 And Frazier, the founder of Hope and Beyond. Ron, I heard you were born and raised in the San Francisco Haydash Berry. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, I was born in San Francisco. Oh, okay. Right. I did live in the Haydash Berry from 74. I moved in to Haydash Berry at 211 Downey Street. That's up the hill here. And in those days, this was a quiet little village. Haydash Berry was a beautiful place. A little mama Italian restaurant. She ran it. She was a widow. We used to go in there for $1.25 with five course meal. I mean, those were the days. So I can say that as far as I'm concerned, Haydash Berry really is at the heart of the city. The evolution into the 60s. The evolution into the 60s. That was an easy transition because I used to hang out in North Beach. In North Beach, everything happened. Jazz, parties, you know, gallons of wine and other things made a party night of it in North Beach. A lot of those folks kind of moved over to the Haydash Berry and it was a quiet city. I think they were called beatniks at that time. Then things kind of evolved and they became kind of hippified, you know, hippies came into it. Then the flower in your hair, the whole evolution was there. It was fantastic. I mean, you couldn't walk down the street without touching someone and there was no way on Hayd Street you could drive a car. That's how fantastic it was. You know, but I have to say that the party mood led into other things. People from different areas, different kinds of pleasures that led into dark sides came into play. But Haydash Berry is still here today. What it has and what it contributes, you're not going to find anywhere else in the globe. It sustains itself. Exactly. So tell us more about Hope and Beyond. Hope and Beyond is an evolution from Summer of Love International, like Billy McCarthy, a lot of other people, all volunteered. We did a series of Summer of Love events actually for the food bank. And we raised over a period of, I think it was a year and a half, over 200,000 pounds of food for the food bank. And I think on the 20th anniversary of the Summer of Love, the figure was, I think it was 20 tons of food. Right. Which was a lot of food for the food bank. Now the point being that it's the kind of thing that started in the 60s, the evolution of the Summer of Love concerts, they were carried out by a whole group of volunteers who were natives and people who came across country, came from all over the world to be a part of these events. They're still going on, but not in the same way every year, they're usually anniversary events. Right. But going back to that, when I was here in the Summer of Love period, early Iran actually in Haydash Berry, I was involved in theaters. We had a few theaters in San Francisco, and our people that worked in shows like The Fantastics, which had a six year run in San Francisco, I think it closed close to 40 years in New York. The crew would come on over here and they would go to the Strait Theater on Hayd Street on Saturdays to perform for the kids who didn't have an opportunity to see theater. Like many, many groups had. That was really a wonderful time. Even Bill Graham, the Bill Graham organization they involved, Bill used to call our organization for promotional hints and leads in for advertising because he was doing theater in the park. Was it at the Mime Troop at that time? Right. They're still going to Mime Troop? I don't remember. Yeah, they are. It was Ronnie someone that was running it at that time. There is so much about San Francisco that leads in and folds out from the hate. North Beach was a character that kind of helped the hate evolve in the hippie era. And that character, people like Eric Nord, people that started North Beach festivals there, people that I worked with like Arthur Meyer, who was the director for a lot of the shows here, all that evolution of creativity that came out of North Beach, molded it into the hate Ashbury is in part what helped people who came here to feel good. The young artists out in the Bay Area, the Jerry Garcia's, the Gray Slakes, all the people who kind of meld into the time made what that was. And people say, wow, you're thinking in the past or it's old. It isn't. It's all heart space. That's all it's about. It's simple human heart space and that evolution works. I'd love to hear more about the straight theater. I was told there were breakfasts, there were events and things. What was the straight theater as far as community wanted? Well, the straight theater. I mean, I actually went there and, you know, see whatever kind of movies. I don't know if they were first run or not. I showed movies. I showed movies, right. And that's why they didn't show early matinees on the weekends. And that's how the theater thing started where people would come in from various theaters in the city and put on the programs for basically youth in the Bay Area that weren't accustomed to theater. And subsequently there were all sorts of community events that were allowed to take place there. And I believe that was owned by the United Artists Theater Circuit, which was Marshall Navy who had Winterland and all the other places that are involved. In our organization we were in partnership personally with Marshall Navy on a lot of theater productions. So there was an interaction from all strata of life in San Francisco. There was a time when that interaction melded together and made and showed what the city that can do was. And that was the heart. Were you ever there? Did you ever see light shows? Was there ever music happening there? Because I heard they used to have music as well. They eventually evolved into certain music after the film closed down. Then it went through a period that had some light shows and some music events there. I don't think I followed that that much at that time. I was involved in the theater a bit into the film industry. We worked with people at that time who were well known today like Sherri Lansing and people like that. You just get busy. And I evolved away from the hate-ass berry when the dark scene kind of melded in. And now that they come back, it's in a sense now as if you're walking in the same shoes you did in the 60s. It's the flavors different. People are a little different with a few different opinions about things. But the space still there. When you say the dark side, when did that come about? My memories are as far as the dates, I don't know. But I think the whole evolution from the highest point to the dark side took about 18 months to a couple of years. Because the dark side was when outside sources, merchants of dark drugs came in to sell. And that's what happened. And because the people had an innocence of communication, a kind of interaction that actually spirits me today to the projects I'm involved in. That's why I brought in a poster from the Soviet American Peace Walk. And that poster represents the kind of spirit that we're talking about. And that spirit was an openness. And that represented over 200 citizens from the Soviet Union who walked and bussed across the United States, who lived with, ate with, talked with, fought with in the fun way, had a good time with American citizens, saw shopping centers, saw that people could evolve and discuss the matter. And went with it in such a way, well, here it is, somebody put it right in my hand. There's the commercial folks. Give with this spirit, give with this understanding. This is the kind of thing that took place. This was the summer of love in global essence. This is what made the Soviet people understand the kind of heart space that Americans have. There was no other scene like this anywhere else. Can you imagine taking the evil empire to the quote, the evil empire and interact like, the interrelationship of their people coming together, inspiring their governments. Now, this couldn't have happened. I've got to be frank. This couldn't have happened if you didn't have an American hierarchical government agreeing with the Soviet government that, okay, let's find a way to do something. So it was at a time when the leadership at least was conscious enough to let the people get together. And that getting together evolved into one year after this, the fall of the Soviet Union. And it wasn't the fall of the people. It was the change of consciousness, the change of government and the evolution. Hey, we're all still working today. There's no perfect government. There's no perfect human being except those who are simply evolved to care. And that's what it's about. Anyway, that was a good time, too. That's right. Where did that take place in San Francisco? Well, that took place in a place that I just loved, and now they're remodeling it, but it'll take a bit, is that's the band shell music concourse area of Golden Gate Park. Now, we had other events that went to the Polo Field, which is a grander area, but not near as charming. Right. The band shell. Now, the coincidence of this, there was a young girl named Sita, Sita Spreckles, that had traveled with some of the Soviet performance that we had here. And coincidentally, when I asked her to come on stage, she said, oh, my grandmother built this. So that kind of shows you that evolution on an international level of what has taken place in San Francisco. You know, my prejudicial attitude for the city goes way back. I was born in the city. My uncle was the captain of the port in the city, so I got to see a lot of things and saw people. And I liked the international flavor of the city. It still exists. Lot of changes, physical changes. The city, I think, is a little bit overpriced for humanity's sake. So do we all. That's something that can be worked. That'll evolve. Things will come to a point where they can relax a little bit. I think the current administration and government seems to be doing the best job that you can do trying to make things work. There's never going to be an agreement with government. But unless we get to the point of interacting with people, communicating with people, you're not going to have the kind of harmony that took place in 1967 in San Francisco. Exactly. I have a question. It seemed like every generation had its search for love and hope and all of this. And then things happened and light, the dark came into the hate. There was always that, the change things. There was a result. And I know you're the founder of the organization Hope and Beyond. I'd like to know a little bit about that because I believe that supporting public awareness for young people on the issues of AIDS and the problems of AIDS. Hope and Beyond actually started with the initiative of Program with Artists for Humanity. It's another organization that I've been involved in in programming. And we did an event, a year after we did an event in the city hall where the children as teachers of peace. And that kind of allowed me because there were children from 33 countries and that was a great interaction. And so that was in 1985. So in 1986, we produced the Artists for Humanity Children's International Awards and that was under the banner of Hope and Beyond. Now obviously the concept is hope. There's always an opportunity. There's always a way to go with hope. Beyond means you're going to get where you're focusing. You know you can do it. You've got the hope, you've got the energy and that spirit carries you beyond to some success. Well, Hope and Beyond in later years, through the 90s, we worked on Global Garden Project. And Global Garden Projects was part of the Hope and Beyond team. But we were focusing on the bioaccumulation. That means the body burden of toxic chemicals that most all of us, not all of us have. And in that time period, focusing on that, I got a report from World Health just by calling Geneva and talking to people and they were telling me, well the highest rates of breast cancer are in Marin County on the globe and a place in San Francisco called Hunter's Point Shipyard. Now those high rates of breast cancer when I went out to talk to the community, General Hospital, Marin Hospital, no one seemed to know that such a figure and such a statistic existed. So I went through maybe a 10-year battle more or less of fighting that and looking at military bases and because they were going through closure and supposed cleanup, which meant frankly a little bit of cover-up literally. Take a toxic site, they say it's a dump site that couldn't get licensed today and cover it and then say it's containing control. I'm not even talking about the groundwater and the leachate and everything out coming out of it and traveling out to the San Francisco Bay. There are a lot of issues I don't want to get on that now because if I do, that's a whole campaign I would be driven to and could never stop. But hoping beyond today in that looking at toxic chemicals, we realized that the transgenerational effect from mother to child chemicals are a direct causation to our next generation and in talking with people and seeing the pandemic of AIDS we realized that the same kind of transitional effect took place except that AIDS unfortunately is a character like chemicals. It may stay in the body for 20 years before there's a causation of cancer from a chemical. AIDS can go unknown and it's HIV stage for up to 10 years plus without symptoms which would carry a person to go in and get tested. So when you imagine that you have young people coming out that become sexually active at younger and younger ages who may not even have a symptom before they're 25 years old who may have been in some contact with any number of other young people who in turn may have been in some contact with any number of young people you can see the potential the potential in India which is a place that we focus on for students so that students can interact in English and hope and beyond is a 501C3 non-profit educational organization and what it primarily does is evolve young people in experiential service involve them in activities that bring them learning through CERDS so that's called service learning so that's basically the program but we're talking about AIDS we're talking about India becoming the number one nation with AIDS there's a lot going on there they have no idea there as we have no idea here how many people really are infected with HIV AIDS there's no way to tell until a person is tested they have new tests now that they take oral fluid 20 minutes they'll see a result if they show up as having an antibody of the HIV now that is only half the challenge the other half of course is the treatment available for that person to catch ahold of that take the medication and from that evolve with some sort of quality of life rather than going frankly down the toilet of disease amazing I'm really curious that the city of San Francisco areas like north beach and hate Ashbury especially where children come young people come from all over the world do you get support do you find the community raising public awareness to young people on prevention do you get support is it a fight here this is San Francisco now for the world they think in a sense San Francisco was one of the origins of the disease of course it isn't and hadn't been those origins are african and they have to do with possible human interaction that may or may not have been purely by nature or by man's folly those are questions that are still left open San Francisco has excellent programs Dr. Murph Silverman Dr. Murph Silverman was here who was the head of the health department at one time who became the head of AMFAR the AIDS organization they helped to initiate many programs San Francisco has beautiful programs the problem is not are there programs the problem is apathy the problem is a young person or an adult not believing because of their strength and their character and their social involvement that they can contract the disease apathy is the danger it is basically the walking skeleton and that's where the problem is now that's why service learning is so important because amongst young people they get involved, they learn and they can bring that program back but that is a small margin because you're reaching the proactive young person what is needed are artists people who get out there models people who are known people who are appreciated and that's the main line is the entertainment industry and if those people can get back on it stay on it and drum into what they will talk about be responsible, leave a legacy that legacy is for young people to lose the apathy become conscious and interact in consciousness because this is not just a disease this is a pandemic a global epidemic that has a hidden factor that will eat your life away in 10 years if you're not tested or received treatment and touching on that I heard that you were putting on a show or co-producing a show in India about AIDS awareness in October is that so yes and what that is about is we're interacting with health organizations with the health ministry with certain political and social ends to bring about the result of testing consciousness for interacting Indian and American students and bringing it to the public forum so that there is a greater consciousness because of the events, the interaction whereas the child becomes the teacher almost biblical in a sense but it's there it will accomplish a great deal with the support of artists the only way you can get media is to get personality in front of them you can't drive the press on old stories and AIDS is an old story that continues is hidden and will have devastating results without action well I'm curious in India what is the education level at this point the government is doing everything it can it's been given a lot of money there are beautiful organizations there they are reaching people in India a wife who feels that she may have contracted it from a traveling husband as a metaphor towards it going to a clinic alone can cause a stigma and a disruption in the family going to to receive treatment in a public forum can cause a stigma and a reaction within the family that's why the beauty of the new tests the beauty of the new tests are you can take it you don't need a lab you'll get a result it's portable you can be anywhere you can be in a home you can be in a forest you don't have to be in a medical clinic you don't have to walk through the front door you can find out you can have an answer and you can appreciate your lives and the lives of others and it's out in the market right now it's not so publicly it's out in the market and our people students have raised funds to buy some and I'm hammering and pulling corporations hammering and pulling the manufacturer to supply it so that we can reach a goal of one million plus test units that we can help interact with our brothers and sisters in India I heard you were going to go into that event maybe you give them out to the crowd the event will be superseded by smaller health events drop oh that's fine I keep music you were saying something about music making it more less of a stigma by the education of the young people somehow no okay one two three four we will have the tests put out to health care facilities health care workers will have this test in advance of the October 2nd event which incidentally is a great date it's Mahatma Gandhi's birthday and it will be a national holiday and we expect to run up our flag on that national holiday and the Indian government is very concerned about this they're very aware they know that there are national health reports and international reports that say that India will have the number one cases of AIDS within this decade now they know they have five million plus known cases that means someone who's walked in the door to be reported or tested that doesn't mean anything when you got one billion people and you've got how many young people in the one billion you've got 600 million people who could be susceptible to it because they're sexually active plus so when we go in there from hoping beyond and we talk about hoping beyond one million plus that's because that's our goal and drive to bring one million units in but it is an interaction it is a working together it's a people to people process and for students peer to peer that's the program raise awareness involve people and as played and the conscious will come forward who will help bring the media and help keep the media focused on the events it's the only way is to focus on the next level young person looks to the next level a 10 year old looks to the 16 year old and a 16 year old looks to the 25 that person who's out there we all want evolution all look towards what might be for us I have a question if this tape is viewed 100 years from now your life and what's motivated you in your life and the hard work that you've done somebody have look at this tape 100 years from now how would you feel at peace what would you hope someone would get from this knowing the youth that came to the head looking for love looking which then creates free love it creates freedoms and yet you have the attacks of the dark forces and whatever somebody looking at this 100 years from now who you are Ryan Frazier tell me what you would feel at peace at if somebody what would you feel at peace at the day would get that you have been doing your life and doing especially with hope and beyond my personal view my personal view from your state myself personally just get the spirit