The Beat Goes on...

Flower Power

Paradise Hotel Time Travel Story continued... by Michael Dolan

It had been a long day and night. That evening would be the Mantra Rock festival. Many people would be there and everyone had to prepare for the real feast. The Krishna devotees wandered off to the back room behind the temple.
Hawk returned to the office and changed his clothes. He needed to clear his head. Everyone was resting. He hit the back door. Next to the garbage cans in the alley, the golden retriever with the red bandana had been the beneficiary of sumptuous leftovers. He was sleeping it off and paid no attention to the stranger from the future who squeezed past him.
Frederick Street was in the heart of what came to be known as the Haight Ashbury district, the epicentrer of the Hippie revolution. The street scene in front of the temple was busy with young people.

Botticelli virgins with ironed hair frolicked in bell-bottoms and peasant blouses while long-haired boys in cowboy hats with leather vests and hiking boots leaned against the storefront and played guitar blues.
Hawk saw a sign posted on a telephone pole:

FREE FOOD GOOD HOT STEW

RIPE TOMATOES FRESH RUIT

BRING A BOWL AND SPOON TO

THE PANHANDLE AT ASHBURY STREET

4 PM 4 PM 4 PM 4PM

FREE FOOD EVERYDAY ITS FREE BECAUSE ITS YOURS

the diggers

Hawk tried to catch his breath. This was the first moment he had been alone since he had arrived from 2017. He needed to catch his bearings.
His feet took him a few steps down the street to the shop next door.

“Free Store” said a sign. The storefront next door was radically different from the Radha-Krishna temple next door. With the air of an organic health food store on LSD, the front was a jumble of wrought iron painted white bordered by a white picket fence. The plate-glass window had a number of weird painted messages, some of them political. The store didn’t seem to sell anything. There were baskets of oranges in front of the store with a sign: “Take one, free. Donate any fruit.”
A step down led into a long hall that mirrored the Krishna temple next door. In fact it was the same building separated only by the small alley. The interior of the Digger Free Store looked like a Hippie Salvation Arm with castoff clothing, coats, jeans, and dresses hanging on steel racks, a shelf of free books, crates of tomatoes, tennis rackets, waffle irons, skis, and kitchen appliances. Some things were labeled “Free.”


A couple of Hell’s Angels in leather jackets sat on folding chairs smoking marijuana and drinking beer while a group of longhaired stoners in jeans and lumberjack shirts were sitting crosslegged on the floor playing harmonica and bongos.

The hall had the same layout as the building next door and so was a kind of perverted mirror reflection of the Radha Krishna temple. Where the devotees were ecstatic, these down-on-their luck druggies were glum and gloomy. Where Swami’s followers glowed with enlightenment and smelled of jasmine incense, these hippie kids were dark and had a rank smell about them, somewhere between onions and unwashed socks. While they were next door to the temple, even the light from the storefront windows here was dimmer and hid in shadows. While the clothes were colorful and the walls were painted with dayglo paint everything had a grayer cast, a duller edge.

As Hawk wandered around trying to organize his thoughts, he bumped over a folding chair with a sign on it, “Take what you want.”
A hunchbacked kid with a chestnut afro haircut and crazy eyes blinked at him through green-tinted granny glasses.
“Excuse me.”
“It’s cool man.”
“Are you in charge here?”
“No, man. You are.”
“What?”
“I’m just Billy, man. You’re in the Free Store. You want to know who the man is? You’re the man.”
Billy was a nerd in a t-shirt and a greasy sheepskin jacket with a funky aroma. He held a dog-eared copy of Orwell’s 1984 in one hand and a half-smoked Camel cigarette in the other. While clearly a member of the hippie persuasion, he had an anonymous face, an air of invisibility that would make him fit into any crowd.
Hawk said: “Cool man. So, what is this place? Are you guys the diggers?”
“I don’t know if you get it, man. The diggers are free. You can be free. This is a free store. We give out free food.”
“So you guys are are a kind of anarcho-Salvation Army for the Hippies?”
“No, man. If it’s salvation you want, you can check out the Krishna people next door.”
As we spoke we noticed a wino stuffing clothing into a paper bag. Billy approached. The wino was shoplifting. His breath reeked. He slipped a pair of shoes into the bag when he thought no one was looking.
Billy told him, “There’s no shoplifting here.”
“What’s that? I’m not stealing. What are you talking about.”
“This stuff is free, man. You can’t steal what’s free. Take what you want.”
The wino stared in disbelief. He took the shoes out of the bag and tried them on.
“These shoes are tight. Can I see another pair?”
“Sure, man. You’re the man,” said Billy.
“Wait a minute,” said Billy, returning to the conversation. “I know you. You were marching with the Krishna people this morning, right? A lot of dudes think you guys are really flipped-out, but it’s cool with me. Everyone is doing the Mantra Rock tonight. Are you going to be there?”
“I think so,” said Hawk.
The Diggers are going to help you guys with the prasadam distribution.”
Hawk’s memory was clicking in. He had heard of the Diggers. Even in modern San Francisco they were legend. They were at the epicenter of the counterculture, the summer of love, the psychedelic movement. They were a mysterious crew. They started as an actor’s co-op that did guerilla theater, and teach-ins against the Vietnam war. They preached a weird form of anti-Capitalism. They didn’t believe in private property. They invented slogans like “back to the land” and “do your own thing” as part of whole hippie ethos and underground scene.
“Well, I’ll probably see you tonight. These guys are doing security,” he said, pointing to the Hell’s Angels who were popping the top on another round of beers.
Hawk said, “So you’re into the free food program?”
Billy said, “Yeah, we’re feeding muggers, buggers, and thieves, hippies, trippies and dippies, the downtrodden, the disheveled, and the doomed. It’s a political statement. This is the real revolution. Look, I know you Krishna guys think we’re basically demons into heavy maya, cause we feed people meat, but I’m a vegetarian myself.”
“In the mornings I go over to the farmer’s market and scavenge leftovers; you know, lettuce, oranges, spinach, whatever. We take it over to the free soup kitchen over by the Panhandle. Other guys hit the butcher shops and rip off meant, but that’s not my thing. Meat is murder, man.”
By now the wino had selected a pair of green and red cowboy boots. They were a bit worn, but gave him style. He had changed his raggedy wino pants for some new blue jeans and completed the ensemble with a green Australian slouch hat and an army jacket cast off by a vet from the 101st Airborne division. Looking spiffy in his new duds, the wino shook hands with Billy with a wild leer and a gleam in his eye.
“Thanks man,” he said, smiling past the harmonica player as he wandered back into the street.
Hawk surveyed the wares in the store, but figured it was better to let someone less fortunate take what they needed.
“Well, thanks, Billy,” he said, and made to go.
“You should check out the Psychedelic Shop, dude. I think you’ll find what you need there,” said Billy.

On the street, Hawk wandered past the Psychedelic Shop where LSD, marijuana, and cheap methamphetamines were sold along with hash pipes, rolling papers and dayglo posters of Jimi Hendrix. In the street hippie girls were belly dancing to conga drums and the foggy air was thick with marijuana smoke.
Multi-colored hippies had set up stalls in a kind of street market. Some of them had just laid a blanket on the sidewalk with their wares. There were black men with afro haircuts in striped bell-bottom pants and Chinese girls in saris, low-riders with Mexican hats and motorcycle mamas in cutoff jeans and leather vests; there were Jesus freaks with beards and robes and science geeks with sliderules and pencils. They sold everything from weed and hash and LSD; turquoise jewelry and crystals; shiny bangles and bracelets, silver earrings from Taxco, Mexico; Buckskin jackets, Indian headbands, God’s-eye dream-catchers woven out of red and yellow yarn, and feather head-dresses. They sold Vietnam War flak jackets, army books and aviator goggles; there were leather sandals, Mickey Mouse hats and tie-dyed t-shirts; Zig-zag rolling papers, hash pipes and hand-rolled joints of Acapulco Gold. As he navigated the mob of buyers and sellers the whole thing seemed like a huge street party.

He saw a long-haired boy dressed like an apostle panhandling with a tambourine and flipped him a coin. He asked the kid, “What is this?” and the boy said, “Don’t you know? It’s the Human Be-in. It’s the Revolution, man.”
As Hawk walked toward the park he had seen earlier, he saw people slapping bongos and having a good time; street musicians had formed improvised bands with odd instrumentation; one group were played Stravinsky with clarinet, string bass, and banjoes; another played bebop on saxophone and sitars. It was the strangest combination of sights and sounds he had ever seen.
As he neared the path that had taken him into Buena Vista Park, he had a vision of an angel guarding the entrance to the alley. Krishna John had a vibration of absolute peace and enlightenment. Standing amidst the unwashed masses in the San Francisco afternoon, Krishna John was gaunt and long-boned with a shaved head and a pony tail. He had a classic Roman nose and a ready smile.
“Hawk,” he said, extending a long arm and pointing to the park. “Walk with me.”