PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007

Subject: BS: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 12:03 PM

On PBS, tonight, American Experience is showing "Summer of Love:"

In the summer of 1967, thousands of young people from across the country flocked to San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district to join in the hippie experience, only to discover that what they had come for was already disappearing. By 1968 the celebration of free love, music, and an alternative lifestyle had descended into a maelstrom of drug abuse, broken dreams, and occasional violence.

Through interviews with a broad range of individuals who lived through the Summer of Love -- police officers walking the beat, teenage runaways who left home without looking back, non-hippie residents who resented the invasion of their community, and scholars who still have difficulty interpreting the phenomenon -- this American Experience offers a complex portrait of the notorious event that many consider the peak of the 1960s counter-culture movement.

Should be interesting.

kat

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: PoppaGator
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 02:41 PM

Were you there? I imagine there are a few US Mudcatters who went through this experience. Not me, though, much as I would have liked to have been there.

That summer, I was between my sophomore and junior years of college at a midwestern Catholic university, living at home with my parents in New Jersey and working a factory job to save enough money to support myself through another school year. I had just enough "countercultural" experience at the time to wish I could be out there on the West Coast, where interesting things seemed really to be happening.

I finally did arrive in San Francisco two years later, as a street musician with a bachelor's degree. Of course, I had missed out on something, but I still found some interesting niches for myself, not only in the City but in the greater Bay Area.

I wasn't the only Johnny-come-lately on the scene, of course. For every wannabe-hippy bumming around SF in 1969-70-71 or so, there were at least a half-dozen tourists and curiosity-seekers hoping for a glimpse of the social phenomenon that had so recently bloomed and quickly faded. I'm pretty sure that my relative success as a streetsinger during that period was fueled largely by the contributions of citizens glad to experience a bona-fide "hippie sighting" during their visit to fabled San Francisco.

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 03:30 PM

I wasn't in San Francisco in the summer of 1967, but I was up in the Lake District, at the end of June that year, with a lovely girl called Jane. Although, I think she did wear flowers in her hair!

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Barry Finn
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 03:43 PM

I hitched out to the "Haight" with 2 other friends from Boston in the summer of 68' it was a year later but we weren't late. It was a long strange trip.

Barry

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 04:26 PM

I wish I had been, PoppaGator. I was only 14 and knew nothing about getting around in the world. I did burn my bra, though, and wore a red headband with long hair and my boyfriend's big brother's Army tee-shirt and fatigue shirt.:-)

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 04:48 PM

Heck, I was 13, and so skinny I wasn't wearing a bra yet. :)

SRS

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Amos
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 05:08 PM

I'd lived in the area for a year (1963-4) and then left to go to Europe. So I bailed out before the flower children showed up --- there were plenty of beatniks and hippies around already, though, and it was a wonderful (if impecunious) year for me.


A

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: PoppaGator
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 05:34 PM

Burned your bra at age fourteen, huh? You must have been lots of fun back then!

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Dame Pattie Smith EPNS
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 05:43 PM

I was a hippie in those days too although a bit later on in the 60`s. (In fact I still am) I burnt my bra and never found another one.......One of my favourite memories is seeing Hendrix on the Isle of Wight. I`ll always remember that although I can`t remember much else about the weekend.....

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Nancy King
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 06:29 PM

I actually lived in the Haight-Ashbury during that time (corner of Cole and Waller, one block up from Haight St., 3 blocks from Ashbury), but was NOT part of the Scene. I was way too uncool at that time, and my then-husband was even uncooler. But it was a fine place to live -- inexpensive, accessible, and very interesting and lively. When we moved there early in 1967, it was really a friendly neighborhood -- everybody very relaxed (probably chemically-induced relaxation...), tolerant, and easygoing. By the time we left in May of '68 it had gotten a lot less easygoing, a number of interesting stores had closed, and there were rumors of rat poison in the drugs.

We had big picture windows in our corner apartment, and used to enjoy watchng the passing parade. One day we were amused by the Shriners, who were having their annual convention in town, riding through the Haight in their convertibles, wearing their fezzes, and pointing and laughing at the hippies.

It'll be interesting to see American Experience's take on the Scene.

Nancy

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 06:45 PM

It's great to hear about this time from all of you. Thanks!

Actually, I was thinking of 1969, folks, when I said I burned my bra. Sorry...at 14 I think I was in a "training" bra; training for I know not what, but I wasn't having it a couple of years later!

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 07:05 PM

I was 25 that year---the year Carol and I were married--on January 3rd. In our VW bus we knocked around the country until we found Depoe Bay, Oregon and settled down to found the "Folk Art Shop" there. During a slow time in our business we drove 500 miles south to San Francisco to check out what all the hoopla was about. We parked on Haight, got out, took 10 or 12 steps and Frank Robinson came walking down the street toward us. (It was amazing because the last we'd seen of Frank was at the No Exit Coffeehouse in Chicago. --- So we went and had coffee in S.F.) Later in his life, Frank was the "Playboy Advisor" --- and then he wrote the book The Towering Inferno.

Such is the stuff of life...

Art

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Amos
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 07:59 PM

"Are psychedelics good for you? It's such a hippie relic of a question that it's almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case, Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963. But should we be prying open the doors of perception again? Wasn't the whole thing a disaster the first time?

"The answer to both questions is yes. The study of psychedelics in the '50s and '60s eventually devolved into the drug free-for-all of the '70s. But the new research is careful and promising. Last year two top journals, the Archives of General Psychiatry and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, published papers showing clear benefits from the use of psychedelics to treat mental illness. Both were small studies, just 27 subjects total. But the Archives paper--whose lead author, Dr. Carlos Zarate Jr., is chief of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Research Unit at NIMH--found "robust and rapid antidepressant effects" that remained for a week after depressed subjects were given ketamine (colloquial name: Special K or usually just k).

"In the other study, a team led by Dr. Francisco Moreno of the University of Arizona gave psilocybin (the merrymaking chemical in psychedelic mushrooms) to obsessive-compulsive-disorder patients, most of whom later showed "acute reductions in core OCD symptoms." Now researchers at Harvard are studying how Ecstasy might help alleviate anxiety disorders, and the Beckley Foundation, a British trust, has received approval to begin what will be the first human studies with LSD since the 1970s."

From Time.

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 11:14 PM

Interesting, Amos. Hope "guest,gun owner" doesn't see it and try to use it to argue another gov. conspiracy.

So, whaddya all think of the program? I thought they needed at least another hour and, of course, wished they'd included more of the music from that summer. I was a little disappointed in it.

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 11:11 AM

I liked the hair, the relaxed clothing, the folk style music, and the smoke. I never bought into the "revolution" or the hard psychedelics. I was too young to go to San Fran that summer, but loved the song. I was old enough to make the break from Mom and Dad (16) but not motivated enough to do so. The song was cool, though - it still has some charm and beauty to me.

I guess I looked the part but didn't have the spirit. I played a coffeehouse date at a nearby college, a couple of years later - and a couple of frat boys gave me some shit about being a hippie. I kicked their asses (I'm a big boy, it wasn't difficult). I guess they figure all hippies would be "pussies" (their word, not mine) but I didn't like their mouth and I didn't like their attitude.

The angry "freek" generation just a a few years later better suited me then the hippie stuff.

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 11:14 AM

I just reread my post - I'm not a violent guy and I wasn't as a kid. I didn't kick many asses. I just told the story to show that some of us liked some of the hippie things, but didn't buy into all of it.

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 12:30 PM

The talk of hippies reminded me of Cornwall, UK in 1967. I was down in St Ives that summer, and there were signs on shops and pubs all over the place saying, " Hippies not served here".

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: PoppaGator
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 12:46 PM

The missus wanted to go out to eat, I forgot about the program, and we wound up missing it in prime time. BUT, we found ourselves staying up to watch it at 2 am! There wasn't anything we didn't already know or hadn't already seen, but it was a pleasure to spend one too-short hour revisiting such a mythic time and place.

Neither of us were actually there at the time (which, incidentally, was a few years before we met), but we were both hippies, albeit geographically challenged and maybe just a little late, and we both eventually found our separate ways to the Bay Area before the Sixties ended.

While we may have missed that Big Moment of unlimited (and impossible) hopefulness, plenty of the hip culture's more soundly-grounded elements were still there to be found, and indeed survive to this day not only in California, but around the world.

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 04:28 PM

IMAGINE the Iraq war with the draft for all boys and girls the correct age!! What kind of "subculture" would it provoke??! The 1960s would seem tame I suspect.

Art

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 04:32 PM

On this side of the pond, PBS meant Poole Bay Shantymen!

Kitty

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: katlaughing
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 04:56 PM

Oops. sorry, Herga!

Art, good point...perhaps that is the main element we are missing when I wonder why people today can't seem to "get it together" in opposition.

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 05:08 PM

Kat - only teasing. Some of us didn't burn our bras because we didn't want black eyes when we danced!

Kitty

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Stewart
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 06:26 PM

I was living in Berkeley from '62 to '65, as a post-doc (biochemistry) at the University. Saw the free speech movement begin in '64, but we didn't get involved as most of our friends did, since we had a young family (twins born in '63 with a brother only a year and a half older) to raise. But those were exciting times in Berkeley and got even more exciting in '65 when we left. My one regret is that I never met Malvina Reynolds then.

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Deckman
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 06:40 PM

The school year of 66-67, I was a student at USF (University of San Francisco) which was only 6 blocks from the Haight. Occasionally some of us would walk down there during our lunch break, to view the hippies and the general weirdness. I was about 29 at the time, seriously married and I was also being a new father. The drugs held NO attraction to me ... still don't

What I remember most were the goofy little shops selling posters, funny smelling perfumes, beads, bongo drums, and dope dealers on every corner.

I had previously lived amongst the "Beats" of the City and Sausilito in 59, so I viewed the "Hippie scene" as just another version.

Very interesting times! Bob

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: katlaughing
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 07:07 PM

LOL...Herga! A warning if you please! I nearly dropped my drink! Black eyes would be a concern for me now, so I DO understand.:-)

Subject: St ives 1967
From: GUEST,Jan
Date: 29 Mar 15 - 01:36 PM

I was there in 1967 ,what a year ,and I remember all the cafés shops etc all saying no hippies allowed we sat all day on the beach partied all night ,and slept wherever .great days

Subject: RE: PBS- Summer of Love -April 23, 2007
From: Mark Ross
Date: 29 Mar 15 - 04:51 PM

I spent the Summer of Love in Greenwich Village. 17 turning 18, like turning a kid loose in a candy store. It's a miracle I survived!

Mark Ross