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Edited on Sat Mar-05-05 04:15 PM by LaPera
be with the people asleep and under control and the media keeping them that way. Ahh, but this is my San Francisco, the one I grew up in and remember!!! "The 1967 Peace March
We took the old electric streetcar from Hayes Street to begin the march somewhere downtown, near Market Street. The streetcar was full of crazy hippies passing marijuana joints from person to person as we headed toward our destination. Everyone took a toke – and much to my amazement – no one seemed to care. At the start of the march I saw every type of person imaginable. Not just the long-haired hippies and students that I expected, but Quakers, Orthodox Jews, average-looking working-class types, well-dressed business people, and families with young kids. There were people of all ages – some looked just like my parents. We were all there with a unity of purpose, and we marched together through the city, holding hands and chanting: “No more war! No more war! No more war!”
There were people marching as far behind me as I could see, and as far in front of me as I could see. It was an ocean of people moving peacefully and happily together through the cool, breezy streets of San Francisco, with the wide eyes of the old Victorian buildings watching in surprise. What an amazing experience! More than a peace march, or protest, it was a celebration. As a nation we were on the verge of a momentous awakening. It was as though we had just discovered a truth that had been kept from us: We were huge in number, united in mind and spirit, our cause was just and we were determined to make our voice heard! We were no longer going to blindly send us youth off to foreign lands to be slaughtered like sheep. We wanted LBJ out of the White House and our troops out of Vietnam. As we exercised our right of free speech and assembly, the FBI was busy photographing us (and, I assume, labeling us as radicals and communist sympathizers).
The march ended with a rally in Kezar Statium. And there, Dr. Benjamin Spock, every mother’s favorite baby doctor and advisor, spoke out against the war, and those in power. I couldn’t believe he could get away with the statements he made. He seemed so “establishment”. Other people, like Jane Fonda and Dick Gregory who were known for their “radical” views, were taking a stand against the war, but there was nothing “radical” about Dr. Spock. And yet, there he was, giving an enthusiastic speech against the war that was not only accepted, but cheered and encouraged by this eclectic crowd of revelers.
In one magical epiphany, I realized that there was a lot more to my world than the small town I had grown up in. I was part of a huge collective called the human race. And, as Country Joe & the Fishs' deafening guitars sent shivers up and down my spine, I felt as though everyone around me felt the same way. For this brief moment, there was hope and love and caring flowing out, from one person into another, in an enormous outpouring of joy and good will. It was a defining moment in my life.
The Avalon Ballroom
Night was falling when the rally ended. Feeling very good and totally hyped on the love and anti-war experience, we decided to go to the Avalon Ballroom. The Avalon was an old Victorian ballroom on the corner of Sutter and Van Ness. It was managed by a group of hippies known as “The Family Dog”. The Avalon was the hippie’s answer to Bill Graham’s famous Fillmore. While the Fillmore had a slick leatheresque tuck-and-roll Tijuana-type interior, the Avalon had the classic decor of an authentic Victorian Ballroom – which it was.
In our stoned search for the Avalon, we picked up hitchhikers heading in the same general direction. They not only gave showed us how to get there, but offered up a little mixing bowl and invited us to sample its contents. “A little dab will do you,” they joked, sounding like a 1950’s hair cream commercial. The mixture looked like cookie dough but tasted strange. They laughed and explained that they made it by cutting LSD with mother’s milk. As the mixture started taking affect, I wondered, “Does my breath smell like mother’s milk?” and “Who are the mothers that provided the milk?” Visions of mothers donating their milk kept running comically through our heads the rest of the night, causing eruptions of spontaneous laughter.
Waiting in line to pay for my entrance into the Avalon Ballroom, I felt like a kid waiting for an “E-ticket” ride at Disneyland. Everyone was wearing a smile that wouldn’t go away – and a serious case of giggles rippled through the line every couple minutes. The evening was funny, and exciting, and magically dreamlike.
We paid our money and entered into a parlor filled with old Victorian velvet couches and lamps that illuminated a magic persian rug. There were people sitting there in Victorian attire. Men had on top hats. Women wore Victorian dresses and hats. Everyone seemed friendly and happily welcomed us. On the other side of the parlor, we passed through an arched doorway into the darkened ballroom.
The room was swirling in squiggly water-colored-bubbles that squished in time to the beat of the music before they broke up into alphabet soup patterns and headed into the darkness of outer space. And somewhere in the midst of the flashing lights and colors were the bands. That night’s entertainment opened with the Steve Miller Blues Band, followed by Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company, and the Doors closing – all for our $3.50 admission! Of course, we didn’t know at the time that we were watching history in the making – for us, it was just a big dizzy party night!
The Steve Miller Blues Band had already started when we floated in. They seemed to emanate a droning wall of sound from the corner stage. I really couldn’t figure out who Steve Miller (later known as the Space Cowboy) was, but I think he was pounding on the drums and singing. Everyone’s faces seemed obscured by the light show. Steve Miller hadn’t yet developed the distinctive voice that would later define his style. It was just the pounding drums and the electric guitar that made us ever-conscious of his presence.
Big Brother & the Holding Company came up next. Their electric guitars pierced the night air like knives through the rainbow butter of our imaginations. They were great. All the band members had really long hair – longer than I had ever seen on guys. Their hair flopped like big dog-ears as they jerked their heads to the music. Their ears seemed to grow larger and longer when they sang about watching Huckleberry Hound on TV. It was so funny to me. Janis Joplin screamed and wailed like a cat getting its ears pinched, her raspy, blues-driven voice somewhat mellowed by the floppy-eared band accompanying her. They all seemed to be having a great time on stage. Janis, not yet famous, seemed really happy. It was as if they were at a big party – and that feeling spilled over into the audience. We were all laughing and dancing as though we were part of their party as well.
When the Doors came on stage, and played “Break on Thru to the Other Side” someone grabbed my hand and yanked me back out onto the dance floor. I was gone, totally immersed in the rhythm, dancing like an Indian amongst my tribesmen whose anti-war paint glowed florescent in the black light. A group of dancers pulled us into a snake dance that looped and wound its way around through the room like an Indian Pow-Wow. Everyone danced, even to the Doors “The End”, which stretched on for an eternity. Jim Morrison was singing with his back to the crowd. Maybe he didn’t like the squiggly lights, or maybe he had a case of the giggles, too, but he faced away from us and sang, his haunting voice filling the room. I’d never heard a song like “The End” before. It seemed to go on forever, yet it had a strange and exotic appeal. As Morrison sang “Ride the snake, to the lake, the ancient lake,” the light show produced images of an undulating lake moving up and down to the music, and we in the snake dance rode our way to the lake. We connected fully with the strange music as we traveled through time and space -- riding “to the lake, the ancient lake . . .”http://www.boomer-books.com/san-francisco-adventure/avalon-ballroom-san-francisco-experience.htm |
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