Blue Unicorn before the media

Bob Stubbs opened the Blue Unicorn in 1963, by the time it got media attention in September of 1965, it had already had ran for almost 2 years. Can anyone give some descriptions of What that period of time was like. Could it possibly be that hippies as we know them in 66 and 67 already had a well established culture by 1963? Also just asking, did the coffee house use all 3 floors of the building?

 

The Blue Unicorn opened in December, 1962. It was one floor only. There existed a hippie type culture as far back as the late 1950s (generally around L.A.), but the roots go back further than that. Try this site for more info, the site owner is an academic historian who was there at the time: http://blueunicorn.webs.com/

 

i don't know the place that you mention.

must be some other part of the country or of the world then i'm familiar with,
but to answer the larger question,
certainly.

the beat generation didn't die.
remember kennidy? all three of them?
they set an example, at least in public image, that civil rights was a good thing.
pacifism came from ghandi and from people understanding what nearly all religions had been intended by their founders to be actually about.

so people had been working on these things all along.
(even in the most establishment circles in those days, there was a tendency to root for underdogs,
and a motivation to keep up appearances of freedom and consent of the governed).

the trigger for the huge popularization that occured in the mid 60s, was midia's attempt to portray all this negatively.
that people who wanted to create a world of greater fairness, opportunity and participation
were portrayed as hedonists who just wanted to get high and get layed.

well what highschool or lower devision college kid, wouldn't want to get high and get layed?

so this huge bandwagon of 'weekend warriors' was created. which i think, did the exact opposite of what media intended.

but at any rate, yes, nothing magically sprang into being over night.
the beat culture was very much still alive. they were the 20 and 30 somethings.
the older brothers and sisters, (and actors and musicians, did a convincing job of being still teenagers themselves)
who had been the first of those conceived when johnny came marching home from world war two.
and so the next, it was only half a generation later, those born when i was, during truman and before eisenhour, and then those born during isenhour too,
yes there was very much a continuity there.

i don't know what illusion that there wasn't, historians today may be trying to create that there wasn't.

remember the song abraham, martin and john?
nobody, and i mean nobody, believed jfk had just been randomly shot by some nut case who had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that morning,
not when some mafia type put a hit on that same, supposed nutcase before he could face trial.

remember the kingston trio? they were mid to late 50s. remember the smother's brothers? very early 60s. peter, paul and marry, the same. even the beatles, 64 or so i think it was when they hit the states, by which time they were already an established thing over in europe.

television wasn't brand new, it had been around throughout the 1950s.
(actually since 1938 i believe the technology first appeared,
but i say 50s because it was around 1952 that from then on, nearly every home in the u.s. had one)
but portable video recording equipment, the kennidy nomination was the first to be covered 'live' as a result of that technology having become available.

early 60s was twilight zone and outer limits too. and then came star trek. over in great britain you had the birth of doctor who, and blake's 7 and the tomarow people.
in fashion it was sexy to be young.

and did i mention the futurists and the club of rome report? technology and the grad students developing it were a factor too.

there were just so many things going on during that period, there wasn't any kind of an empty gap between beatnic and hippie.
they were slightly different perspectives, the way things evolve naturally, but there was no lack of continuity.