Woodstock and San Francisco (multiple posts)

sixties@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Wed, 31 Jan 1996 09:01:11 -0500

(1)
Sender: "Aron \"Pieman\" Kay" <pieman@ns.calyx.com>
Subject: Re: Woodstock and San Fransisco

Hi; the 60's had left a profound effect (which is still being felt) by
society as a whole.and it is great that today's students are looking into
the 60's as part of their curriculum. Anyway, I was involved in it as a
part of the yippies. Feel free to contact me: aron kay-the Yippie Pie Thrower
(Pieman@calyx.com)

(2)
Sender: PNFPNF@aol.com
Subject: Re: Woodstock and San Francisco

Doug,
As many others no doubt are telling you, the real "Summer of Love" in San
Francisco's Haight Ashbury district happene in summer and early fall 1966;
there were then communal groups and a sense of multiplicitous
caring/sharing/expressing; among many others, the group called the
Diggers--named for the Dutch group, or (original) Provos--were trying to
"change people's frame of reference" with street happenings (like NOT running
from but, e.g., staring at, cops when they'd come down on a bunch of folks in
the intersection), with giving away food (and beads, and crashpad space, and
anything else).
This was all part of the belief that one could push away the old bounds of
the System, the old teachings, and COULD love everyone, COULD do things
DIFFERENTLY, could make the supposedly (and status-quo supporting)
unchangeable changeable, could do what we had not tried and what we were told
was impossible, thus bringing down the System by collapsing its walls.
But by the summer of 1967, so many people were laying trips on the young
(and other) persons who really believed in this goal...that much of the scene
in the Haight became a giveaway of, too often, sex, drugs, and stds. By fall
of '68 there was also enormous commercialization of "Hippie clothes""Hip
paraphernalia" etc., inc. by many little stores in the Haight, some (not all)
run with quite traditional commercial values. --Still, this collapse of the
Haight has also been exaggerated.
In fact, the collapse of the core of the Movement has definitely been
exaggerated, as you apparently know.
Paula Friedman (in Berkeley)

(3)
Sender: "EDWARD P. MORGAN" <epm2@lehigh.edu>
Subject: Re: Woodstock and San Fransisco

Has anyone mentioned Charles Perry's "The Haight-Ashbury" --excellent
journalistic history, I thought. Covering not only the early, idealistic
counterculture scene, but it's disintegration, too by the "Summer of Love" &
afterwards.
Ted Morgan