“This is an article about the 60s. I know what you’re thinking. A bunch of stoned hippies sit around singing “Yeah, yeah, yeah” and protesting the Vietnam War. Then they turn into your boring parents and swear they never smoked marijuana.
But look at all the stuff today that we’re into: Nirvana, alternative. People go to raves and dance and become one with the music. It’s cool to wear a marijuana-leaf T-shirt and piss off your teacher, pierce your belly button, have the guts to adore a weird movie star that no one else likes. We want to be individuals.
Where did these ideas come from? Who influenced our music and styles? Take the peace sign, for example. We owe the peace sign and what it stands for to the young people of the 60s. They imagined the world could be a place of love, not war; harmony, not violence. They took a stand against injustice.
Sometimes I wish I could take a break from this mundane world, where there’s graffiti everywhere and people are living on the streets. You turn on the TV and people care more about a snake eating a Chihuahua than important issues.
And there’s so much pressure to fit in, you can forget about your inner feelings. Sometimes you smile at people just because you’re happy, and they don’t smile back. If I feel really happy, I’ll start dancing around the halls, and people look at me and say, “what?” People suppress their joy. They don’t know how to express how they’re feeling. You go to a dance and people are just standing around the punch bowl, trying to look cool.
That’s why I like to imagine what it would be like if I was there, a student at Berkeley when the San Francisco scene exploded about 30 years ago in the “Summer of Love.”
Flashback to the 60s
It’s 1965. The Free Speech movement at Berkeley is at its height. I put off my final paper to gather around a police car, hearing Mario Savio speak. Three months later, the college students took action; almost 800 of us marched into Sproul Hall, Berkeley’s administrative building, for a demonstration. We just sat there until the authorities packed us into sweaty buses and took us to jail. It was worth the bad record and dip in grades, though; now all students on campus can speak our minds. We’re pains in authority’s neck: questioning the government, segregation, and the Vietnam War.
Two years later, we sit in the office of the student newspaper, the Berkeley Barb, and ponder the lyrics of Donovan’s latest hit, “Mellow Yellow”: “Electrical banana, gonna be a sudden craze, electrical banana, gonna be the very next big phase.” Hmm, I wonder. “Maybe there’s some powerful hallucinogen in banana skins.” Everybody chuckles, but someone sarcastically prints the idea in a review of Donovan’s work. As the next weeks pass, we’re amazed to see people actually smoking banana skins and claiming to get high. Oh well.
I like to wander around the funky neighborhoods, where there’s a whole underground community doing wild stuff. It’s like the Beatniks, the artsy crowd of the late 50s and early 60s. People are trying all sorts of drugs and free sex, trying to shake free from the cookie-cutter establishment. As Jimi Hendrix sang in “If 6 Was 9”
If the sun refuse to shine
I don’t mind, I don’t mind
Let the mountains fall in the sea
Let it be, let it be
Alright
‘Cause I got my own world to look through
And I ain’t gonna copy you…
White collared conservatives flashing down the street
Pointing their plastic finger at me
They’re hoping soon my kind will drop and die
But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high, high…
Fall mountains fall just don’t fall on me
Go ahead Mr. Businessman you can’t dress like me
Sing on brother play on drummer
So let me live my life the way I want to
Yeah
I peek inside some pads, and loads of poets and artists are talking and sharing. Some guy with his head in the clouds saunters out, and tells me there is a “Hip Movement” to expand on this “new conciousness,” rejecting selfish capitalism and the rest of the establishment. Instead, we want harmony, everyone interacting in love and peace, able to be yourself. We rap for a bit about this kind of world, and then he offers me a dubious-looking little red square, which I politely decline.
“One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. And the ones that Mother gives you, don’t do anything at all. Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall…” It’s a communal thing, people sit around the streets toking up together. They say the LSD, marijuana, dexies, and more make you more imaginative; I mean, you should hear some of the weird ideas these cats come up with, like Jefferson Airplane’s song “White Rabbit.” But I’m not really into this stuff. I think that our world can be just as beautiful with the love we create ourselves, like the Beatles song, “The love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Love is beginning to fill neighborhoods, especially around the corner of Haight Street and Ashbury. Nobody’s harming or hassling anyone. Out of nowhere, someone gives me a big bear hug. I expect it to be a total stranger, but it’s my friend Leaf from the San Francisco Diggers, the street theater troupe. I tell him his last performance was groovy and we go out for lunch. Not to a restaurant or anything; instead, we go to Golden Gate Park and pick up free sandwiches that the Diggers are distributing. Leaf tells me they’ve set up a Free Store where they give away the community’s extra supplies to those in need. I must admit, it seems like a fantasy tale; everyone is just trying to help and love each other. But I don’t worry about how unusual this is. As John Lennon sings, “Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields, nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about.”
Soon, it’s late spring ’67, and I’m invited to a Council for a Summer of Love. After long, drawn-out conversations, we outline plans for “celebrations all summer long to affirm the universal values of Love, Peace and Self-knowledge.” Soon, our ideas to welcome the youth of America to the Haight-Ashbury are printed in the Oracle, the important underground newspaper. I stand on the corner of the Haight giving it to everyone who passes by, even old ladies and scowling businessmen. We want to experience and share our joy with everyone. During the summer of ’67, thousands of young people will answer our call and migrate to San Francisco; our ‘hip community’ will become the Hippie phenonemon.
“If you come to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair,” goes the song that has taken over the airwaves-dumb and commercial in my opinion. Yet it encourages young people across the country to join the flower children. I can see why; they’re disaffected, feeling that their home towns are boring and heartless. These kids pack their bags and hitchhike, drive, or ride planes or buses out West, looking for ?? themselves? their souls? somebody to love? Some of them from the suburbs are naive, they’re easily exploited for money or sex. Others will burn out on drugs. But those who return home will look on this as the most important experience of their lives.
Soon, the “Hashberry” is mobbed with everyone imaginable: the remnants of us protesters for Free Speech, which is joining with the civil rights movement, Hell’s Angels, people hopelessly tripping on drugs, and “squares,” normal people come to see the sights. Some of my friends on the Council feel that the Love has “dried up,” and that our whole purpose has been trivialized. The Haight is so crowded, filled with drug dealers; the spontaneous love and generosity is harder to find. Yet I still feel we’re doing a good thing. There’s nothing else we can do: San Francisco is open to the world.
But the bad vibes can’t ruin the music, bringing all kinds of people together. The Bay Area is the home of acid rock, we call it that because of the amounts of LSD everyone is exposed to. The music is really loud and wildly experimental. It’s about harmony, sex, drugs, happiness, the world, whatever. We’re lucky to have local bands like Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin with her band Big Brother & the Holding Company. In fact, they play free at the Fillmore Auditorium each Friday night. Everybody comes to see them, along with artists like Los Angeles’ Doors and the English Yardbirds.
In June, I go to the Monterey Pop Festival, the musical high point of the Summer. On June 16, six of us pack sleeping bags and food and drive down to Monterey. I see a Hell’s Angel skulking around and give him some flowers for his hair. Wow, dig that guy with the designs painted on his head! And lookâis that Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones? Holy Isis! We stay for three days of live music, from established groups like the Mamas and Papas, to complete American unknowns like Jimi Hendrix. Thirty thousand people fly high with Jefferson Airplane and the Byrds, are enchanted by the exotic sitar of Ravi Shankar, moved by Janis’ heart-rendering blues, wowed by the equipment-smashing, hard-rocking Who, and completely blown away by the ferocious guitar-burning, erotic performance of Jimi Hendrix. The festival introduces mainstream America to many of these immortal artists, who will go down in history as the soul of rock n’ roll.
September rolls around, the kids go back to school, and I have to snap out of my daydream. Yet the “Hip Movement” lives on, in San Francisco, the West Coast, across the nation and even the world. Groups of concerned people formed their own good vibes of love and peace, music, drugs, and free sex. All over, festivals and be-ins sprouted up, and the sparks of the Berkeley protests were fed into the fire of the great civil rights movement of 1968. Hippie things like love beads, paisley, and acid rock are an unforgettable part of America.
Even though the psychedelic years ended in 1969 with the famous Woodstock festival, its spirit endures today. That’s why the hippie movement was so important. The artists like Jimi and the Grateful Dead, and the fashions like bell bottoms and tie-dye are popular today. But the ideas of being individual and spontaneous are crucial; protests against segregation and for womens’ rights have made our country a much better place to live. We can speak out for what we believe in, have the courage to be who we are, and make a difference in our world, thanks to the young people of the 60s.”