 I want to welcome you all back to the Haydashbury Oral Video History Project, and I'd like to introduce Richard Honigman again, and have him introduce everyone else that we're discussing today. Well, to my right is Alan Cohen's widow, Ann Cohen. To my left is Martina Jeter. And to my furthest left is Azul. Welcome. Azul lived with Alan on and off several times when both were between various girlfriends that somehow ended up de-othered. You're a brother, in other words. My name is Rebecca Nichols and I will be moderating this along with you. Richard, I see you have an oracle in your hand. Is that an original? This is an original oracle and one of the most popular and famous of the oracles. The cover is beautiful as is the back cover. The oracle was known for its artwork. It was known for its writing about spirituality. It was known for its writing about politics. And it was known for its writing about the scene and what was going on. Just the advertisements from the various shops and the business that were starting up. So a lot of the advertising came from the street. Everything came from the street. This is of and by the street. Where was the oracle printed? It was printed on 16th Street and Folsom. It was the name of the press. Oh, you're here on the Queen. Yeah, Queen Press. And he was basically a supermarket publisher that publishes those four and six page supermarket sale Wednesday. Okay, catch it. And that was his stock and trade. And somehow, I mean, these are all very straight union characters. Somehow they agreed to print the oracle and we couldn't touch the machinery and we couldn't affect the actual printing process. But he'd let us tell the men to do things that they never would do such as take a bucket of ink and throw it across the press. And let the ink just go where it goes. Right. And we created so many new effects that eventually he got Mr. Quinn got his payoff. He got a feature article in printer and editors quarter. Wow. Explaining all of the new ideas that were coming out of these. Who was giving these ideas? Artists hanging out together and what happens with artists hanging out together. Exactly. Day event stuff. And so it was invented on the spot. Some people knew more about printing than others. Some were total novices and just walked in on the scene and started going along with it. Didn't Steve and Lieber spend a lot of time over there at the press and also Eddie McGee? Eddie McGee and Steve Lieber are the two most responsible for an awful lot of the oracle. They did the layout work? They did the layout work. Eddie was more of an artist. Steve Lieber and Gene Rim did most of the layout. Who picked the artist? Who was at group collaboration? Who picked who did the articles? Everything was always talked about argued over, hassled over and eventually agreed upon and figured out. People would just walk in off the street and they'd have wonderful things on acetate. Sometimes they'd be black magicians and they'd have everything written backwards and you had to hold it up to a mirror. But the main thing about the oracle that really made it take off was that time, you know, there's been New York Times and the Herald Tribune and the Nelson Jarreau and this and that. It was all very hard edge with no good news. There was no good news. The oracle was the first one to come along with good news, with joy, with celebration and with love. By the way, Richard happened to mention girlfriends. The pill had been developed and everybody could really make love and not war. And the oracle was a reflection of the sense that developed in our own consciousness about ourselves. Over the years, the Haight-Ashbury in 1964 was a very different place than the Haight-Ashbury three years later in 1967. In 1964 it was just developing. It was just sort of adjunct to the East Village. And month by month it grew exponentially and got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until eventually, and so many interviews were taking place from the Chronicle and from TV, and eventually Herb Cain got a slimy hands on it and the Chronicle, Herb Cain invented the word beatnik by putting beat with Sputnik together and he invented the word hippie because everyone in trying to explain what was going on there, what the bein was about, what Haight-Ashbury was about, what the dances were about, were saying, well man, are you hip to this? Are you hip to that? You've got to be hip to what happens when you do this. And the word hip was used so much, Cain's funny mind turned it into these people are hippies because they always use the word hip and they're trying to be hip, which is a far cry from William Burroughs' original hipster of the village in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 40s and 50s. The highest octave hit meant aware that you got it, that you groped it, that you understood it on a different level on another perceptual level. Are you hip? You understood the essence of it. If you were hip, you saw into something. So it was a positive work being hip. You know talking about the journalism of the time and people writing about us, I haven't touched on the press conferences that we had. Those were very interesting. And it was invited to these press conferences and when did they take place? We invited the whole press, first of all, I had worked with Jerry Mander as his assistant doing press conferences. So when they had dawned on me, we didn't like what was being written in the press. We were being misrepresented. So I said, why don't we do our own press conference and we put out what we think will touch people more deeply. Give them more of a deeper understanding of what we're really all about. So because I had these skills, it was pretty basic stuff to know how to do that. And so then other people got on board and what we did, the first one I think was at the firehouse. And the idea was to create the ambience that would speak of what the values were are that we felt was important to ask us of the new culture. Being so misinterpreted. Right. Which we still are. So we wanted to create the ambience that would speak of those values. We tried to create an atmosphere that was very warm and loving and welcoming. Did the press conferences turn out the way you liked them? Yes, they did. And we got great press out of them. I recall we did. That's how I got to the Oracle because I knew Walter Boart from the East Village days. He calls me up one day in San Francisco. He's the only person he knows in San Francisco. And he says, hey, there's this press conference out in some place in Marin County called Stinson Beach. You know where that is? Yeah. It's being held in this guy's house, this lawyer's house. I think he works with Melvin Belli. Can you pick me up and then take me out there? And I think you might like some of these people. That was the underground press conference. That was the first underground press conference. And I walked into that room with Walter, who, as I say, I had helped him start EVO in 64 or 5. And I met most of the people that were to be my best friends for the rest of my life. Wow. That was the day 70 people came to lunch and was out in the kitchen making soup. Okay. Was that when you met Alan? Yeah. That's when I met Alan. That's right. And this took place where? Stinson Beach. Stinson Beach. Yeah. We had mainstream press conferences before that where we had invited all the mainstream press. Right. We had television cameras and representatives from all the main newspapers and magazines. But it was very hard to straighten out the sensationalism that drives the press. Right. And there was fear being generated by the press. What we wanted to do was reverse that and create the image of a group of people who were really wanting to create a positive change in the world and to take away that fear. Sure. And eventually the summer of love was created and announced and made to happen by us because we knew we were going to be stampeded by them, the press and the press. So you put out the medicines before. Society at large. So instead of them creating a horrible situation, we tried to make the best of the situation. You know the train wreck coming. Sure. So it was going to happen. So in order to steer it in the right direction and get the most out of it, get the most positive news value, tell the most people about ecology, about saving the earth, about the right foods and what we thought was the right way to live, peace and love in the middle of a war, we announced the summer of love. Who arranged the permits? Who got the talent? What do you mean for the gatherings? For the human being? Yes. Were you involved with that or were you basically sabotaging it? Somebody had a heart problem. Who did that? Who were the players? Our little meditation room was the site of me. Do you know some of the bands that played? Do you? Well, the human being? The script for dead? The crypto messenger service and the brother Hunter. They played all these things together. Yes. And I'm just wondering who made all the arrangements. We will finally have it very fast. Sure. The idea was birthed and within two weeks or so and it was amazing. Up to this point, many of us had seen each other, because we all lived in different neighborhoods and lived in Moran, lived in Berkeley, had seen each other at the dances at the first acid test at Long Charmin's Hall, which was my first published article back in Evo in New York. I was there. Sure. This was a correspondent. And then at the Fillmore, and of course, no one here yet has mentioned the Chet Helms and the Family Dollars. And the Avalon Ballroom. Because the Avalon Ballroom, because Chet Helms represented a whole different force than Bill Graham. Sure. Bill Graham was really the Florence Ziegfield of his time. Sure, sure. And Chet Helms was really from the streets, was one of us. Exactly. Graham was an outsider in many ways. He was hit. He was hit. He was hit, but he was an immigrant Jew running from the holocaust with that New York edge. And he walked across Europe to escape. He walked across Spain and got on a boat and came to New York. Bill Graham was the manager of that Peter Bird scene. What was the name of that place? Famous. Famous. The Mime Troop. Mime Troop. He said the Mime Troop. That's how it all started. The Mime Troop came down and the Mime Troop got busted in the park. They said, let's have a benefit. Everybody said, what's that? Oh, you get these bands together. Everybody pays money to give it to them. So they went down and they rented Fireman's Hall way down on Third Street. And I got down on the Ziya. And the place was absolutely packed and there were lines coming out onto the street to try to get in. And the bugs were there. Jefferson Airplanes. Jefferson Airplanes. The bugs in Jefferson Airplanes in one of the banks. Can you imagine that? Sure. For like $1.75. Right. So what finally came is the fire department came. They tried to close it down, but they couldn't close it down. There were too many people involved and too many people. But they did stop people from coming in. But he saw that. And when he saw that, he said, my God, I could do this at the Fillmore or the Avalon or what was the name of the one? The Carousel Ballroom. Carousel Ballroom. Carousel Ballroom later became Fillmore. So he went down and he just took this funky old Fillmore and nobody had used it. I think he got it for $25 a night or something. Can you imagine that? And he signed a lease for like a year. And that started the big dances. The first show was the airplane dance. What no one understood about both the Avalon on Van S. and the Fillmore is that the acoustics were perfect and they were perfect for the kind of dancing we were doing because they were huge brick walls three feet thick and huge beams holding up wooden floors and plaster walls. And the best acoustics are like Italian opera houses. They're made out of masonry and wood and plaster. So we danced on the beat. It's a Glenn McKay's light show or the Bill Ham's light show. And the beat came down and the oil and water hit on the projector. And we all came down at once. That place was like a drum. It was a drum full of hundreds of people all on the beat. And it was amazing. Did you ever report about any of that stuff in the Oracle on concerts that had happened? Did you give reports? Or did you advertise the upcoming shows? It was too commonplace. It was an everyday event. But all of these things are spontaneous historical... It's a staircase. And that's how the consciousness came about of that we were these people doing this thing in this special time and place. I want to come back to the beat for just a moment because it relates to what you're saying is my recollection is that there was an awareness that there was an awakening happening out there in the hinterlands. That there were kids out there that were freaks that didn't know that there were others. And they knew they were strange and different. And maybe our vision or what I sensed and some other people, that maybe they were kind of scared and alone. And that part of the human being was to run a flag up the pole so high that said, hey, there are others of us here, you're not alone. And we had power. We could do that because we knew how to work with the media. So creating an event that was really huge that would hit the media with the sense of the presence of this new emergent consciousness and that people would... So the idea for human being came through the oracle. Oracle people. And then obviously it takes a lot of people to put on an event to bring the stage and to do all the production work and stuff, but the idea came and you had a cover of one of the oracles. Yes. Which was the artwork of Michael Bowen and Stanley Mouse. Yes. And... Casey Sonoban's photograph. Yes, it was Casey Sonoban's photograph. Oh, okay. That's of the Indian man. Yeah. Wonderful. And so almost having that as a cover came out about how soon before the event that publicized the event. Barely weeks. So that was the whole thing. There was only about two weeks. That was the publicity. The oracle went out on the street. Well, there were posters. The posters. And word of mouth. And then we had the flags, the marijuana leaf flag. They were on silk. There was silk screen, beautiful marijuana leaves on silk. And they were on long poles. I remember because I was given one and I was going down Haight Street that morning holding this flag and people gathering behind me. Following the flag. I don't really know where the heck I was going. And I gathered this whole troop and there were other people all around with these flags that pulled in people. I cried fibers. Sure. And you know how young people are, especially then in the 60s. Word spread very quickly amongst teenagers and amongst 20s. There's a scene going down. This is going to be great. What's happening today? What's happening today? Because it really was on the moment. Yes. We really were living on the moment then. So, it's so amazing to see some of the memories of what's happened. And what I see in all of you is that spirit is still there. You're still... We're all living the same lives. You're just older. And hopefully more grounded with more wisdom behind the vision. Well, I seem to... More integrated. We're more integrated. Yes. That was a thing about the 60s. I mean, there was a lot of criticism about the 60s. It wasn't integrated. It was off the wall. The people were worse-paced and far out and crazy and da-da-da-da. But, you know, you know probably from the experience that people take LSD before they really developed any sort of ego or self. They often can fall apart and disintegrate because they're already so spacious. Right. Yeah, LSD O'Shawe used to say you're speaking in Macrobot. He said LSD is the most yin thing in the existence. The most yin. Because it takes you way out there. Transcendent space. And buddhas in the sky. You know, all of those. Totally. And one thing about us coming together now is right after Alan passed away, I really got it very clear that a lot of people felt that their hopes of rekindling the oracle, their working in it, was going down in the grave with Alan. And so I started contacting the oracle staff. So that wouldn't happen again. And we've been collaborating. We started about September, I believe. And we're actually emailing instead of being in the staff office. So now it's 2005. And we're doing it again. We're doing it. We're doing it. We are. It's great fun. We're all busy. We're all making a living. We're all running around. We're all doing. We all have other professions. Are there other people involved that are not here? Yes. Yes. As many of the oracle staff, well, let's see. We have Travis Rivers. Steve Leaper. Gene Grimm. Jay Fallon. Yeah. Jay Fallon. Amy McGill down in Carmel. She's been talking. Oh, Heady McGee in London. Stanley Mouse's daughter is in Japan. Which daughter? Rose. Rose. Rose. Yes. And what's happening with her? Well, let's see. She's actually in regards to what's happening with her over there. I'm not quite sure. I guess I've been selfish in writing her about what we're up to. But she is a writer. She's an extremely intelligent woman. And then Dangerfield Ashton back in South Carolina. Japan is picking up a lot of the 60s stuff. They love it over there. They have go, Gill go over and all my friends, they always say they're going over a conference. They have 2,000 people every month, stays up for two or three days. They dance and go, because they have such a constricted society, they're so much based on formality during because the size of it everybody's always bound to each other. That when they break loose, and the tons of Japanese go to go and followed Washington, Oshawa, the Japanese like everything psychedelic. Well, how do you guys feel about finding each other again? I mean, when this project started, obviously some of you still knew each other. We knew each other as friends. We had loose contact. We all have friends and no friends. And eventually all of a sudden we were at a party and oh, hey, I haven't seen you in five years. Exactly. We never saw each other in a funeral. Well, how do you feel about each of you? Do you share in this vision of the future of the oracle? And I'd love to hear from each of you what you see as the future of the oracle. What would your vision be? Where would you see it going from here? In the spirit of what it was? Well, it can never be what it was because we're not living in that kind of a situation. Sure. I mean, we're all in our 50s, 60s, and 70s. And hate street isn't what it was. The world isn't what it was. It's in a whole new form of complexity now. And we see a lot of the product of what we've done in a very positive light. Certainly ecology and solar energy and hybrid electric cars and so on. Everything we envisioned. Recycling. Recycling is now. Recycling was something that people laughed at once. And now it's as common as can be. It's in every city, everywhere. There's an awful lot of good came out of it. Some of it got screwed up. Some of us got screwed up. But for the most part, they hate Ashbury was successful because they were intelligent, hardworking people at the heart of it. And we're still here. And the oracle will continue because there's a need for vision. Do you see new issues being created? Do you see remaking some of the old... Tell me more about what you think. The first oracle that we do, it's going to be printed at the old blood press that Howard Quinn's read up. Still there. And the press is still there. They said it's dusty, but they've maintained it and we will be able to print it there, which is exciting. Very exciting. So printing costs are going to be enormous since the days, you know, after the oil crisis. So has the partnering regime. They just couldn't splash it on. It's got to be fortunate. So we have to have a benefit. But at least the oracle has a right. But it's so necessary. Just like you said at the beginning when we started this interview that there wasn't any newspaper or anything out there that was positive. Well, I feel that way now, regarding political, that we really... It's necessary. People need to stop being negative and you did this and this isn't working. But embrace. But also newspapers are dying. They're dropping like flies because people don't believe what's in them anymore. They read it online. That's right. Or they're in different places. And they've been caught in so many lies and centrifuges themselves. They're just as bad as the government that they're reporting on. Did you end up with membership online and people could subscribe all over the world to the oracle? Yeah. And also the oracle has to be the future. Let me just show one thing in here. I think that the universal thing continues. And I was just giving reference to the second page, which is a picture of Krishna inside of a cell playing music. And these are all the different bardos or the different stations of life. And this is a cell. And the music is going out into the cell. And Krishna is inside the cell. And this is all to back up Stephenine's poetry. It's as old as art. It's as old as art. Of course. You are. And it's a floating mandala, which is inside of us. So basically it's saying that inside, equivalent to outside, Krishna is not only outside, but inside. As above so below, you are it playing, you know, the cellular symphony in your body. Sure. And that it's all one. So in those kinds of visions, I think we're going to continue. I think it's even more needed now than before because of the climate of fear. We need to hear some good news. And to really come forth beyond that idea of fear. Totally. Richard, I think you mentioned that you wrote an article in this publication. It told a little bit of the way it was here on H Street in the 60's. It was supposed to be an insider's view instead of the New York Times and the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle writing about us from the outside from some guy in a suit for some woman in a dress. I'd love to hear a little portion of it. Or read the first paragraph. And we are in what year at the moment? 1967. Walking barefoot on the streets the young people wander from noon until early two. Wandering aimlessly up H Street over to the free store at Carl and Cole with back to the sonic or a cream pie and coke or to the panhandle for digger stew. Hundreds of young people, refugees from suburban internment camps are making the scene or duplications in kind in several dozen cities around the country. Most streets like H Street in San Francisco now turned into an abstract vortex for an indefinable pilgrimage an admixture of homemade spiritual group therapy and actors in life theater which turns the participants into cellars. Yes. That's great Richard. Wonderful. Perfect. That's beautiful. It's a time capsule. I mean if we're walking down you parked your cars and come do this interview if you walk down H Street today that spirit is still here. The spirit of celebration. The spirit of community. One more thing I want to say is that many people worked often on one painting for one page. The surrealists used to do that also. Pass it on to the next person and pass it on to the next person. It's open creativity because there was a lessening of the ego and attachment of this is mine and we're sharing a vision and sharing. That's what we're doing on the first article. I'll be more about it. What would it be? What can we look forward to? What are some of the ideas? Well it's a group article and it's about big brother and how the world has changed. I mean there's cameras everywhere, there's microphones everywhere. The government has all sorts of plans to keep track of all sorts of people doing all sorts of things. This was never the way it was. In 1967 we had a plan to put TV cameras on every street in an intersection and it was laughed out of existence by the entire country being absurdly Orwellian. Now that's becoming what's happening both by the government and by capitalism. Look at all the picture phones on people's phones. Look how much stuff is being caught by amateur photographers. A police beating up on black and brown people. There's a good side to it and a strange side in that the world of 1984 is being created automatically out of fear and out of greed. And those are not good reasons for 1984 to take place. But yet on the other hand some of the like some of the people that were writing about this were getting both sides were getting the tough end were getting the soft end the spiritual end and the article and there's a little bit of spatting going back and forth in this emailing and do you have an artist interested in contributing? We, well yes we do but right now I guess we're looking for the context but it's getting time. We're also moving toward a unified region field we're moving toward a quantum thing like what the kind of approach to reality as being a 5th dimensional the net of jewels the reality is really a net of jewels and we only followed up with our you know If somebody watching this video would like to support what you're doing would like to donate to you would like to find out how they can help make what they have available How could they how could they contact? Okay I think probably they could contact us through me at Annie's little farm just A-N-N-I-E-S little L-I-D-T-L-E farm F-A-R-M at S-B-C-Global.net and I will make sure that I get it out to our group I try to show the Oracle office as we're closing I would love to see this Gene Grimm is kind of over looking this because he did a lot of layouts then That's how you usually saw Gene Beautiful Do you have anything else with you? We have about one minute left Let's see Here's another Gene Grimm and Alan Cohen Do we know who the other one is right up there? We'll find out as these videos get viewed Yeah Do you have another one with us? This would be Alan and we think this is Ralph Ackerman He has a photographer Old friend Alan kept in touch with all these people Alan was very good at keeping the thread together Is that photo by Gene Anthony? On H Street? Yes, it's right there And Alan was responsible for the facsimile edition Yes That was a major piece Can people get this book still? Is it available? Through Regent Press in Oakland on Adeline I'm sorry I don't have the address but easily found in Oakland on Adeline Regent Press A few hundred I feel like Alan is with us and he's really proud that his family is supporting all of your hard work and what he believed in and the spreading of people's thoughts to poetry, writing the support of artists and writers to tell the good news and hopefully to inspire the young That's right The good news is what we need Because love being good putting out this energy just brings more That's right You have to run away, you can join in and make a circle Yes, that's right Thank you so much for being here It's been a pleasure Thank you so much