Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD (32 page)

The media portrayed the Digger thing as a goodwill gig, a “hip Salvation Army.” Of course they missed the point entirely. Charity was not what motivated the free service initiatives. The Diggers were attempting to lay the groundwork for a collective apparatus,
an alternative power base capable of providing the necessary resources so that people wouldn’t have to depend on the system or the state to get by. The gist was practical but also theatrical. Inject FREE into any event, and it could turn into theater. FREE was “social acid” that blew apart conditioned responses and called into question prevalent cultural attitudes about class, status, morality, consumerism, etc. Like LSD, FREE could shake people out of the rut of ordinary perception and catalyze some sort of revelation. This was the upshot of Digger activities: to make street theater into an art form, a social opera that would ignite and liberate the human spirit.

To the Diggers FREE also meant not claiming credit for what they did. Anonymity was a cornerstone of their operations, and it greatly enhanced their mystique as a group. Of the dozen men and women who initially formed the Diggers, there was no single leader or spokesperson. Whoever had a good idea became the prime mover of that project; others pitched in if the spirit moved them. People did what they were good at doing, but they also made a point of keeping out of the media spotlight. They were wary of the media not only because it distorted everything but also because it was hierarchical, an intermediary between people and the world. Worst of all, it purported to tell people “the way it is,” when everyone should be their own source of news. The Diggers had little tolerance for reporters and made life difficult for them whenever they came around for interviews. On one occasion a journalist from the
Saturday Evening Post
dropped by the Free Store and asked to speak with the manager. He was told that the manager was a shy person who didn’t like to answer questions but would make an exception in this instance. The man from the
Post
was then introduced to a
Newsweek
reporter who had been told the same thing. The two press stiffs questioned each other in a corner for twenty minutes before discovering that they’d been duped.

The Diggers’ aggressive anarchism ran into conflict with the
Oracle
group, which went out of its way to accommodate the Fourth Estate as part of the publicity campaign for the be-in. Although the Diggers had not been specifically invited to the be-in, they showed up anyway and gave out free food and ten thousand hits of “white lightning” acid Owsley had recently concocted. But that did not mean they approved of the be-in format, which was dominated by media personalities and centered around a stage—the same old hierarchical mode. In contrast to the
Oracle
’s shoot-the-moon scenario
of one huge global turn-on, the Diggers focused on the immediate nitty-gritty concerns of their own community. They set up crash pads and a free medical service for the young runaways who started flocking to the Haight after the be-in; they facilitated group rituals (often coinciding with solstice and equinox celebrations) as a way of unifying the spaced-out zone of hip; and they kept up their criticism of the HIP merchants and media sycophants whose “psychedelic logorrhea” prevented them from getting down to brass tacks and dealing with the serious problems that plagued the acid ghetto.

A lot of changes had taken place as a result of the media blitz. The local press was having a field day, with reporters from the
Chronicle
and the
Examiner
engaged in a running contest to see who could come up with the most lurid details about the human zoo on Haight Street. They took a complex social phenomenon, reduced it to a few sensationalistic elements, and repeated the same tripe over and over again. In every edition there were stories dwelling on dope, promiscuity, long hair, filth, and bizarre behavior—themes that reflected the prurient interests and prejudices of straight journalists locked into the usual middle-class stereotypes about bohemia. The sensational press coverage was tantamount to a full-scale advertising campaign—albeit of a twisted sort—and the neighborhood became a magnet for people who were into just what the media reported: sex, drugs, dirt, weirdness, all the seamiest aspects of the hippie trip. A different crowd filtered into the acid ghetto, and although it passed unnoticed at first, the original community began to disintegrate.

The psychedelic style had a certain meaning for the first wave of self-conscious innovators who were engaged in acting out communal modes of existence. Mundane objects such as love beads and peace insignias were tokens of self-imposed exile that communicated a forbidden identity; they warned the straight world of a threat and issued an oblique challenge to consumer society. But this meaning was not readily apparent to the multitudes who turned on for the first time after the be-in. Before long, teenyboppers and “plastic hippies” from the suburbs started frequenting the hip hotspots for some weekend entertainment. Department stores blossomed out in paisley swirls and psychedelic color schemes, and hippie lingo entered into common usage; suddenly everyone was “rapping” about “doing their own thing.” Long hair, beads, and dope—anyone could be a hippie by following the latest fashions.

The exceptional attention Haight-Ashbury received—its continual
newsworthiness—undermined the spontaneity of the psychedelic style and created a schism within the acid ghetto. On the one hand, there were the LSD veterans whose images and definitions of psychedelia stemmed from a grassroots sensibility that arose organically during the early- and mid-1960s; on the other hand, there were the Johnny-come-lately flower power trippers who were keyed into trendy images of an emerging youth culture. The newcomers began to mimic a collective reflection of themselves; they learned who they were (or were supposed to be) and how to act through the media, which offered a new standard of nonconformity to which they conformed. “The media casts nets, creates bags for the identity-hungry to climb into,” a Digger broadside declared. “Your face on TV, your style immortalized without soul in the captions of the
Chronicle
. NBC says you exist, ergo I am.”

For some the Haight was nothing more than an easy place to pick up hippie “chicks” or cop a buzz; others knew a fast buck when they saw one. And then there were those who came just to gawk. Tourists, carloads of them, bumper to bumper creeping up Haight Street. The Gray Line bus company announced a “Hippie Hop”—“a safari through psychedelphia. . . the only foreign tour within the continental limits of the United States.” Local storefronts suddenly filled with concession stands pushing “hippieburgers,” “lovedogs,” Day-Glo posters, and an endless assortment of psychedelic gimcracks. The street people were turned off by the whole scene and held up mirrors when tourists peered out of the windows to get a good look at the weirdos.

The influx of tourists and thrill seekers exacerbated the animosity between the flower children and the rest of San Francisco, particularly the police and city officials. Businessmen complained that hippies were clogging the sidewalks in front of their shops and scaring away customers. The cops started busting young people for loitering, panhandling, drug use, and vagrancy. Runaway teenagers who’d been staying at Digger crash pads were the target of a series of daylight raids (“sanitation sweeps”) led by Ellis D. Sox (the hippies loved his name), director of the San Francisco Health Department. By this time the Diggers were mustering their considerable talents for open confrontations with the authorities who condoned the deterioration of their neighborhood. They joined forces with the Communications Company, an underground mimeograph service that printed and distributed free handbills with on-the-spot news, poetry,
and announcements geared toward prodding the love generation into standing up for its rights. “Stamp out police brutality,” suggested a Digger leaflet. “Teach a hippie to fight.” With traffic tie-ups becoming a real downer on Haight Street, the Diggers elected to take matters into their own hands. On Easter Sunday 1967 a six-block area was effectively closed to cars as thousands of longhairs rejoiced and danced on the pavement, shouting “LSD, LSD!” and “The streets belong to the people!” By evening the police had arrested a dozen people, including a twelve-year-old boy.

Tempers were already at a boiling point when the
Chronicle
picked up an offhand comment by a Digger and turned it into a front-page banner headline: “
HIPPIES WARN CITY
—100,000
WILL INVADE HAIGHT ASHBURY THIS SUMMER
.” Images of a psychedelic
Grapes of Wrath
sent city officials into a tizzy. The mayor immediately declared “war on the Haight,” and shortly thereafter the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution stating that hippies were officially unwelcome in their town. A futile gesture, to be sure, as the press kept on predicting that a deluge of acid eaters would descend upon the Golden Gated city as soon as school let out for the summer.

As self-fulfilling prophecies went, this one couldn’t be beat. The acid ghetto was headed for a forced consciousness expansion of the rudest sort unless someone figured out a way to stabilize an already overloaded community. The crisis was so grave that various community groups—including the Diggers, the
Oracle
people, the HIP merchants, and the Family Dog—put aside their differences and tried to work out strategies for housing and feeding the media-hyped masses. They proposed that Golden Gate Park be turned into a huge free campground, but the city’s political leaders balked at the idea. The Diggers countered by organizing a feed-in on the steps of City Hall. They dished out free spaghetti and meat sauce to government workers and circulated a leaflet that read, “Say if you are hungry, we will feed you, and if you are tired, we will give you a place to rest. This is to affirm responsibility. We merely provide food, shelter and clothing because it should be done.”

Some took it as an omen when the Monterey Pop Festival drew nearly fifty thousand people to the Bay Area shortly before the summer solstice, becoming the largest rock and roll event of its time. Flyers at the Human Be-In had first announced the festival, a nonprofit affair with the slogan “Music, love, and flowers.” Monterey featured a lineup of psychedelic superstars, including Janis Joplin,
the Byrds, the Grateful Dead, and Jimi Hendrix. Joplin pulled out all the stops in a total freak-rock performance that was seen by millions in D. A. Pennebaker’s film of the concert. But it was Hendrix who really stole the show when he ended his first American appearance by kneeling in front of his electric guitar and setting it on fire. For the country as a whole, the acid rock era really began with Monterey. Scott McKenzie summed up what it all portended for the Haight when he sang his hit single during the final set: “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear flowers in your hair.”

The entire city braced itself in uneasy anticipation as young people started pouring into the Haight. They came in droves, a ragtag army of tattered pilgrims who’d gone AWOL from the Great Society. Propelled by a gut-level emptiness, they rode the crest of Kerouac’s bum romance, searching for kicks or comfort or a spiritual calling—anything that might relieve the burden of nonliving that gnawed at their insides. They believed that it would be like the newspapers said, that somewhere at the other end of the rainbow was Haight-Ashbury, the Capital of Forever, where beautiful people cared for each other, where all would be provided and everyone could do their own thing without being hassled.

But the Haight was hardly a paradise during the so-called Summer of Love. The early days of acid glory had receded into memory along with the pioneering spirit that once sustained the hip community. Things were getting rougher on the street, and a lot of kids left when the vibes got too heavy. Those who remained were quick to learn the meaning of Dylan’s adage about the rules of the road having been lodged: “It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge.” Young runaways had a hard time finding a way to earn a living or even a place to sleep. Some took to begging for spare change, but the transient rut didn’t hold much in the way of good luck. It was enough just to avoid getting caught in the wicked undertow of the drug scene, which claimed more than a few victims in the Haight.

Most of the newcomers were less interested in gleaning philosophic or creative insight than in getting stoned as often as possible. They smoked or swallowed anything said to be a psychedelic, and when the visions grew stale they turned to other drugs, especially amphetamines. That such charms were addictive or potentially lethal mattered little, for the dangers belonged to the future, and the future was a slim prospect at best, too improbable to acknowledge with anything but a shrug. For these people Haight-Ashbury was the
last hope. They had nowhere else to go. They were the casualties of the Love Generation. You could see them in the early morning fog, huddled in doorways, hungry, sick and numb from exposure, their eyes flirting with vacancy. They were Doomsday’s children, strung out on no tomorrow, and their ghostlike features were eerie proof that a black hole was sucking at the heart of the American dynamo.

The Great Summer Dropout

Nineteen sixty-seven was a year of stark contrasts. America’s war against the Vietnamese had swollen into a disaster, provoking disgust and condemnation throughout the world. The black ghettos of Detroit and Newark exploded in the summer heat while Aretha Franklin belted out her anthem for women and oppressed minorities: “All I want is a little
respect
. . .” Yet it was also a moment of highflying and heretofore unimagined optimism as the youth movement reached a dazzling apogee. (
Time
magazine gave its Man of the Year award in 1967 to “anyone under twenty-five.”) Nowhere was the upbeat sentiment of these turbulent times better expressed than by the Beatles, who embodied in their music and personalities the very principle of change itself.

The Beatles were the foremost lyric spokesmen for an entire generation; millions worshiped their verse as holy writ. Their songs were synchronous with the emotional excitement surrounding Haight-Ashbury. The Beatles were a symbol of the communal group that could accomplish anything, and their unprecedented success fueled the optimism of the times in countless ways. Just before the Great Summer Dropout, the Beatles gave the blossoming psychedelic subculture a stunning musical benediction with their release, in June 1967, of the album
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
. Later that month they supplied an anthem for the advocates of flower power, “All You Need Is Love,” in the first live international satellite broadcast, to an estimated audience of seven hundred million people. “I declare,” stated Timothy Leary, “that the Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God with a mysterious power to create a new species—a young race of laughing free men. . . . They are the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars the human race has ever produced.”