What were you doing forty years ago...before the summer of love - The Human Be-In....

[GreenTea]

There are a lot of myths about that day, and one truth: If you were there then, you are, like, old. The Human Be-In, held on the warmest day of the San Francisco winter of 1967, was 40 years ago today.

The Be-In -- unlike a teach-in, or a sit-in -- was what Chronicle columnist Ralph J. Gleason called "the greatest nonspecific mass meeting in years, perhaps ever.''

There was no real point. It was a gathering of the tribes, the passing of the baton from the Beat Generation to the hippies. It was the winter before the Summer of Love. It just was.



"I remember the day, I remember playing,'' '' said Gary Duncan, guitarist with the Quicksilver Messenger Service. "I remember we thought we were gonna play a free gig in the park before a few hundred people, but when we got there, there were so many people we couldn't get to the gig, we had to crawl over people. It was amazing. It was monumental.'' He was 22.

People used to say if you remember the '60s you weren't there, but people remember this one. The Grateful Dead played, Quicksilver played, Country Joe and the Fish played.

The Beats were there -- Allen Ginsberg read his poems. Gary Snyder, the poet, then in his Japanese period, chanted; Timothy Leary advised the crowd to tune in, turn on, drop out.

Jerry Rubin denounced the war (in Vietnam, remember?). Leonore Kandel, described by the papers the next day as "The love poetess," read some of the works that had gotten her arrested not long before for producing pornography.

LSD was passed around. People sat on the grass making their own music: guitars, harmonicas, tambourines, flutes, sitars. Nobody sold anything to anybody.

In the middle of one of the music sets, an airplane flew over, and a man floated down in a parachute and landed right in the middle of all those thousands of beats, Berkeley radicals, college students, hippies, freaks. What did they say back then? Cool.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/14/BEIN.TMP



"It was great,'' Country Joe McDonald said. "It was f -- great, man.'' He painted his face, wore a hippie shirt. "I felt a part of it,'' he said. "I was a part of it."

Some thought the Be-In, which was the idea of Allen Cohen, editor of a paper called The Oracle, was the beginning of something, a change, a watershed. "It was the passing of the late-era beatnik, and the beginning of psychedelia,'' said Bill Belmont, who was 24 in 1967.

[Gogi]

1. I was twelve.

Playing in the backyard, I guess.

[GreenTea]

3. I was thirteen I was born & raised and living in SF - in two years I was going to

Fillmore hearing unbelievable music....Changed my life.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

16. What part of town? What high school?

Mission high here, class of 69. Lived in the Castro district when it was blue collar, Irish, Catholic, working folk. One of my best friends was a guy named Jessie Westlake. His father printed all of the Avalon and Fillmore posters that are now worth a fortune. We used to fuck around with the printing equipment to print business cards. Go figure.

[HeeBGBz]

47. I was 12 too.

Feeling lost between childhood and adolescence. Prior to my hippie awareness.

[Mythsaje]

2. I was only a few months old...

But less than five years later I was living in San Jose, going to concerts at Stanford with my Dad. His friends were hippies.

A lot of them moved out of the area, more than imaginable ending up in such far-flung places as Central Oregon, Tacoma, WA, and Saratoga Springs, NY.

Yeah...I've known a lot of them in my lifetime.

[illinoisprogressive]

4. I was playing sandlot baseball with the neighborhood kids at 10 years old

[A-Schwarzenegger]

5. In a warehouse in Germany, eating that cloth thing inside a Vick's inhaler tube

to get high, and vomiting bright green bile. Yum.
By the time I got to San Fran-cisco in 68,
the summer de love had turned. Hitchiking south, had
my first acid trip alone in Big Sur at night.
All my major acid trips I ended up alone in some wilderness.
Hmmm.

[Blue_In_AK]

86. Oh, my God, I thought I was the only one who ever did that...

Wyamine inhalers, I believe, were the ones we were doing in '68. Crazy some of the things we did for a cheap high, huh?

[A-Schwarzenegger]

89. Yeah, NOT recommended.

I wont even name some of the things we ingested just to try
to be anyplace but where we were. 20 years clean & sober.

[eleny]

6. I was 20 *sigh*

Living and going to college in NYC where I was born and raised. Everything always felt brand new.

[oblivious]

7. Is that what the song "Are you going to Saaan Fraaaan cisco" was written for?

[illinoisprogressive]

8. yes

[oblivious]

10. San Francisco - Scott McKenzie. That song brings back memories.

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair

All across the nation such a strange vibration
People in motion
There's a whole generation with a new explanation
People in motion people in motion

For those who come to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there

If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there

[jcv1]

63. I saw Scott McKenzie 10 years ago

Filling in a new constitution of the Mama's and Papa's - other members were the original John Phillips, his daughter McKenzie, and Spanky McFarlane (Got to Get to Know You, etc.) I was 11 that summer and starting to watch closely the events that would lead to the 2nd American Revolution in the summer of 1968.

[oblivious]

69. Excellent. The Mamas and the Papas brings back those same memories.

[JohnnyLib2]

9. Grad school, dealing with the draft board.

And wishing I were in SF.

Thanks for the nostalgia.

Yes, the song derived came from that summer.

[DainBramaged]

11. In high school smoking bones and worrying about my brother

who had been drafted into the Army. He was later wounded by stepping on a popper, and spent the rest of hs life damaged, disturbed and homeless. I was on a work/study program working as an apprentice mechanic at a local Chevrolet dealership. And I was smoking a lot of bones.

Pounds that's right, pounds, were $350, about 2 weeks net pay. But 10 ounces were sold to make the money back and the rest rolled in my Rizzla machine so it looked like a Camel while I was driving. 4 track tape players, Scott Muni, Allison Steel on WNEW FM in NYC.

It was a very unique and different time. But we didn't learn our lesson. There is a menace to humanity in the White House 40 years on.

[JohnnyLib2]

13. You've given a snapshot of the Viet Nam years, thanks.

Millions of families were like yours. The number is fewer now but the war-damage is rolling on. And many more brothers and sisters will be back, "damaged and disturbed."

[barbtries]

12. living with my brother,

my mother, and my father, in torrance, ca , where i grew up. my oldest brother had joined the marines, been stationed in hawaii when he got out of boot camp, and was over there married to his shotgun bride.
40 years ago i was 11 years old, yet my sister who was not even 7 years older than me had also married, to a man in the air force, and they were living in suisun, CA, with their little boy .

sometimes i feel a little forrest-gumpish: because my sister had married and gone up north to be with her husband, i actually got to visit san francisco that summer, with flowers in my hair...though the "Be-in" was before my time. it took me til i was about 15 i guess to develop into what i would call a hippie. and except for about 5 minutes during the 80's (i was a yuppie then), a hippie i remain.

far-out. groovy. cool.
PEACE.
:)

[orleans]

14. lovely post--i bookmarked this. i was nine years old and pieces

of television news that would turn my head or capture my attention for a moment were probably still another year away. my awakening wouldn't be for two more years. i was the youngest in the crowd i ran with--friends had older siblings dodging the draft, or sending hash back from vietnam

amazing days

ah, to be able to indulge in that mindset again.

[SoCalDem]

15. I was 17, in high school in Kansas.. (the '60's did not arrive in Kansas for another 5 years )

:)

[Art_from_Ark]

24. The '60s never came to Northwest Arkansas

except for maybe parts of Fayetteville, the local college town. The rest of the area went straight from an extended '50s to the post-Nixon '70s, although some of the high school girls did get '60s hair styles.

[proud2BlibKansan]

30. Where in Kansas?

And I am going to mildly disagree with you. I was 13 and we had a park here in KC where we used to go and worship the hippies. I couldn't wait to be one. There were also a lot of hippies in Lawrence.

[SoCalDem]

67. Salina Kansas.. smack dab in the middle of pretty much nowhere

In KC & Lawrence there was more awareness, but in Farm Country, it was still pretty much like "Happy Days"..

[cathandler]

70. I was 14 years old in Independence, Kansas.

I don't think the 60's have made it there yet.

[proud2BlibKansan]

73. Yes I have spent too much time in Salina

But I really like that cool park with the cliffs.

[SoCalDem]

74. Salina is/was a pretty little town with many cool parks

It's "grown up" and lost some charm, but there are still parts of it that are quite nice.

[TahitiNut]

59. And I was teaching high school math to your peers here in Detroit.

Likewise, the 60s didn't arrive in Detroit until 1970.

[scarletwoman]

17. I was a senior in high school, in St. Paul, MN, *WISHING* I was in San Fransisco.

I remember hearing about the "Be-in", it was definitely in the news even in flyover land. And I wanted SO badly to be in California instead of in the middle of the upper Midwest.

But I'm profoundly aware that it wasn't the same as actually being there.

I did eventually end up living in California for a time, ironically in Southern California -- Venice Beach -- 3 years later. Not too far from where Jim Morrison had once lived. Lots of drugs, lots of sex, not so much the rock'n'roll. But the ripples that had been sent out in 1967 were still rearranging the shorelines of our culture...

sw

[GreenZoneLT]

18. I was five, living in Nashville

Making up lies to impress my kindergarten mates, mainly. Among these were claims that I had an older brother (I had an older sister) and that I had a robot.

People who lived in the South and rural areas generally in the '60s have a totally different perspective on the "Sixties." Hippies were on TV, mainly, and were widely reviled as filthy drug addicts. Every kid in my first grade class in 1968 had a burr haircut, and 90 percent of them were Nixon supporters. Almost everyone I knew supported the Vietnam War up until the '70s.

Long hair and dope smoking didn't go mainstream until the '70s; it was mostly a college scene in the '60s, and only in the majority on a few campuses like UC-Berkeley and Columbia. Porter Waggoner probably sold more records than all of the Be-In acts put together.

Not making a value judgment, just giving a little perspective. I think a lot of people who weren't around in the '60s think it like Haight-Ashbury all over America. Twasn't.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NI4NI]

20. I was 18,

and waiting for my wife to give birth to our first child; seven days later she did, to our oldest son. There was plenty lovin' goin' on during the summer of '66 too!

[OffWithTheirHeads]

21. Sorry kids, I grew up there!

Speedway meadows, the Blue Unicorn, Communes in the Haight, buying ice cream in the Castro and paying with Hash, Grass off the street at $80.00 a kilo, Nepalese finger hash stamped in gold by the government of Nepal, the Berkley Barb, teargas from the pigs at the anti-war marches, peoples park, Big Brother and the holding Company practicing around the corner in a garage, LSD, Psylocybin,Christmastrees, Patchouli oil, Vietnam, people coming back from Vietnam completely fucked up, the draft board, the draft lottery, My stepbrother getting #12 in the lottery, the draft board trying to find my stepbrother by asking me where he was, me sending Salami peels and cigarette buts back to them in their self addressed, stamped envelope, My stepbrother getting caught by the Pigs and told to show up for the draft or go to jail, My stepbrother filling his veins with drugs so he would fail the test, my stepbrother dying from a drug O.D.?

Yeah, I remember the days.

[China_cat]

25. Finally!!!! Someone else who remembers

the Blue Unicorn. One of my best (if a bit hazy) memories. Did you know Stuart and Sam and Boswell?

I'm really sorry to hear that your stepbrother took such a drastic step. That must have hurt like hell.

[shanti]

22. suffering from adolescent angst

and not worried about anyone else but myself. pretty typical for a 12 year old. i remember the music, but not the messages..."don't you want somebody to love..."

[shanti]

23. self delete

dupe

[zeemike]

26. I was 23 and serving my last year with the Navy

Stationed in Pensacola Fla which was a southern town still trying to deal with segregation.
But the hippie movement had reached even there by 1967 but to a much less er degree. I remember a grout of them that lived in the woods and called themselves the church of something or other and ate green spaghetti as a sacrament...Wonder what ever became of them..
Drugs were cheep and plentiful A Kilo of pot would cost $300 right off the fishing boat from Columbia. And in that warm climate the Majic mushrooms grew wild and could be found in any pasture growing out of a cow pattie.
But for the most part the 60s didn't take off until the 70s in the south.
And I think it was things like the Be-in, the summer of love and Woodstock that really started the ball rolling for many people.

[murielm99]

27. I am like, old.

I wasn't there, but I was a sophomore in college then.

[Dover]

28. I was probably at a sit-in

just finishing potty training.

[Subdivisions]

29. I was in the throes of the "terrible twos", much to my parents

chagrin. :D

[DoYouEverWonder]

31. I believe they had one in Central Park in NYC too

but my parents wouldn't let me go.

[Jeanette in FL]

34. Yes, there were many in Central Park that year

I also wanted to go, but my parents wouldn't let me. We lived on Long Island, I was 12. Lots of my older friends went and I wanted to go to. My friends and I had our own little sit-in listening to my transister radio.

What a small world it is DoYouEverWonder.

[DoYouEverWonder]

41. And we both ended up in North Florida

LOL.

I was 12 living in LIC/Astoria. It was a crazy time. I ended up going to HS on E 65th St and the nuns would allow us to take off from school to go to CP for all the Vietnam War Moratoriums. They even shut down the school so we could all go to the first Earth Day Parade.

[Jeanette in FL]

48. That is wild

We are even the same age. My goodness, what a small world.

Our school closed for the first Earth Day Parade. We were going to have a new high school built. So the school organized a march to the new school ground and we picked up trash. Their was so much civic activism while we were growing up.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

40. I was there, Easter Sunday! I was 15. My older brother took me, not telling me where we

were going, and it was wonderful!

A sea of mostly young people, hugging, singing, dancing to great music. All there to have a beautiful time! The energy was amazing!

I lived in Flushing then. Right by Queens College, where most days at the Student Union Building was like a be-in!

[DoYouEverWonder]

43. Down at the Fountain

it was a Be In everyday for the next 4 years, after that.

I went to Queensboro Community when drugs were still being done openly on campus. The big joke was, you couldn't walk by the student lounge without getting a contact high.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

52. By the time you were attending Queensboro I had already stopped smoking pot and

was working in Manhattan.

Nice to see someone else who grew up in Queens here! :)

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

78. I was at QC in '67. Left in '69 when we took over the school

during the Vietnam War/military recruiting protests. I'm pretty sure I was at the Be-In at Central Park that spring. Most of those years are a little hazy now. They were a little hazy then, too

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

88. Laughing here. I was a Senior at Bowne (the HS behind QC) and was very involved in taking

Bowne over with fellow anti-war students. I also visited QC while it was being taken over.

My brother attended QC between 1965 to 1969.

[RadiDem]

32. Great Article - isn't 'Burning Man' a modern incarnation of the '67 Be-In?

Or pretty close? It sounds like it from what I know.

[RadiDem]

33. (oh - I did make to some love-ins in Griffith Park L.A. >>>

Remember The Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Steve Miller band playing.

Here's a great article on the birth of The Hippies

http://www.hippy.com/article-243.html

[Vidar]

42. Very informative. Thank you.

[madokie]

35. I was in luvst with my first real girlfriend, go pick her up after work

go eat, both of us on a couple bucks btw, maybe take in a movie, drive in .50 cents, then hit the back roads and do, well what kids do. All the time not knowing I was fixing to be a sailor in a few months. I'm the pied piper, yellow submarine, 99 tears, when a man loves an woman, lots of simon and garfunkel, dion's Abraham, Martin and John.
being recruited for what I was told at the time, the peace corps, but the two gentleman in the big black car that were talking to me scared the hell out of my young okie ass, while my boss was telling me these guys don't have your best interest in mind. Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like had I gone with them on the what turned out to be the last visit, telling me, we tried. At the time I was obsessed with guns, designing them, experimenting with them, etc. My HS teachers had taken notice of this too. I have owned one gun in the last forty years and only briefly. After experiencing what guns could do in a far away land I just never had a desire to own one again.

thanks for this post it has taken me back 40 years to a time when I thought I could trust the government

[trumad]

36. I was playing Xbox, PS3, Wii, and on-line computing games.

Don't tell anybody but I can jump back and forth to the future.

[trof]

37. I guess I was part of the 'establishment'.

I was 25 and playing 'fighter pilot' in the Alabama ANG.
By then I was 'seasoned', with a couple of years of bombing around (figuratively speaking ;-)) the southeast in my almost supersonic single-engine jet.
I had become confident in my abilities in the cockpit and almost comfortable with the most life threatening part of our forever non-combat mission, aerial refueling.
At least to the point that my flight suit wasn't soaked through with sweat when the tanker hove into view.
I was bulletproof and invincible.
A hot rock and mucho macho.

I fervently hoped that our squadron would be called up so I could go be a 'real' fighter pilot.
But because of the obsolete planes we had, I knew that wasn't likely.
OK, it was not remotely possible.

I was politically naive in the extreme. Unaware might be a better term.
Certainly uncaring.
In my head I was still pretty much an adolescent.
I rarely read newspapers and didn't watch TV news.
I don't remember that much of what was going on amongst the 'hippies' filtered into our local news outlets anyway. Like another poster said, the 60s didn't hit Alabama until 5 or 10 years later, if at all.

Some years later I was very, very thankful that I hadn't gone to Viet Nam, and I still am.
Forty years later I'm seeing the real life deja vu of Iraq and it's still hard for me to believe that we've done it again.

When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
:-(

[pecwae]

38. 15, living in Lexington, KY

hanging out at the Student Center on the UK campus every chance I got. Talked with a couple of people who had been in SF for other reasons and had gotten swept up in the Be-In. They couldn't stop talking about it, but always had trouble finding just the right words to describe it. They'd finally just give up and say 'you had to be there.' I never tired of hearing their stories.

Thanks for the memories!

[msedano]

39. Living in Isla Vista, thinking of doing grad school in "The City" or Cal

Santa Barbara had its own "Human Be-In" at South Beach. Isla Vista was a perpetual love-in. I lent a textbook to a classmate who ate acid in Mexico and died. Bummer. There were "hippies" who hung around just for whatever they could get for free--scummy kids from privileged homes-- and hippies who truly were the gentle people that gawdawful terrible song celebrates. I remember stories of "Super Spade" who surrounded himself with young chicks--that guy had a great con going, until someone shot him dead, or did he put a spike in his arm and OD?

The "love poet" Lenore Kandel had a thought I recommend to all who say "Fuck Bush". The love poet said something like "fucking is beautiful. If you want some asshole to suffer you should wish them, 'may you not be fucked.'" That was such a good argument, too bad no one picked up on it. Instead, she was termed a founder of the Filthy Speech Movement.

1967 was a great year. It got better and better all through 1968, when I got drafted out of Grad School. (When the involuntary draft ended and before the lottery draft became law, the Selective Service had free reign and plucked me and hundreds of registered Democrats like me out of our lives and into military service). By the time Woodstock hit, I was in the Army counting the days until I DEROSed from the Land of the Morning Calm; I got shipped out to Korea, of all places.

http://readraza.com/hawk/index.htm

http://labloga.blogspot.com

Yes, I am old. If you don't like it, may you not be fucked.

[conscious evolution]

44. It's Time for another one

And another SUMMER OF LOVE!

[The Backlash Cometh]

56. Yes, but, will there be a fight over the concession stand permits?

[timtom]

45. I had just gotten out the Marine Corps in October 66

and moved to the Bay Area. I ended up living in Oakland about that time. I was just getting my bearings and remember seeing either a poster or a copy of the Oracle announcing the Human Be-in ---- one or two weeks after the event!

Not to worry, though. I participated in many other things in the weeks and years to come.

[randr]

46. I was there and I can report that the drugs definitely worked

a miracle. Many of the people who "experienced" this particular gathering of the masses, along with many more at such events across our country in the ensuing years, still feel an important bond to humanity and feel a connection to what can only be call GOD, imho.
At the time I was working with a group of concert promoters, The Family Dog, and our motto was: "May the Baby Jesus Open Your Eyes and Shut Your Mouth".
It is no accident that the revolution in our country politic is coming from the sacred Bay Area.

[WinkyDink]

49. I was a senior in high school, 1966-67. The world was on the cusp of some major

changes, wasn't it?
Nixon, Kent State, moon landing, Chappaquiddick, Tate-LaBianca, Martin, Bobby, etc., etc.

[mwb970]

50. 1967 was my favorite year ever.

I was 17. I got out of high school. I started college. "Sgt. Pepper" came out. The music was great, the protests were sincere, the hippies were a breath of fresh air (not necessarily literally).

By the spring, word of the Human Be-In had reached Cleveland, where a Be-In, or a Happening, or something like that was scheduled. I was working part-time at the local library while finishing high school and my boss sent me as a reporter to cover the Cleveland Be-In for the library newsletter. It was great!

1967 opened my mind, but it was May 4, 1970, that turned me against the right-wingers politically.

[XanaDUer]

51. Probably sitting in my crib

Lol.

[The Backlash Cometh]

53. Forty years ago...

I was a willowy child of eight, wearing hand me downs from my obese sister, and I walked around with her shirts always slipping off my shoulder. The highlight of my life came during moments when I could escape with the dogs to go to the storm drains to catch minnows. But the sixties became a very attractive nuisance for a child, because of the colors and textures. What with the burlap wall decors with stapled black-light posters, and the drug paraphernalia always had fairy like people depicted on them and my interest in Greek and Celtic mythology may have sprung from there.

There were so many interesting things to see. Candles were twisted and bent to do incredible things. Everyone wanted triangle shaped green glasses like the Beatles had. The variety of music was incredible. From clever, amusing country lyrics, to bubble-gum ear worm songs, to Motown boogie beats, to heaven lifting acid music. I also had a front row seat to see bell-bottomed jeaned, straight-haired girls fall in love with boys who had hair growing down into their eyes and was very fortunate to only hear of one girl who lost their boyfriend in the war. Fortunate, because I know it was a much, much worse time than it is today.

[laruemtt]

54. going through puberty - ugh.

but made up for lost time a few years later :hippie:

[bikebloke]

55. I was 10.

Probably playing outside.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

57. I was in college -- the antiwar movement was spooling up,

but this was before it started getting really ugly. In 1967 we were getting high and hoping for peace and worrying that you or your friends or families would get drafted. The following year Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated; all hell broke loose at the Chicago convention, and Nixon was re-elected. In 1967, "Hair" opened, and we thought we were living in the Age of Aquarius and we could end the war. That took another eight years.

[Fly by night]

58. Getting ready to graduate from the last segregated class at Lee High, Columbus, MS

Forty years ago -- jeez louwez. Has it been that long?

I lived in a small northeastern Mississippi town, the eighth generation of my family to be born there. Enjoying life in a very insulated white cocoon, getting our news from a radio station, TV station and a newspaper owned by the same family (who spared us any angst by cutting the sound on the CBS Evening News whenever Cronkite reported a story about civil rights actions in my home state.)

Fiddling with the fire in my girlfriend's pants, as often as possible. (Every day after school and several days a week before school).

Trying to decide where to go to college, and picking Vanderbilt because it was the most liberal place I could find within hitch-hiking distance of the fire in my girlfriend's pants. (Turning down scholarship offers from Harvard, Brown and New College in the process). Vanderbilt hosted MLK and Stokely Carmichael that spring, integrated SEC sports (with Perry Wallace) and actually attracted people from around the country (including my first ex-wife, a Michigan hippie chick who had hitched a ride back to San Francisco, California on one of Ken Kesey's buses).

Not smoking pot yet. Just barely drinking (I had been old enough looking not to be carded after I turned 14.) Trying to figure out just what had come over two girls at my high school from the nearby Strategic Air Command airbase who had dropped acid and showed up with wicked grins and uncontrollable laughter one Friday morning.

Just wondering what the next phase of life would bring, back when I made five year plans rather than living one day at a time.

Ah, the spring of 1967. The last time I went to confession with my liberal young Catholic priest (doing his time in the missionary fields of north Mississippi) who wouldn't grant me absolution because I wouldn't swear off playing with fire.

Ah yes, oversexed and underdrugged -- I remember the late 60s well. And I was there. Thanks for the thread.

[JitterbugPerfume]

60. clueless in Indiana

:cry: stuck in a loveless mariage , with children.

I knew there was more, I was just trying to figure out a way to GET some of it

[WritingIsMyReligion]

61. My mom was eleven and in sixth grade. My dad was seven, almost 8, and in second grade.

:)

[alfredo]

62. I was sitting on top of an extinct volcano in East Africa.

While there I was sitting behind a telegraphers mill, earphones attached to an R-390.

The mill was an Underwood typewriter. The R-390 was an incredible radio receiver.




If we wanted to hear the music of the "hippies" we had to listen to Radio South Africa. The Army radio stations would play country, and easy listening music. What rock we got was crappy commercial shlock rock.

Of course the local weed was great. They called it hashish because of the way they collected it. They'd walk through the field and rub the flowertops between their hands. Over time their hands would be covered in resins. They'd scrape off the resins and smoke that. Sometimes they'd throw the plant on a fire and breathe the smoke.

If you wanted to get totally smashed they had their version of Ouzo called Zabib.

[Keefer]

64. I was eight years old...

and had no idea what was what. I've never heard of the "be-in" until now.

[argyl]

65. Getting kicked out of high school in Schertz,Texas because my hair was too long

for the likes of the asst.principal there.

[Crabby Appleton]

100. me too, different HS

[Arugula Latte]

66. I was a baby -- turning one.

I wish I'd been a little bit older to grasp things that were going on in that momentous time. We moved to the SF area in '70 -- I remember seeing the hippies and the groovy "vibe" that still hung over the city then.

[Arkansas Granny]

68. Forty years ago today I was caring for my firstborn who was

three days old.

[bbgrunt]

71. I was in LA training for the peace corps

[helderheid]

72. I wasn't even a twinkle in my parents' eyes

[NorthernSpy]

91. me either...

Guess we missed it, huh?

:(


Still, it's nice to hear people's stories.

[LaPera]

75. Here's the 1st print poster for the Be-In on Jan 14th 1967 On ebay right now....

http://cgi.ebay.com/Gathering-of-the-Tribes-Poster-ORIGINAL-Human-Be-In_W0QQitemZ320069464916QQihZ011QQcategoryZ104755QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem



I was in SF growing up then...a year or two too young on 1/14/67 (in 66 & early 67), but very shortly, I made up for it, man, did I make up for it starting in early 1968 - throughout the city, it was a great time!
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by Eric King
In August, 1965 I arrived in Berkeley to pursue a Ph. D. in Medieval English. I had read about the Free Speech Movement and been drawn to Berkeley by the prospect of freedom of academic inquiry. As I was finishing my M. A., the local disciples of a rather amusingly demented guru whispered his alluring siren call in my ear, "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out." I attended one of the early concerts at the Avalon Ballroom in a appropriately stoned state and met a very attractive young woman who took me back to her apartment and made love with me in an uninhibited fashion beyond anything I could have imagined. I awoke the next morning with the realization that this was a lot more fun than translating obscure passages in Beowulf. I spent the next several years at the greatest party since the fall of the Roman Empire.

If the party had any focus, it was at the Fillmore and Avalon Ballrooms. Today, thirty years after the beginning of the two main series of San Francisco psychedelic rock concert posters, the Bill Graham Presents series and the Family Dog Presents series, people are in a bizarre state of denial concerning the role drugs played in the creation of this art. Collectors, dealers and even one or two or the artists themselves seem to be pretending that if they looked up the word "psychedelic" in Webster's, they would find the definition to be, "a breed of pussycat." The reason for this is simple. From the outset the art establishment has contemptuously sought to dismiss this major art form as the drug-crazed ravings of sex-obsessed dirty hippies, and according to this group the farther away from people's minds this drug connection can be dragged, the more likely it is that this art will finally be accepted by the art establishment. Reality check time, fellows and gals. The art establishment loathed us in 1966, and their loathing continues unabated today. Until they have passed from the scene, their attitude will prevail. Even if we did convince them that "psychedelic" meant "pussycat," there would still be the problem in their eyes of sex-obsessed dirty hippies.

Nowhere has this been more true than in San Francisco itself, the very home of psychedelic rock concert poster art. Here is a supposedly cash strapped city which has found the enormous sums of money necessary to fill its museums with New York art, deconstructionist atrocities which demonstrate no technical mastery of any medium, occasionally interesting Asian vases and a few lesser European Old masters which were not gobbled up long ago by European or East Coast museums because they were just that, "lesser" European Old Masters. This same city from the mayors and supervisors on down to the graphics acquisition staffs over two dozen years has systematically refused to appropriate what was once only a few thousand dollars to insure that a set of original printings of the greatest original art ever to arise in San Francisco stayed in San Francisco. Why? Because "psychedelic" does not and never will mean "pussycat." These posters were by, for and about drugs.

This is not an essay advocating drug usage. Even if we were naive enough back then to listen to Bobby singing, "Everybody must get stoned," we are not that naive now. We have seen the hollow-eyed wraiths, the casualties of the psychedelic revolution, some of whom still populate our streets, and know the downside to drug abuse. More than one of the great psychedelic poster artists experienced drug related problems and one almost trashed his entire life, but for better or worse out of the cauldron of naivete and confusion came brilliant art of often crystal clarity.

If anyone would doubt the power of psychoactive drugs to influence artistic creativity, he or she need only study the works of Hieronymous Bosch before and after he was initiated into the cult which had managed to find some means of neutralizing the toxins in the rye fungus known as ergot from which LSD was eventually derived. Because we live in a country which has thrown a quarter of a trillion dollars down a rat hole known as the "War on Drugs" which has harmed us more than the drugs ever did, and they did us no little damage, we are no longer willing to discuss how the goal of psychedelic rock concert poster art was to "stone" the beholder briefly, to create on paper the visual effects of hallucinogenic drugs. Furthermore the concerts themselves, music, light shows etc. were all intended to enhance the psychedelic experience. It should be noted just as clearly that although the environment which made these posters and concerts possible could not have existed without the widespread, indiscriminate use of mind altering substances,the destruction of this environment inevitably resulted from the same widespread, indiscriminate use of these substances
http://home.earthlink.net/~therose7/drugs.htm

[LiberalEsto]

76. I was 15, a sophomore in high school

I was writing weekly newspaper columns about high school events for my local paper. And wondering if I'd ever get to wear a bra.

[troubleinwinter]

77. I'm so old....

Most of the music posters in shown in the OP were on my bedroom wall in Berkeley. I was 16.

Joel Selvin (of the SF Chronicle, as quoted in the article) was my next door neighbor, just a year or so older than me. He & his parents had a pet sloth(!).

I have a photo of my (then yet-to-be) husband at 16 at the 'Stop The Draft' protest at the Oakland Army Induction Center, Oct. '67.

Yup, LSD, weed, hashish, music at the Filmore, Berkeley protests, teargas, National Guard occupation with tanks of Berkeley, Peoples' Park all to come.

In '69 my husband and I lived awhile in Hawaii (he'd just gotten a high lottery number). We met many young soldiers coming in for R&R (a 3 week 'vacation' of "Rest and Relaxation" before being shipped back). Kids from farms who had never known much about the world. They had learned a lot in a hurry and had become anti-war and knew plenty about weed and more about heroine. Glazed eyed cynical boys who'd grown up much too fast.

It feels so sad to be in the same old boat with a totally fucked up war now 40 years later.

[proud patriot]

79. I was born in 1969 , a result of the summer of love

I am a Love Child . Lived in a commune in the haight til '72 .

:patriot:

[zeemike]

81. Wow I just realized

That the love children of that remarkable time like you, are now turning forty.
I know realize that I am really old. or at least as old as my age would imply.

[otherlander]

80. Come back, dancing people...

:cry:

[ikojo]

82. I was three and a half...I was probably

following some sister around or trying to get attention from my overwhelmed mom (I was kid number six out of seven).

[Raine]

83. 16 yrs. old and oblivious

to what was going on in the World. I was more concerned with clothes, trying to be popular and getting a boyfriend.:shrug:

[Blue_In_AK]

84. January 1967

I was a junior in college at the University of Houston, heavy into the civil rights movement (and catching a lot of flak for it) but not yet "experienced," in the Jimi Hendrix sort of way. That came the following October as a result of the Summer of Love and its ripple effect. Those were some really "heady" times. :hippie:

[Manifestor_of_Light]

93. Hey Didja know Mickey Leland???

Everybody's favorite bomb throwing pharmacist from TSU?

[Blue_In_AK]

99. No, I didn't.

My civil rights activism consisted mostly of having a lot of black friends (I'm Caucasian) which was dangerous enough in Houston in 1966. Getting called all those names toughened me up. :) The year I started college (1964) was the first year UH had integrated athletics, the year Elvin Hayes came to the basketball team. He was a good friend of mine, and I helped him some with his classwork. The reaction from some people wasn't always good.

[raysr]

85. A year later I got Drafted. But while

in the Army in Maryland I took in "THE" Woodstock Rock Concert.

[texanwitch]

87. I was 13 years old and in junior high school.

I am so glad I lived thru that period of time.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

90. Suffering through the hell of junior high

Eleven years old in the 7th grade. I had lots of negatives: Wore glasses, extremely smart, female, very small, never learned to fight. Nowadays kids solve their bullying problems by bringing loaded guns to school and using them on their tormentors. Back then, we just suffered and cried silently and wondered if we'd ever get out of that hell.

[PlanetBev]

92. I remember hearing about the Be-In on the news.

and wishing I was there. I was sixteen years old, living in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Started smoking weed that year, had the ZigZag Man poster on my bedroom wall, read the LA Free Press, and listened to psychedelic music on Dave Diamond's Diamond Mine on radio station KBLA. Exactly 40 years ago this month the Doors first album was released and I still have it to this day.

1967...they don't make years like that anymore.

[B Calm]

94. Working a soda fountain at Steak-N-Shake

[Thothmes]

95. Forty Years Ago

Standing burner watch in Bravo 3 on a destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.

[KharmaTrain]

96. June, 1967 - Carnaby Street - London

I was in England on a family vacation and picked up my copy of Sargent Peppers (with all the cut-outs) at a record store there and still have the disc.

My memories of that summer were sweet...especially the music. The Rascals "Groovin'", Aretha's "Respect", Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love" and Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco, Wear Flower In Your Hair" (written by John Phillips) were everywhere on the AM radio (FM? what was that?)

I was in Haight-Ashbury last summer...did a pilgrimage to Golden Gate Park, the former Fillmore and many other sites. I also picked up a book at one of the local head shops that was a great history of that summer by a man smack dab in the middle of it all...Bob Weir...a fascinating read about a fascinating time.

[ballabosh]

97. I was relaxing

in my mother's womb. I was evicted 95 days later.

[donsu]

98. trying to stay alive and not succumb to grief

I'd lost everything and was held together by cobwebs with a hemorrhaging heart.

sheer will power and the lust not to let the bastards win kept me going.

haven't a clue what was going on otherwise.

sorry, thinking back 40 yrs. pushed a button.