 My name is Rebecca Nichols, and I want to welcome you, Virginia Resner, to the Haydee Ashbury Video Oral History Project, and we're really, really pleased that you're here. We'd love to know something about you and your life in San Francisco, as well as your involvement in the Haydee Ashbury and beyond. I know your friends call you Jenny. Jenny. Jenny. Okay. Sorry. It's Jenny. And your friends and family call you Jenny. Okay. So, Jenny, where were your parents from? My parents, Doty and Herb Resner, were born, each of them, in Cook County, Illinois, in Chicago. And their parents before them immigrated from Russia in the late 1800s. And then you were born. Yeah, but there's no sister. I was born in San Francisco in 1946. I'm the youngest of three. I have two older brothers, were two years apart. My father and mother came to California, I believe their families came to California in the late 1920s and settled in Southern California. It was in probably the late, they came in the mid-20s and it was in the late 20s that I know for certain that my father came to Northern California to Berkeley where he went to the University of California at Berkeley and graduated from there and then went on to Bolt Law School at Berkeley and graduated from Bolt Law in, I believe it was 1936 and it was around that time that he met my mother and they were married in, I believe probably around 19, I want to say 1939, it could have been a little earlier, well actually it could have been a little earlier. And my oldest brother, Hillel, who was known as Tom changed his name to Hillel in the 1960s in the Hague-Ashbury. Does that mean? Well, as far as I know, I was a little bit, I remember, confused when he did change his name. I thought, well, does that mean you're not the same brother? But he just explained to me that it was, I think it was somewhat of an epiphany for him to change his name. He had some sort of experience that compelled him to do so. And many thousand others became sunshine and rain drop. I have an older brother whose name is Bill, who is no longer alive, but the three of us were always very close ever since we were young and our mother died when we were quite young, all of us, in the early, mid-1950s and I suspect that that's probably what kept the three of us very close together. So we were primarily raised by our father who practiced law in San Francisco and who was a, I would characterize him as a liberal, classic liberal Jewish lawyer of his time. He was a member of a firebrand radical liberal group of lawyers during that period of time in San Francisco that were representing mostly people that were considered underdogs. My father was very active in the Longshoremen, fight for Longshoremen in the late 1930s. He was a labor lawyer and he was a maritime lawyer. He represented Harry Bridges, who was well known in the labor movement, who, Harry Bridges was a present guest in our home and lived in our home when we were young children in San Francisco often, the long periods of time. So he took his job beyond the office. Yes, yes, and so he was involved in liberal politics at the time and so my brothers and I were exposed early on to a liberal open-minded way of thinking and politics and we often were also encouraged to pursue those things that would contribute to the community or the culture that we lived in and to have a good time while you were doing it. It sounds a little wonderful, family. You were born in San Francisco and what hospital, do you know? Yeah, I was actually born in a hospital across town in Pacific Heights that is now Pacific Presbyterian Hospital, but at the time it was Stanford Hospital and in fact the building Lane Hall that I was born in is still there, it's one of the few buildings that's still standing. Wow. So you lived in San Francisco, you went to public school and high school, do you remember the names of your public school and high school? You went to Lowell. I went to Lowell High School for two years and then I transferred to a school located on the north side of town called Gallaudet, I graduated from Gallaudet. So you then were a teenager, you were going to school and where were you living at this time? At that time in the, around the 60s I was living in Pacific Heights. And your first memory of coming to or learning about the 8 Ashbury, do you have any memories of coming to the 8 Ashbury and getting involved, was it because of other friends you had or were you all coming or can you tell me a little about your beginnings with the 8 Ashbury? I think that I actually as I recall really didn't spend much time in the 8 Ashbury or pay much attention to it until my older brothers and some friends of theirs became involved and discovered the building itself which would have been a movie theater called The Hate Theater and my brothers and a couple of their friends found the building and they decided to develop it into, at that point it was vacant, it hadn't been occupied as a movie theater for many years and interestingly enough the film was owned by the Sproul family, the Robert Sproul family and I have a photograph on my wall at home of my father who was on the debate team at UC Berkeley in the 1930s with Robert Sproul in that photograph and so there was many occurrences, synchronistic occurrences that kept occurring in my life that connected everything. I guess I'm in the right place. My brothers had both been going to, or one of them had been going to State College and many of the people that were a few years older than I was came out of State College and into what was going on in the Hate Ashbury or into the psychedelic music movement at that time and so they came across the straight theater, they decided that they wanted to do a rock and roll theater but also not just rock and roll but what would be an environmental theater which would also include drama arts, children's theater and dance as well as rock and roll live music performances so they discovered this building, they set about leasing this building and then went on the set about on the argeous journey and figuring out how they were going to pay to renovate it and improve it to have it be a community setting. Was it called a straight theater? No, they named it the straight theater and that's something that I don't really know how they came upon that name. Exactly. Do you remember what was called before? It was called the Hate Theater. It was called a photo on the wall and I think that's before it became the straight theater. It's called the Hate Theater closed. Right. So the feature of that sign was the straight theater. Yes. And the marquee was never changed from hate to strange? No, it wasn't, I remember that. So your brother and his friends, they pretty much were the innovators and the creators of this idea to take on this project and make it happen. Your family's very close, I feel, brothers and you are what's going on here and getting excited by what's going on and that sort of encouraged you and brought you there. Do you feel contributed in any way, sweeping the floor, making a phone call, helping the rest in the restoration and helping that straight theater open and operate, do you feel? Right. Well, first of all, I guess I'd have to add just a little bit of history of what would draw me into it to begin with because my brothers and I were very close. Naturally I wanted to be where they were, especially if they were doing something that was exciting and productive and creative. Prior to that time, I had been introduced to psychedelics by one of my brothers and it was common during that period of time that if you were introduced to psychedelics that it would be by someone that was close to you or that was familiar with a psychedelic journey or journeying and so that was one place where it started also. So one of my brothers introduced me to cannabis when I was maybe 18 or 19 years old and so I was pretty much in that realm. I knew that if I was going to explore consciousness that I was in a safe parameter if I was with my brothers. Of course. And during that period of time, Bill Graham was already operating the Fillmore Auditorium for which many of us were attending performances that were going on there at Fillmore and Geary Street and also Chet Helms was operating the Avalon Ballroom. And I believe when the founders of the Strait Theatre, including my brothers, came along to do the Strait Theatre, their idea was not just to do another music venue but as I said before was to create an environmental theatre that served the community which was the Haydash Berry. They found the property in 1966 and went about trying to restore it and raising the money to do so and during that period of time I had gone to live in New York City in the West Village in June of 1966 and did not return to San Francisco until June of 1967 right when the Strait Theatre was scheduled to open. During that period of time they had had a very difficult conflict with the City Board Permit of Appeals in San Francisco was resistant in issuing the Strait Theatre a dance permit primarily because there was such an influx of young people into the Haydash Berry and the population had grown so significantly that the City was concerned that if they had another location where young people were flowing into that it was not going to be manageable and so they attempted to get a dance permit for which they were never issued and the way that the history books tell it is is that they came up with this brilliant idea whereby they would operate a dance school the Strait Theatre would be a dance school and not a dance hall so to speak and you did not require a dance permit in order to operate so the Strait opening in the summer of 1967 opened as a dance school with dance instructors being Anne Halpern, Jerry Garcia, Caitlin Huggins who had founded the Strait Theatre Dance Company and that was great fun I do somewhat recall that evening in the excitement of the opening and it was very colorful that's a way to get them in you were a dance teacher and well what was done is that dance cards were sold so like kind of a membership card so you had a dance card to the Strait Theatre and at the box office rather than selling tickets people got student ID cards right to to be a dance makes a lot a lot of sense because I was Bill Graham's archivist and he fought very hard for the Fillmore and he finally got a dance hall keeper's permit and he had fight the city because nobody under 16 was going to be allowed in so he basically changed the law allowing young people to come into venues that are under 16 and you get a stamp and you can't drink alcohol and there's a way to control it but and I'm so impressed knowing this is such a I've never heard this information is on on how they pulled it off and how they made it work and makes a lot of sense because I've been calling people and talking with them about the Strait and I've been hearing a lot about dance and now it makes a lot of sense unfortunately many of the publications and the stories that have been told about the Strait Theatre over the last 20 years are not accurate now and there's many published accounts that's why you're here and it's never quite been told the way it really happened or the way that it came down and in many instances the stories have been told by people that weren't even there exactly and so that's why it's extremely valuable to speak to those people who are actually operating the Strait Theatre and so you really get the true story of what be part of this oral history projects get first-hand information unfortunately as as I saw it during that period of time because it took the founders so long to raise the money and to actually structurally redo the entire internal environment of the theater as well as paint on the exterior that by the time they got open in the summer of 1967 they only had about six months left to really thrive because at that point the community really started to disintegrate and we moved out of the Strait Theatre at some point I guess it was yeah in 1968 but it was extremely difficult to operate it uh as I recall in the latter part of 1968 I remember the Strait closing I remember the street closing with the flatbed truck in the band playing and the streets were mob patient was mobbed with people and then the police would arrive at six o'clock or five o'clock and you needed to go and just like magic the front doors of the Strait Theatre would just swing open and whether it was psychedelics or kind of whatever it was people just alive on the music there was a place that was positive to move them into and every single time that happened the doors of the Strait were open if they weren't there I don't know where these young people would have been and dealing with the police and whatever it was a natural progression of getting off the street because the truck was on Schrader and hate and there you had the next block coal it was right there and was perfect and when the police would come and horses and sticks and the whole thing the positive vibe just continued those doors swing wide wide open with smiles and open hands the staff waiting to help organize the crowd and help protect them in a way now are you talking about the flatbed truck at the time the Grateful Dead was playing and they they plugged into the Strait Theatre right now I don't recall exactly when that occurred if that occurred in 1966 prior to the opening of the theater or if it happened the theater was opened at the time if it was after that if it occurred in 1967 quite frankly I don't recall I don't believe that I was here in San Francisco when that event occurred but shortly after the theater opened we had many events there both rock and roll music and groups playing and also had many plays that occurred there as well as Children's Dance Theater and Health and Came and presented dance programs. Kenneth Anger came to the theater and produced a play there whether it ever got completed or not I'm not sure there's a very interesting story that someone else will share with you about Kenneth Anger putting a hex on the straight thing which is quite interesting history and but while the time that I was there because I was the younger sister of the founders and there was some another younger sister who was also Connie Williams who was a younger sister of Reggie Williams we girls often got relegated to doing some of the really slimy grimy kind of cleanup jobs and so at the end of the day when everything was said and done at one o'clock in the morning we were the people that were cleaning up the lobby and cleaning up the bathrooms and and all the debris and at the end of the day and I remember helping dress the windows in the front of the theater with posters and things of that nature to advertise programs all of us kind of contributed to making sure that the handbills and the flyers and the posters would get distributed and I don't recall really spending a whole lot of time on the street itself as much as I was there was enough to do in the theater between programs and being sent out to run errands over to the hardware store to get something sure back and forth and getting ready for the next event sure that I I can remember tripping up and down hate straight right but I don't remember just hanging out right never really spending a lot of time just hanging out on the corner well it's your hard work kept it open and that's what it is never should have a letter in your hand I do I brought a piece of writing that my oldest brother Hillel wrote to me while I was living in New York City in 1966 and we were corresponding and I was writing home and letting everybody know how I was doing on my east coast adventure living in the west village and Hillel was writing me back and giving me periodic updates about how they were progressing with the development of the theater and this is really extraordinary here is a actual letterhead that has the straight theaters letterhead a letter that has a straight theaters letterhead on it that's amazing and it looks looks like it was printed today yes in such good condition and so they were very artistic and creative and they in fact were very businesslike believe it or not among all the madness and nuttiness that was going on they were doing sensible things like printing letterhead that's right becoming established anything anything in that letter not personal that maybe he's telling you what's going on yeah in fact there's a good portion of it that I'd like to share with you love to hear which is quite fun and revealing of what was going on at that point he says hi and it's spelled hig h which would would be the the greeting of the time and it says sorry for not writing for such a long time I just have a hard time getting down to it I read the letter you sent to bills and got a kick out of hearing that you're living on mcdougal street after hate street and sunset boulevard it's probably the craziest street in the country it used to be far the craziest but that was before everything went west hate street is getting completely out of hand and we're sitting right in the middle of it we're still not open but it still looks like we will be eventually people refuse to let the straight theater die two days ago we were sitting here waiting to be evicted when in walked a guy with 1200 dollars and bailed us out so our rent and bills are paid once again sixth month in a row and we sit in our empty theater with far out walls still waiting for a dance floor to materialize our plans which had to be revised to include a sprinkler system under the floor will be sent back to the building department this week and then all we will need is three to five thousand dollars to start building this has been the hang up for the past few months getting enough bread to do the most essential thing now however it looks like we'll probably finally be getting it the same cat who gave us the 1200 dollars is going to help us promote a huge trips festival san francisco love festival in la with the grateful dead quicksilver and probably possibly the seeds if we have good publicity and luck we could net as much as ten thousand dollars which we will then put back into the theater at the same time while promoting the show it appears our new found investor is going to help us going on get us going on the floor so pray and wish us good luck everybody here is grooving and sends their love well i gotta go and see our rock and roll blue don't know if you heard that bill and i are managing a band called the electric jungle they're not so bad hopefully we'll earn some money with them before the theater opens that's beautiful it's a time capsule yeah and i thought it was really moving it's really moving and so you can see by the tone and the content of his letter that they were truly going hand to mouth in trying to get the theater no it's wonderful yeah and so um no i mean and you know we did have a time capsule which we had intended to put in the ground after the structure was torn down um in when was that structure torn down in the early 90s right and we had a party and everybody came and brought things to put into the capsule and but we never got the the capsule actually um but the capsule was was a arc lamp that came out of the michael brothers theater on feral street here in san francisco big lamp arc lamp and it opened up and it it had it was made out of i don't know what it was made of steel maybe it opened up and you're able to put things in it and so we collected a lot of things put in it well we paint we had a party we painted it and we collected all of the paraphernalia put inside it and then we never did um do anything with it we didn't get it into the ground so where is it well it sat in my garden is an art object for many years and then there was an auction at butterfields about seven or eight years ago at butterfields auction house here in san francisco where money was being raised for the haydash very medical clinic and for other community programs right so we collectively decided to take the time capsule and put it into the auction with some of its contents and it was purchased by a man who lives in northern marin very very interesting uh from what i understand there are time capsules that people have dug and you know built all over the place and we just they just recently had a ceremony where they had towards the end of the 60s buried the the symbol of the hippie in bonavista park and everybody has been looking for a few years where was it we've just turned up to the research it was bonavista park and uh this last sunday they had a big ceremony there where they took a tablespoon of dirt and had a big parade to city hall sprinkled it on city hall steps and supposed to be the to bringing back the life of the hippie in the haydash very you know so it's a little bit of everything um uh i would love to just bring you to the present a little bit and you're a wonderful spirit great energy and we've shared so much i noticed that you've given an award for the drug policy alliance and a lot of your working has been in human rights and the drug war and you give me a two minute three minutes about this i would love to know about this i've been involved in drug policy reform uh for the last over 10 years since the early 1990s and i originally became involved in what federal sentencing reform of mandatory minimum sentencing reform after a close friend of mine had been sentenced to a uh five-year sentence for um through uh drug distribution and was sent to federal prison and then as a result of that i got involved in the reform of the sentencing laws and um through that became involved with many prisoners of the drug war that were serving very long sentences sometimes up to 20 years more than somebody committing murder yes it's not because of the federal laws the the drug laws are based on the type of drug and the weight of the drug and so during the 1990s for instance there was a lot of dead heads that were rounded up at date for grad date for grateful dad concerts and they were busted because they had lsd with them that was on a piece of paper and the feds would weigh the paper and that translated into a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence and so so thousands of people in the 1990s went to federal prisons for long periods of time and among that were women were a very high count in that because they were in relationships with boyfriends or husbands or friends that were trafficking in drugs and the way the laws work that basically um kind of the federal government managed to codify those drugs yes i thought crime you know if you knew about it then you'd become subject to conspiracy statutes and so i saw this tremendous travesty being created and i became involved in trying to reform the laws i met other reformers and we went forward through the 1990s and uh created an exhibit about these um inequities and created a book called Shattered Lives Portraits of America Just a Drug War and and from that work um i with others was honored in 2000 with the robert randall award for citizen action which was an award which basically the message of it is doing work for making democracy work exactly exactly yeah and my work continues with that today i'm active in medical marijuana reform give a website give a website i have a website that i'm that's called human rights in the drug war human rights at human rights in the drug war it's hr 95 i sit on the board is the president of the board of green aid the medical marijuana legal defense and education fund which is another website which is www dot green slash aid dot com i've uh i'm active in the medical marijuana community it's a healing and a healing and a healing so you're still active in the community yes uh trying to make change yes i have things be fair and it comes out of a whole long life and absolutely we want to thank you so much for being here we will be inviting you back again gather your papers and your notes um you've been very uh opened up a lot of doors and brought us back to a period where we're all searching and trying to get first aid information um and we just thank you so much for caring and being here and being part of this so hopefully someone watching this in the future can be inspired but with people have done what they can do so thank you so much you're welcome thank you for inviting me