Greetings, I was wondering if anyone knows more about this. I was reading that in fall of '67, the hippies were getting annoyed with the media attention and day trippers who would join them, so they held a furneal for the movement (in SF I believe). I had never heard of this before and was wondering if anyone was there or knows more about it... Peace and Love, Jon
Allen Ginsberg...but we're supposed to want media attention,it's the abbie hoffman way...fuck the media...hippies dead haight ashbury 67.Hippie was just a way to sell papers.Now it's a way to sell the internet.peace
Hey, yeah I remember reading about that "Death of Hippy" ceremony in the Haight in '67. Twenty nine years later Me and Katie bumped into a guy who was there in a laundramat in Big Sur? Well he was saying that what it was about was that the whole Haight Ashbury scene had gone to hell what with the junkies, losers, media and criminal types descending onto it. The "originals" moved on and this guy said he had not been back since. Of course the Haight Ashbury scene kept rolling merrily along and a good account of what came after '67 can be found in R. Crumb's "I remember the sixties" comic (just a piece of it here you will have to order the comic to get the full story); http://www.lambiek.net/crumb.htm Come to think of it Haight Ashbury is STILL worth a visit and I think we might be going again this year ('96 was our first time ever in California but hey...GREAT place to tour but I sure wouldn't want to live there!) Tundrahopper
I was always under the impression that the Haight-Ashbury Mock Funeral staged event: 'Death of a Hippie' marked the end of the original Hippies involvement with the S-F scene because it was September & they all had to go back to College. - Either that or the money had run out so they were returning home to mummy & daddy. Yes I am being cynical & tongue-in-cheek here. After about October 1967 San Francisco was beset by the 'Bad Hippies'.Phoneys who didn't believe in the counter-culture values of love & expressive freedom but the values of 'free-love' (groupies)& 'help yourself to what you want'. At the worst end of this scenario we find Charles Mansion's 'Family'. So hence 'Death of a Hippie' may now have a far greater importance attached to it from a historical perspective than it simply being a staged media event. Am I right? or talking out of my hat? Please say.I stand corrected if need be.
Flight, That "original" we met in Big Sur also said the "back to the land" thing came of that. Like a rejection of the urban landscape as a place where "hippiedom" was possible. This is just one guy's opinion mind you but I did kind of go through the same thing myself at a later date. "Money run out" is a definite possibility-how long can anyone sustain a long party? But I think the reasons for the steam running out of the original Haight Ashbury thing were as varied as the reasons people found themselves involved. Better that people who were there tell their own stories though.... There is an eyewitness account on this forum by one "Shameless Heiffer" you could check out. TH4
Thanks Tundrahopper4. Yes I am slowly reading through Shameless Heiffer's recollections.People like me brag about the 1960s because we've read so many books/visited so many sites ; but the original transcripts of the ones who were there at the time - are much more interesting.Far less Text-Booky!!.
Since my name was brought up and yes indeed I was there in all my 17 yr old glory. I had been in The Haight about a year or so and things were getting pretty bad as I have posted previously. The Diggers and their leader Ken Grogan aka Kenny Wisdom had burnt out so to speak and the Haight had gone to hell in a handbasket full of hard core crimenals and drugs. The free love and peace had left the building. The Mime Troupe and the Pranksters set up a mock funeral on Haight St. The had a dude in a coffin and they carried him down Haight followed by the furneral party, dressed in mouring black in full makeup. Everyone on the street joined in as we mourned the demise of the Love in The Haight. It was to address the situation of the tourist and their constant gawking and picture snapping. The media and their lies, the pigs and the rest of the ones that brought the Haight to it's knees. You see the Old Ones that started the "Movement" struggled with the media and the Law Enforcement officals years before the Haight became so "popular" They are the ones that staged the demonstrations and love-ins, be-in and concerts, they also organized the free food distabution and free stores. I was apart of those happenings untill the end when kenny wisdom od on smack. He had all he could take and he did all that he had. That was the end and the begining of a new Haight. The drugs,pimp, husselers and rip-offs rained for two years and then a new light begain to shine on the Haight again a glimmer of the LOVE LOVE LOVE started to appear again. I was lost in the shuffle, with ones going here and ones going there. I traveled around for a while visiting the communes that started to spring up everywhere. I ended up back in The Haight in 68 and hooked up with Cliff who was the father of my son Jom. We had a little antique store on Page St. between Clayton and Cole.
