Post
by Lassen Forge » Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:49 pm
Hippies and Yippies ("youth in politics"), the 60's were trippy, you bet your sweet bippy!! And that's the truth. Blattttt.
It may be rice wine to you, but it's sake to me... oh no...
If you weren't here, you wouldn't know. If you were, you wouldn't remember. And we're not talking Beautiful Downtown Burbank, either. (tho the references are awfully fun.)
People living (literally) in the panhandle. Shucking change from the passers-by ("panhandling") to survive, to go to the corner grocery to grab some grub, going to the free clinic if you needed a 'cillin shot or if you were having a hard trime coming down, or if your brother was ODing or your sister said she felt like a broken typewriter... And, um, brother, can ya spare a doob? (ya have to ask?? What's this "selling" shit? Yiiii!) Or Port Wine. Whoo, wicked stuff, esp. for a little kid. Don't forget to take your vitamins... just remember, speed kills.
What else? The food place on the corner of, darn, I think it was Masonic. If you were starving, sometimes they'd look kindly on you. You betcha, now it's a yuppie brewery, high price, ug. . The Hallmark up the street where ya go for ribbon for your smith-corona (was still there 10 years ago, used to buy cheap fountain pens and moleskine notebooks), and the hardware store to get something to patch the hole you made in the wall, or a 25 watt lightbulb or a box of kitchen matches... or if you were well off, a hammock for the tree, or fuel for a coleman stove. You betcha... Luxury!!!
And the wall art. Oooh yeah. Wow. Nothing like the stuff today.
Everyone remembgers the summer of love ('67) but no one remembers the melee of '68, or '69. Things changed SO fast...
Now... it's a tourist trap down there. Ben and fucking Jerrys on the corner, $5 a cone. Capitalist Nightmare. Pigs... And people, yeesh, they go there, think they know, but they haven't a clue, think they're part of the whole movement with their $300 a night room and their touristy trap "experience" with the newly painted psychedelic storefronts and whatnot...
Oh save me. Like I said, there's a difference between having been there and *feeling* what it was, and trying to go there today and thinking it's what it was...
it's like going to the beach at Tahoe and thinking it's BRC of 1994. The past is gone, ne'er to be repeated, but by some, fondly remembered... Counting our blessings, for what we saw, and what we did, and what we didn't.
Sorry if it sounds snarky, but it was the beginning, and the ending, and it was good. Say goodnight, Dick...
bb