It was more than a neighborhood, this Haight Ashbury, it was an urban starship, Jefferson, with a cast of characters that included hippies, yippies, Hells Angel's, Diggers, musicians, artists, seekers and searchers. Peace, Love and Spare Change became the battle cry of the generation in search of itself. If the Beat Generation was geriatric, getting old and gray, Haight Ashbury hit the scene like a tie dyed dose of Grecian Formula.
The young sat on the concrete streets along Haight Street like Stoned-henge rows of ancient Aku-Aku guardians in faded jeans ready to commit statuatory rape on infidels, with Dorian Grey young faces son to fade and and age with reality. but starting off fresh, but soon to get stale begging for alms for the poor, a real Hunchback of Notre Dame scene, beggars and jesters, palms out, plaintive cries of "Spare change? Spare change?" It was the money mantra of the pedestrian panhandler in an excruciating effort to obtain a flow of income for food, rent, drugs, booze, sex, all of the above for the below legal aged blue eyed former innocents formerly from the midwest and points rectangular like Kansas and Iowa, toy action figures really in black and white and in neat little square boxes stacked neatly in the garage on the shelf along with tools, toys and Turtle Wax cans. The Haight became a cabaret and combo costume ball in a crowded back alley bazaar in Tunisia with baskets and dead chickens hanging on hooks and hookers hanging out with prisoners listening to scratchy recordings of Eric Burdon singing a salutatory ode to worship San Francisco nights, while Scott McKenzie penned the anthem of the Aquarians, with the youth of America flamboyantly festooned with a colorful cornucopia of flowers taking root in their psyche, not to mention, their hair.
The acid was a mirror reflection, and mixed with mescaline and smoke, you could be the Prince of Araby or Captain Hook by crook, or a whole tribe of lost boys doing Wendy in the jungle after she finished with seven dwarves. The purple hazed and double dazed days were days of wine and roses, underwater gardens of strange fishes tended to by Joe, from the country, and all the heat was canned, but survival, like creativity is the mother of invention, so fug it, said Col. Ed Saunders. Mr. Hoffman's first bicycle ride on acid, made Sandoz pharmaceuticals suitable for the subterraneans, while Owsley Stanley became the Henry Ford of colorful dreams on the streets. Orange Wedge, Purple Double Dome, Strawberry, it was all about colors and perception, just ask Jim, and the literary hustler Huxley.
The Haight became a packed Turkish prison cell. No room to move, Greyline sightseeing eye-dog buses barked and chased cars through the social excrement of the enclave, cameras snapping photo's. semi-automatic as fast as a National Guardsman could shoot students down on the commons at Kent State, while tossing tear gas cannisters. Sailors and soldiers, on leave, (mostly of their senses!) came down at night to find hump happy hippie chicks without politics, to screw, and for an appetizer, beat up a longhair or two not wearing the uniform of the uniformity of conformity of the country. Merle Haggards all. Sometimes the military would clash with the Angels, no contest, boys, the Angels scored big in every game. Visitors zero. The hard core pushers jackknifed trucks and elbowed their way into the fabric, a wine stain on carpet, while mental illness and poisoned dope bad trips carved a a scene of R.P. McMurphy meeting Alex and his Droogies at Lobotomyland. The Haight had lost it's shine, it's armor of surrealness, transforming into something, everything, sinister, and by summers demise, Hip Was Dead....they even buried him/her/it with a precision procession down the throng filled Haight thoroughfare.
Lyndon Johnson had proclaimed The Great Society complete with social reform and welfare programs aplenty, however, in the Haight a group called the Diggers had declared The Great Un-society. They put on free feeds in the Panhandle during the week for the local resident weed whackers and foods such as rice and beans were elevated to the status of Haight haute cuisine. The Diggers also operated The Free Store on Cole Street. Downstairs were blue jeans and field jackets of every style and size and on the mezzanine balcony were shelf after shelf of books and magazines that resembled an underground version of the Library of Congress...nothing in the store was for sale..it was all absolutely FREE!!
If bad drugs were circulating in the circulatory system, there was free medical help from the Diggers. (This concept eventually manifested itself into the Free Clinic run by Dr. Joel who knew the value of thorazine to combat a bad acid trip. It was the emergency jake brake on a runaway 18 wheel nightmare) Every new denizen in denim to the Haight could go to the Free Store and pick up a field jacket and hiking boots (I did) and free cigarettes, magazines, books, pants, shirts and socks or just lounge on the mezzanine level and read or convo with others.
The Diggers were formed from the San Francisco Mime Troupe, yes, mimes who combined street theatrics and antics, guerrilla theater and socialism with a purpose and a sense of humor and it all came about because of those damned lovable mimes….they truly believed that action truly does speak louder than words.
When Diggers Attack (Part Two) by Mike Marino Just who hell were these San Francisco Haight Ashbury free store free free free mime-assed Diggers anyway? They did NOT emerge and converge from another dimension of space and time from some Rod Serling television drama, or arrive after traversing a Gene Roddenberry worm-hole in space. They were NOT a holy hallucination from a planet of a raving intellectual race of Greek philosophizing Sophocles types who spouted sophisms from the proscenium of a lysergic lyceum.
The Diggers were NOT any of the above. What they WERE however, in fact, not fiction, were based on a solid rock of Gibralter foundation of social philosophy espoused by Henry David Thoreau and the social experimentation of a little known group of Socialist Robin Hoods and Friar Tucks who roamed the Sherwood Forest of the British social infrastructure in the mid-17th Century.
The original British Diggers had a vision of a societal mandala composed of concepts completely FREE of private property ownership and the shackles imposed by the confining economic constraints of buying and selling which shackled the lower classes of the British class system and divided the “haves” from the “have nots” It was a socialist concept applauded and adopted by among others, the sarcastically caustic George Bernard Shaw and futurist author H.G. Wells.
There was also the influence of H. D. Thoreau, the Wonderful Wizard of Walden who was a maximum minimalist that managed to inject the modern Diggers with a philosophical hot shot. Combine this rich raw compost of historic precedents with the emerging Civil Rights protests and growing Anti-War Movements along with the emergence of the youth counter-culture which would culminate and collide at the crossroads of Haight and Ashbury. The time was perfect and the stage was set for a collision of social experimentation and art that would define FREE as a group of politico-artistico-fantastico-anarchists with penchant for street theatrics known as the San Francisco Mime Troupe emerged from their cocoon of street theater and took flight as “The Diggers!
To fully understand the Haight Ashbury Diggers one has to explore it’s immaculate conception. This merry group of activist mimes was formed in 1959 on the cusp of the Sixties as a medium is the message project of Mime Messiah R. G. Davis where he and other kindred kin in spirit could explore divergent artistic concepts that would soon culminate in a convergence at a confluence of art and politics. Their brand of street theater at first was pure mime-ology with the trapped in a box Marceau influenced cubicle cubism with silent soliloquys punctuating the performance visually with a visceral explosion of thought-pictures.
As the Sixties ascended transcending from the morals and chains of the Fifties, the Mime Troupe adopted the 16th Century Italian format of the Commedia dell’Arte which utilized masked antagonists and protagonists and was more “Night at the Improv” where Mort Sahl Meets Robin Williams if you can fathom that image and level of high energy performance.
The Troupes performances ignited altercations with law enforcement and brought awareness and notable notoriety to their growing infamous fame and street power to the people.
As Haight Ashbury became the magnetic Mecca of marijuana and all things psychedelic the former Mime Troupe, now called Diggers, added the distribution of free food and goods along with street theater and “happenings” The Diggers would write up these events to promote them in advance along with editorials with a manifesto air to them on leaflets and broadsheets that were passed out up and down Haight Street. These are part and parcel today of the collections of the Digger Papers.
The Digger goal was Thoreauian simple...to create a Free City through direct activities with an anarchist flair and flame to them, combined with a brand of social activism projects that manifested themselves in the creation of the Free Store, Free Medical help, Free Art, Free Music and the Free Feeds in the Panhandle every afternoon. They were also the “first responders” in the counter-culture to espouse the cerebral celebratory celebrations of summer solstices as sexy, and to celebrate equally, the equinoxes. Don’t knock the equinox! The Diggers were also the Haight Ashbury Project Run-a-way Runway for Tie Dye fashion statements.
The Diggers were utopian usurpers to the crown in mime makeup in a neighborhood of Hells Angels and Motorcycle Ritchies, coyotes named Peter, magic men, mad men, and mayhem in a matrix of runaways, speed freaks, LSD, mescaline, grass, lava lamps, patchouli incense, the Psychedelic Shoppe, Tracy Donuts, 1090 Page Street, the Panhandle, Golden Gate Park, Park Station Cop Shop, mellow yellow, purple hazed and double dazed days dazed in a daze petting the Family Dog who was man's best friend, and Bill was no graham cracker while Tracy's Donuts on Haight Street just a half block west of Ashbury was open into the wee smalls to accommodate the homeless, the late night trippers, talkers, nodders and rappers..all singing along to the jukebox in the corner that always seemed to be playing Bob Dylans EVERYBODY MUST GET STONED!!
Finally, no trip to the Haight would be complete without a visit to 1535 Haight Street, site of the Psychedelic Shop..The Grandfather of All Head Shops. Black lights, posters and enough patchoulie incense to fill the Taj Majal were its hallmarks. Sitar music greeted you as you entered the shop and zig zagged your way to the back of the shop where the beads parted and you gained entry to the womb room that contained the best poster art on the planet. Black lights added ambience and low, murmured WOWS and FAROUTS punctuated the air.The corner of Haight and Ashbury is symbolic of not only a particular summer but of a changing of the guard...an elevated social questioning and inner search. It is also the location where on October 6, 1967 it all ended with a Digger procession that proclaimed The Death of Hip.
The Haight has long faded like an old comfortable pair of 501’s. What remains is a grotesque knock-off of wannabes and who never weres. The Diggers and hippies have left the auditorium. Today you can still buy a tie dyed shirt..pick up a Jerry Garcia bumper sticker and on occasion the cries of Spare Change still ring out, but when visiting the Haight leave the flowers in your hair at home and bring your checkbook instead. Plenty of shopping and dining to do at some unique stores and shops not found elsewhere in the city. Peace and Love have been replaced by commercialism, capitalism and commerce, but every now and then coming from some second floor bay window you can hear a CD blasting out a rendition of The Dead's CASEY JONES!! Also, make sure you have a pocketful of spare coins..some things never change. The Diggers are long gone...and damn it...The Haight ain’t FREE anymore!