I got to see the documentary called the "Trips Festival" which offers a lot of commentary and analysis of the legendary Trips Festival in San Francisco in from Jan 21-23, 1966.

This LSD fueled festival came out of the Acid Tests, conducted by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, where neophytes where inducted into the psychedelic realms accompanied by light shows and the Grateful Dead.

At the Trips Festival, participants were offered LSD tainted ice-cream. Note this was a PUBLIC event, as LSD was still legal at that time.

Filmmaker Eric Christensen, who participated in the event as a high school student, does an excellent job of selecting archival footage and interviews of participants for the film.


Interviewing such icons as Kesey, Gary Snyder (beat poet), Ken Babbs (Merry Prankster), Dan Millman (author: the Way of the Peaceful Warrior), Stewart Brand (Merry Prankster, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Well, EFF, Long Now Foundation), Carolyn Garcia (Jerry's Wife), Lou Gottlieb (Morningstar Farms), Allan Cohen (founder, SF Oracle), Bill Graham (Fillmore Auditoriums), Bob Weir (Grateful Dead), Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights Bookstore) each with their own take on the Trips Festival, offers us some fresh retropectives on this earth shattering event.

I liked the way Christensen looks to the past to explain how we got to the present and looks towards a incredibly rich future, all inspired by one set of events in 1966 and LSD, of course. The Trips Festival has been credited with inspiring other great events including Burning Man, Woodstock and the entire Rave scene. Light shows became a standard feature at Rock concerts after the Trips Festival.


The film focuses on the long-term social and psychological influences of that moment in history when the doors of perception were flung open for the masses for the first time, and how it has changed society, for the better!

Unlike other retrospectives that take a different tone, including that awful one on the History Channel (Hippies), that tried to portray Charles Manson as a typical hippie (thru the entire movie!), this one takes a much more upbeat positive view of those events and times.

I still haven't forgiven Peter Coyote for doing the voice over for that historically inaccurate monstrosity. In fact, filmmaker Eric Christensen, who got Mr. Coyote to do the voice over for this film, claims that Coyote was upset about that other film, and it's part of the reason why he did this one.

You can purchase this video at: thetripsfestival.com

I highly recommend this film for anyone interested in the period, the personalities and the historical influence of the period on American society.