Avalon Ballroom, and the San Francisco Anti-War 60's Trip
“Would you like to go to San Francisco with me? There’s an anti-war march this weekend.” The strange, pudgy-cheeked girl in the pea coat asked, in a serious tone of importance and commitment.
I was fumbling my way through junior college – trying hard to avoid the military draft --when I was invited to an anti-war march. It wasn’t uncommon in the 60’s for students to invite complete strangers along on crazy trips to share rides and expenses. Many colleges even sponsored “ride boards” that gave departure dates of students looking for companionship or help with gas money. Back then, everyone seemed to be on the move – even if we didn’t know where we were going.
For me, San Francisco was a magical place that I knew of only through rumor. Friends, or friends of friends, would return to our small, conservative southern California community with their stories of the Haight-Ashbury, flower children, or Ken Kesey’s merry pranksters and acid tests. This escape to San Francisco could offer a temporary escape from my less-than-perfect home life, and an opportunity to witness firsthand the peace and love movement that was sweeping the nation. The idea was liberating. San Francisco was the heart and soul of the anti-war, pro-peace movement and I wanted to be a part of it. You’ve heard the slogan “Free Love.” What nineteen year-old guy wouldn’t want to go there and try that?
The San Francisco Trip
So, with $40 in my pocket and a handful of my mom’s diet pills as my contribution, I took off in a baby blue 1963 Volkswagen bug with two people I didn’t know: the girl in the pea coat and a red-haired, goateed guy who I assumed was her boyfriend.
We drove up the coast, stomping our feet to the music on the radio, talking freely, and getting acquainted. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do remember it was enthusiastic. The diet pills gave us a rush. Everything felt good. For a few hours, in my euphoria, I forgot about the looming military draft and the domestic disharmony I left back home. Everything was great. Getting away felt fantastic!
The Haight-Ashbury
“Groovin” by the Young Rascals was playing on the car radio that afternoon as we cruised into the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. It had just rained. The streets were wet, everything looked clean and fresh, and the air was filled with spring, love, incense, and the heavy aroma of pot. The sidewalks were crowded with people, walking, talking and singing. There were guys with really long hair that accentuated their long, skinny faces. They wore funny hats and leather boots. The girls had on long flowing dresses, granny glasses, and some wore flowers in their long, frizzy hair. There were so many young people, and everyone looked like they’d traveled a ways, like us, to discover if free love really did exist on Haight Street in San Francisco.
We found sleeping quarters in the basement of an old Victorian house on the 1700 block of Haight Street. It was the home of the Diggers, an odd anarchist art group that took breaks from writing Dadaist manifestos to give free food and shelter to the increasing numbers of travelers and peace demonstrators drifting into the Haight-Ashbury. One of the diggers actually slept in a coffin at the bottom of the basement stairway. It seemed pretty bazaar to me – though he wasn’t trying to play vampire. The coffin was simply a cheap, warm, comfortably-padded bed. The Diggers had made their basement into one giant bedroom for participants of the peace rally. They provided privacy for us by hanging tabletops sideways from the overhead floor joists. Even though there were hundreds of us sleeping on mattresses on the cold floor of a very crowded basement, we all felt as though we had a little cubicle of privacy.
Since we arrived late in the day, and there were so many people coming in for the peace march, the three in our group had to share a cubicle with a single-bed mattress. Sleep didn’t come easy. I lay there, pretending to sleep, while my mattress-mates (the girl in the pea coat and the guy with the red goatee) humped and groaned noisily throughout the night. They probably woke up everyone in the basement. I tried to make myself go to sleep by imagining I was on a log raft bumping down a stream where the water gurgled and made moaning noises: unnh, unnh, unnnh, unnh . . .
Early the next morning, the Diggers sponsored a pancake breakfast in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park. We wondered around listening to the sounds of the bands warming up at the stadium. The guitars faded in and out like the morning fog that drifted in and out on the breeze off the bay. Again, there was the thick smell of incense and marijuana, but there was something else in the atmosphere as well: the air was electric with excitement and anticipation. Everyone felt that we were about to be part of something really big.
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
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.
Revolving above the doorway was a full-bore hundred-mile-an-hour strobe light, or so it seemed. Every movement froze in time, and then jerked rapidly into the next movement. It gave us the illusion of totally participating in an early flip-card silent movie. To the right was a group of people painting their faces beneath a black ultraviolet light, the fluorescent designs glowing oddly in the darkened ballroom.
The
ballroom seemed to be the size a huge ornate skating rink. There was
a raised stage in the corner and a balcony on one wall opposite the
stage. You could easily imagine an elegant ball there, with beautiful
couples spinning around the room to the music of an Austrian waltz.
The 24-foot high walls of the ballroom were divided up into eight or
ten sections and covered with white sheeting. Each section had a different
slide show projected onto it. One section had American Indian Chiefs,
another had vividly colored Hindu Gods, another had mean-looking Tibetan
Gods, another had beautiful paintings of angels, another had
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 . . .”
We left the Avalon Ballroom around 2 a.m. to make our way back to the Diggers basement, only to discover that someone had broken into the car and stolen our blankets and what little money we had. We borrowed blankets from our hosts, and I shared a mattress and a wool blanket with a Canadian guy about my age. At least that night I slept well. By the time we were bedded down for the night, our euphoric impressions of mankind were fading fast, like the alphabet soup patterns, into the cold d arkness of space and reality.
The Long Trip Home
The next morning we started home. Without money, we took on a couple of hitchhikers whose contribution was a tank of gas and an LSD trip for those who wanted to make the ride home more interesting. I was jambed into the back seat of the Volkswagen bug between strangers who were traveling on a trip of their own. A large, hairy woman with bad breath sat on my right. She took my share of the acid before I had a chance at it. From the scary way she was breathing, and the way she stroked my leg, I had the uneasy feeling that she wanted to do more than “touch my body with her mind” as we rolled south towards home.
Somewhere around Monterrey, the VW pulled over and the chubby-cheeked driver got out of the car and started coughing. I climbed out to check on her and she confided to me, in a soft, but very earnest tone, that she had swallowed her brains and she thought she might have just thrown them up. She was looking around on the ground as though her brains might be lying there somewhere on side of the road. It appeared that I was the only non-stoned person in the group. After a few minutes, she got into the back seat and I slid behind the wheel. I was relieved. Not only did I have a whole complete seat to myself away from the hairy woman, I would be the “captain trips” for the rest of this journey. It felt good, really good, to be in the driver’s seat.
As fun and exciting as this trip was, I felt a little unnerved by the way events seemed to have been reeling out-of-control. Maybe it was because of what I had experienced over the past few days or maybe because I was headed home to reality, but for the first time in my life, I relished being in control. Our guests left us in Santa Barbara, and after that, the ride became eerily quiet. It was a long drive; the others slept or tripped, but I was strangely awake and happy. Back home I’d still have my parent’s divorce, the draft, and my classes to deal with, but that was then and this was now. For the next couple of hours, it was just me and this 1963 VW bug, and the winding Zen of Highway 1.
-- Bill Grote
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