such a greeting to this world from a new generation emerging?
We had became empowered of our own secret fantasies and had gifted them with a special self witness.
It was from that vantage point in 1967 that the select of our generation watched with a mildly detached amazement as the Genie of our own unique fantasy seemed to become realized, taking on a magical life of its own, and walking the streets of San Francisco among us.
It was so intoxicating! Who could resist the possibility of creating no limits?
So... For that brief moment in time, there existed in this special place, a new type of Camelot. A Camelot reborn. We would regain the one stolen by the death of John Kennedy!
But how did we fail to see that, somehow, this was a 'Carnival' of Camelot's? A parody of renaissance harlequins, conceived by Ken Keasey and designed by Andy Warhole.
It was in this illusion of a magical matrix that a fiction had somehow descended to earth and become a new people's nation.
We all rushed to become citizens of this new nation. We gave ourselves passports, wrote our own tickets, and were granted passage on board, for the voyage now known as: "The summer of '67."
And it was our faith, our faith alone, the unshakable dewy-eyed faith of the true believers, that brought it all to life....
.....In the summer of '67, I lived on the second story of a small flat right around the corner from the ever popular button shop.
Each day, we would rise before noon and go down to the panhandle or over to the "shop" and just 'hang around.'
One of the women that actually paid the rent on the flat, had secured a part time job at the shop.
In those days, most of the commercial buildings in the Height were only two or three stories tall. The shops were on the ground level, and most buildings had living quarters above them.
The roofs were flat and were generally accessible from inside. On nice days, (before the afternoon fog would roll in) those of us connected with the button shop would gather on the roof, ingest questionable substances, sunbathe in the buff, play our flutes or guitars, sing for hours on end, and continuously trip on the world, both below and above!
The Hog Farm occasionally served up free meals down at the panhandle, so the 'bus' was a regular stop. In a pinch, we would scrounge enough cash between us to send someone into the Safeway across from the beginning of the park and buy some odds and ends while the rest of us would raid the dumpster.
There was music in the air!
Free concerts in the park were a weekend tradition. The Charlatans, the Dead, and the Fish, ( Country Joe) were constant favorites.
I had somehow become aquatinted with Barry Melton, the Guitar player for the Fish. He was my idol!
I'm sure I drove him nuts!
There were so many great local SF groups that never became very well known.
In the spirit of true fanatics, we knew them all and could sing every song they played.
Quicksilver Messenger was probably the best of the 'least known,' from a musical point of view.
Occasionally everyone would all pile into the nearest available 'ride' and follow the up and coming psychedelic bands on their circuit around the Bay Area.
If there was room available, we often rode with the band. They liked the attention, and we felt like we were on top of the world!
It was not all peaches and creme in the SF music scene, however.
....There was always The Jefferson Airplane!
They could be counted on to wilt even the sweetest love child's flower!
Naturally, I loved their music, but they had a bad Attitude. (I'd call it "elitist" now days)
They drew too many bikers for my young sensibilities. Plus, I didn't like Marty Balin very much. Marty was way too uptight.
No doubt, he thought himself a star!
That was a very UN-populist attitude to have at the time.
I took it personal that the Airplane wouldn't let us wander around on the stage during shows. This was in marked contrast to the Grateful Dead and the other SF groups, who were totally cool.
Marty Balin and Jack Cassidy, the Airplane's base player, often used to get into fights right on stage.
That was an inconceivable thing to do. It would horrify the more gentle of music lovers!
Fist fights did indeed tend to run counter to the general good vibe we all wanted and expected from our bands.
To add insult to injury, there were many times when Gracie wouldn't even come out and sing. She'd just stand on the side of the risers and drink rotgut until she fell down.
I used to have a wild crush on Grace Slick, but after a while I quit going to their shows.
On special week day occasions, a few friends and I would go down to the Avalon or the Filmore and either sneak in or sleaze in with the band.
Offering to carry in the equipment usually earned a free pass.
Even Bill Graham was known to smile on occasion, back then!
City Lights, Gypsy Moth, and Aladdin Lights regularly staged the most incredible psychedelic light shows at the Filmore. There is nothing known today that can even begin to compare.
The masters of lights could always be counted on to save their best effects for when the Dead played.
At such extravaganzas, we often would lose several complete days out of the chronology of our lives. For the most part we were not aware, or even cared, for the loss!
The San Francisco summer of '67 was a defining moment in post war America.
I believe that long gone summer is best summed up in the hit song recorded that year by the group known as "The Cyrcle"
It was a #1 hit and when I close my eyes, I can still hear it's refrain even now....
, ..... "Live for Today...
And don't worry Babe,
About Tomorrow"....
All those years as we spent as children growing up in schools that subjected us to weekly drills of simulated Atomic destruction.... Drills where we all huddled under our desks, while the teachers closed the blinds and lectured impressionable children on how to survive a nuclear blast.
Is it any wonder. that as our generation moved into approaching adulthood, we all carried within us a secret sense that there was no future beyond the moment?
We had been victims of a cruel and unusual terrorism.
We grew into adulthood, drilled in the terror that in the flash of a split instant, we would cease to exist.
Worse... That the world would cease to exist!
Our earliest social understanding was that each new day was pregnant with the possibility that there would be no tomorrow to live for....
So..... what better anthem was there to embrace than "Live For Today"?
Thus was shaped, the attitude of an entire generation. And so, as in some kind of myth, from the forehead of Zeus, sprang the summer of '67.
'68 summer and into '69, the entropy of natural social evolution reared its heretofore unknown head, among us. In the Height, too many tourists were starting to show up. The tourists were fun at first. For a few months, it was a great pastime for everyone to pretend to take pictures of the tourists taking pictures!
But, a darker vision was looming. On the street, we could sense the beginnings of a hard core move to heroin and cocaine. These kind of drugs were unacceptable and quickly brought things down. Bad money began to drive out the good. All the SF regulars started spending more and more time away from the Height.
As the Height scene began to unravel, I often would hitchhike down US Highway 1 to Santa Cruz or Monterey and then on to Big Sur.
Though it was popular on the street, I never really took much liking to Big Sur. Perhaps this was indicative of my emerging future drift to contrarian doctrine!
Most of my friends were moving up the coast towards Mendocino.
That's where I ended up gravitating.
As time passed, I quit going back down to the city all together. Since everything I owned was usually with me, or on my back, relocation and mobility was not a problem!
After the People's park riots and the SF State strike, I'd had enough of the direction things were moving. Many felt the "revolution" was at hand, but I had been there and found it wanting.
The taste of tear gas and the sight of all that barb wire and 50 caliber machine guns on Telegraph Avenue in May of '69 seemed too real. Perhaps even surreal, at the time.
We had gotten our middle class illusions gassed and beaten out of us during the march from Spraul Plaza to People's Park.
It was then that James Rector was shot to death by the police.
The porkers had pulled a dirty trick earlier that day. They had occupied the park grounds about 3:30 in the morning!
Everyone was outraged by the deceit! What a sneaky thing to do! Nobody thought that the next day that authorities would actually allow the situation to become a shooting affair!
Berkeley and The SF strike were the first times I had ever had a personal encounter with paramilitary police. In those days, they were known as the
"Tac Squad"..... What a bunch of banana eating gorillas!
At that point, I began to see the iron fist behind the velvet glove. I began to understand that what was happening overtly in South America was only practice for eventual use here. After all, it was the US Gov. who was doing the training of the Latin American goon squads.
That was the beginning of the end of the age of innocence!
But what a wonderful dream it was, while it lasted!
Life's curious events swirled on in a cascade of memories.
I briefly moved to Central America. Finding there, that the business end of a M16 was not to my liking, I then moved to Northern California and lived on a communal gold mine, until one day, while we were away from home, the Forest Service burned us out.
And so on it went, forever chosing to be "on the bus, or off the bus."
But in the growing twilight of another age's faded optimisim, there will always remain a glimmer of light from the beacon of that special San Francisco summer of '67...
It was a rare, magical midsummer's night dream of brother and sisterhood, filled with incense, bells, exotic music and youthful fantasies.
It was yet again, another Camelot that never was.
Nor, will it ever be, again.
The Rumor Mill News Reading Room
http://www.rumormillnews.com INNOCENCE RE-LIVED: THE MAGIC SUMMER OF '67
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=46474Mods, claiming fair use. I am sorry in advance if I have violated any rules. I don't think I have, but if you believe I have, please let me know.
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