as a nomadic college student taking refuge in the oasis of the Village, and the counterculture was an expansion of that scene, so I felt very much at home. The shyness that had burdened me dissipated, since everyone looked weird and anyone could join the welcoming herd. With my long hair and hippie haberdashery I was part of a vast youth culture in which the barriers between journalists and their subjects were porous. I could hang out with rockersand engage them on a meaningful level, with no press agent in sight. Through these encounters I discovered the self I never knew. It’s the self I still possess.
When I think of those years I picture a sheet of ice melting from the surface down, growing wet and warm in the sun. That was the impact of this new era. I grew more trusting, and I learned that when you trust people you can relax. So I relaxed, maybe too much. But first things first. It began with a trip to California during that uncanny season called the Summer of Love.
In 1967, London was heroin and New York was speed. But San Francisco was all about psychedelics. The postman would offer to share the joint he was puffing on, his long hair flapping under the official cap. Pungent odors emanated from every doorway in the district where young people had settled by the thousands, an area near Golden Gate Park named for the intersection of two ordinary streets—Haight and Ashbury.
I never found out how the Haight, as the neighborhood was called, acquired its mystique. I figured it had something to do with the Merry Pranksters, the crew of acid explorers, led by Ken Kesey, that Tom Wolfe wrote about. The Pranksters were architects of hippie style. Swirl-covered buses like the one they traveled in were a common sight, as was their other major innovation, mass celebrations that featured LSD. In 1966, when I was reporting on the new drug culture for my ill-fated book, I’d witnessed one of these Acid Tests, as they were called. When I returned to San Francisco a year later LSD was illegal, but it was easy to come by, and certain manufacturers, such as the legendary Owsley, were treated like rock stars. The result was a stoned, sensate community, something I’d never imagined even in my wildest fantasies about what was blowing in the wind.
I wasn’t very hip to the San Francisco scene when I arrived. All I knew was what I’d seen on TV. There was lots of coverage, little of it knowledgeable. The reporters were outsiders, and their attitude was fascination mixed with dread, a combination I hated. (I still remembered the “Guide For Worried Parents” that the publisher inserted into my drug book.) But nothing since the Beatles had produced such a media frenzy, and I was sure I could do a better job than these pros at describing it. Only problem was, I didn’t smoke grass. Though I’d tried it incollege, I was convinced that if I got high again I would turn into Norman Bates. But there was no way I could understand the hippies without sharing their signature experience. So I bought a nickel bag in New York—approximately enough for two joints. Being stoned was less unsettling than I feared. I stuffed myself with Sara Lee cheesecake and got lost in a song, but there were no major changes. My intellect was intact, and I could still take notes, though they might climb the side of the page. Once I realized that I could function on grass, I felt ready to head west.
I arrived with the mental baggage of a New Yorker, sheathed in cynicism and highly suspicious of anything that claimed to be mystical. In that respect I wasn’t so different from the lefties who created the alternative culture of San Francisco. Their attitude toward the ragtag army of young longhairs in their midst was both welcoming and skeptical. On the one hand, these kids shared the values of the left, including collectivism, environmentalism, and an obsession with consensus. But they had no politics in the usual sense. They were hardly intellectual, and
When I think of those years I picture a sheet of ice melting from the surface down, growing wet and warm in the sun. That was the impact of this new era. I grew more trusting, and I learned that when you trust people you can relax. So I relaxed, maybe too much. But first things first. It began with a trip to California during that uncanny season called the Summer of Love.
In 1967, London was heroin and New York was speed. But San Francisco was all about psychedelics. The postman would offer to share the joint he was puffing on, his long hair flapping under the official cap. Pungent odors emanated from every doorway in the district where young people had settled by the thousands, an area near Golden Gate Park named for the intersection of two ordinary streets—Haight and Ashbury.
I never found out how the Haight, as the neighborhood was called, acquired its mystique. I figured it had something to do with the Merry Pranksters, the crew of acid explorers, led by Ken Kesey, that Tom Wolfe wrote about. The Pranksters were architects of hippie style. Swirl-covered buses like the one they traveled in were a common sight, as was their other major innovation, mass celebrations that featured LSD. In 1966, when I was reporting on the new drug culture for my ill-fated book, I’d witnessed one of these Acid Tests, as they were called. When I returned to San Francisco a year later LSD was illegal, but it was easy to come by, and certain manufacturers, such as the legendary Owsley, were treated like rock stars. The result was a stoned, sensate community, something I’d never imagined even in my wildest fantasies about what was blowing in the wind.
I wasn’t very hip to the San Francisco scene when I arrived. All I knew was what I’d seen on TV. There was lots of coverage, little of it knowledgeable. The reporters were outsiders, and their attitude was fascination mixed with dread, a combination I hated. (I still remembered the “Guide For Worried Parents” that the publisher inserted into my drug book.) But nothing since the Beatles had produced such a media frenzy, and I was sure I could do a better job than these pros at describing it. Only problem was, I didn’t smoke grass. Though I’d tried it incollege, I was convinced that if I got high again I would turn into Norman Bates. But there was no way I could understand the hippies without sharing their signature experience. So I bought a nickel bag in New York—approximately enough for two joints. Being stoned was less unsettling than I feared. I stuffed myself with Sara Lee cheesecake and got lost in a song, but there were no major changes. My intellect was intact, and I could still take notes, though they might climb the side of the page. Once I realized that I could function on grass, I felt ready to head west.
I arrived with the mental baggage of a New Yorker, sheathed in cynicism and highly suspicious of anything that claimed to be mystical. In that respect I wasn’t so different from the lefties who created the alternative culture of San Francisco. Their attitude toward the ragtag army of young longhairs in their midst was both welcoming and skeptical. On the one hand, these kids shared the values of the left, including collectivism, environmentalism, and an obsession with consensus. But they had no politics in the usual sense. They were hardly intellectual, and
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