The Naked and the Dead

Here's the latest continuation of the science fiction time warp adventure story: Paradise Hotel by Michael Dolan

Mantra Rock at The Avalon Ball Room

Back at the temple, it was time for action.

The Digger’s Free Store was next door to the temple. It was run by a strange group called the Diggers, an offshoot of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Emmett Grogan had been a jewel thief and and actor. The head of the local Diggers, he could have been a stunt double for Richard Burton. Charming and erudite with wavy hair and boyish good looks he wore a duffle coat and an engaging smile.

He greeted Krishna John as an old friend.

Schwartz Prabhu was there, dressed in a white dhoti, tennis shoes and a business shirt and tie.

“What’s up?” said Hawk.

“Hare Krishna,” said Schartz Prabhu. We gotta load these boxes on the truck. Help us out.”

Bhakta Congo was already hard at work along with Dave Krishna.

Krishna John introduced everyone to Emmett.

“Emmett here runs the place,” he said.

“Nice to meet you boys,” he said. Turning to Krishna John he said, “But you know, we really don’t have any leaders. We’re just folks trying to lend a helping hand. Tonight’s party will be quite an event. The Avalon Ballroom is sold out. Will you be performing tonight?”

Krishna John said, “I’ll be playing my flute, but the real event are the Hare Krishna Chanters. They’ll start the mantra and then the Swami will speak. He’ll explain the philosophy. I hope you can make it.”

Emmett turned to Billy, “I’ll do my best. Look, I’ve got to run. I’m going downtown. I’ve got some business with Alan.”

“Allen Ginsberg?” said Hawk.

“Well, him too, but actually it’s Alan Watts. He’s here with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert and they want to have a meeting with Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and the Grateful Dead. So, I’ve got my hands full. If it was up to me, I’d help you guys put together the food distribution. But I’ve got to run. Do you need to get to the Ball room, Krishna John?”

“Yes, I’ve got to do a sound check for the Swami.”

“All right, I can give you a ride. I’ll drop you off. Come on. Let’s open the doors of perception.”

“Let’s go,” said Krishna John. Emmett buttoned his coat against the San Francisco mist and hurried off. With Krishna John by his side they made an odd couple.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“How are we doing this?” said Billy.

“We’ll do the cooking in our own kitchen and bring the prasadam over here,” said Schwartz Prabhu. “I understand you guys will handle the transportation over to the Ball Room.”

“OK, we have the Hell’s Angels helping with cars and trucks. Even a few teamsters are donating their labor.”

“Good. What about the equipment for the Swami?”

“It’s taken care of. But you should talk to Chet.”

“Right. I spoke to him earlier this morning. All right. Esmeralda and the girls will be over here with the food later. If you have any problems call Atmaram. We’ll go over to the Ball Room and make sure everything’s ready for the Swami.”

“Cool. Emmett’s co-ordinating the entire event, Krishna John’s doing the sound. I’ll stay here, get together with Esmeralda and the girls and make sure the Angels get the food, I mean prasadam down to the hall. You guys can catch a ride with Speedy.

“Speedy?”

The guy with the harmonica stopped playing.

“Yeah?”

“Give these guys a ride to the Avalon.”

“All right man.”

Speedy was true to his name. He drove a candy apple green ‘Chevy 58 with a V8 hotrod engine. Speedy stomped on the gas and raced passed Union Square on Geary to the Avalon Ballroom, tearing up the streets of San Francisco. They reached Sutter and Van Ness in a matter of minutes. Speedy dropped them off at the corner in front of the Ball Room and took off in a cloud of white smoke.

The Avalon Ball Room had originally been a Dance Academy, and had space for a hundred ball room dancers to move comfortably. The dance floor was upstairs from the street. The floor was wooden, giving a warm quality to the sound of the hall. Mirrors against the walls let the dancers see themselves do the foxtrot, the waltz, and the mambo. There were huge gilded columns and a mandala in the center of the ceiling where a chandelier hung.

When they got there Krishna John was on stage, playing a Chinese shakahuchi flute with a deep tone. He was going through the sound check, but the mellow sound of the flute carried Hawk to another time. They cranked the sound up. The floor shook. Hawk felt the vibration from the bamboo flute penetrate his heart as 150 decibels waved through the air.

The sound stopped. Emmett Grogan appeared and at a signal Krishna John took a break and went back stage with Emmett. Schwartz Prabhu and Hawk found Chet Helms upstairs in one of the balconies adjusting the strobe lights. Chet was lean and lanky with long strait hair and a mustache. He looked like one of Robin Hood’s merry men.

“I got these strobe lights at a discount,” he said. “Army Surplus. They were developed by the CIA for use in Vietnam. Never been battle-tested. They can flash at a frequency high enough to cause epileptic fits in rhesus monkeys, but they’ve never really been tested on human beings. We’re going to try them out tonight. Maybe we’ll break on through to the other side. You must be Schwartz. Didn’t you used to play piano for Green Armadillo?”

Schwartz demured. “No, actually it was mostly classical; Rachmaninoff’s 9th Concerto was my thing. But I did do some backup work for Quicksilver Messenger Service before I met the Swami.”

“You know George Harrison, right?”

“That’s a very well-kept secret for the moment.”

A new group took the stage. A stout Texan woman was shouting blues into the microphone that had gone dead for some reason.

“That’s Janis. The strobe gets really good action working off the day-glo paint. It’s what they call psychedelic. Watch this.”

The house lights dimmed. The seats below were cast in darkness. Suddenly a brilliant white light flashed thousands of times per second. Hawk felt his retina dance, his brain shiver. The lurid flourescent colors on the walls jumped into action, bouncing off the pilasters on the walls with weird effects, spray-painting his field of vision and frying the neural synapses inside his brain-pan.

Helms shut it off. The lights came back up. Janis was outraged, screaming something at the technician. The microphone was still dead but you could read the rage on her purple face as she bunched her fists into knots. Hawk couldn’t wait to see her sing the blues.

Helms said, “I need to adjust the synch. The idea is to have the lights play with the rhythm. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a new gateway to the mind,” said Schwartz Prabhu diplomatically.

Helms spoke less like a cut-throat business man and more like a hippie prophet.

“Well, that’s the Swami’s lookout. I hear the Swami is going to give a good talk. It’s all part of the same revolution, man. There’s a lot of young people who want a change from the establishment bullshit. They’re looking for something spiritual, here. I hope we can bring it. Look, as for the money, as long as the bands show up, you guys get 90% what’s left of the gate after we pay the bands and the Hell’s Angels for security.”

“Right,” said Schwartz, “Atmaram is handling the money.”

“Cool.”

“Listen, Chet, I need to check the Swami’s equipment.”

“Sure,” said Helms. “Go backstage and see Wrong-way Eddie. He knows all about it.”

“All right, Chet. Come on Hawk, we’re burning daylight.”

The two of them went downstairs and walked the length of the ball room to get backstage. The ball room was a long boxy rectangle with no chairs. At a concert it would hold maybe 2,000 people standing up, maybe more depending on how close they stood. It was big enough for a good old party, but not exactly a thrilling opening night. Word was that the Fillmore had better acoustics, but the Avalon had superior light shows. The strobe light would blow a lot of people’s minds.

The ceiling was a huge mandala with a chandelier in the center. They walked to the big stage at one end of the hall, where Janis had cooled down a bit. She wore a black miniskirt with high-heeled roman sandals. She wore rows of love-beads as a necklace and multicolored bangles as jewelry. Her ginger-colored hair was frazzled and stood on end as if she had just had electroshock therapy. The microphone was working now and blasted a screech of feedback.

She grinned at Hawk and Schwartz Prabhu. She winked playfully and said, “Howdy boys, Mama’s happy to see you” into the microphone, and shook her hips.

Schwartz Prabhu turned red as they walked back stage. Behind the curtain they found Wrong Way Eddie moving amps.

“You guys are with the Swami?”

“That’s right.”

“OK, we gotta move this throne. It’s pretty heavy, so take an end.”

There was a giant throne made of plywood and decorated with red velvet. It took three of them to move it onstage. Janis was taking a smoke break. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir were plugging in their guitars as Pigpen was setting up his drum kit.

“Hare Krishna, gentleman,” said Weir as he tried a couple of riffs with a bottleneck slide. Jerry Garcia, or Captain Trips as he was known, was stoic. His head was ten thousand light years away. He nodded and Weir changed gears, playing a backup rhythm as Garcia sliced his way through a modal lead. Wrong Way said, “Over here. That’s good.” They set up the throne center stage, between the drum kit and the guitar amps. Wrong way mopped his head with a bandana. “Take a break.”

Hawk took a quick walk around the block. Outside the Ball Room, Hawk tried to catch his breath. This was the first moment he had really been alone since he had arrived from 2017. He needed to catch his bearings.

He bought the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle from a paper boy on a street corner and went over the headlines. He walked over to Lafayette Park and sat on a bench.

He saw the date on the newspaper: January 29, 1967. So it was true. He wasn’t dreaming. He looked at the headlines. The Apollo I spacecraft had exploded and was destroyed by fire in Cape Canaveral, killing all three of the American astronauts on board. Killed in the blaze were Command Pilot Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White II, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. At 6:31 in the evening, the three men were inside the capsule of the Saturn rocket, in simulation of the planned moon launch. A spark from a short-circuited wire ignited a flash fire in the pressurized cabin of pure oxygen.

Hawk looked around. Four teenage girls were walking toward Van Ness, wearing a motley of strange hippie garments: A dark woman wore a Mexican poncho with a sari and motorcycle boots, the blond had an African caftan with a Russian bearskin hat and love beads. A black man walked by wearing a sailor’s hat and a dashiki. A throng of kids sat smoking marijuana making their own kind of music with bongos and a guitar. They were singing, “Ballad of a Thin Man” by Bob Dylan: “..And you know something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is... Do you, Mister Jones?”

Hawk turned the page. In Vietnam Operation Cedar Falls was a massive search and destroy operation to pacify a stronghold of the Viet Cong, called "Iron Triangle", close to Saigon. It was either a great victory for democracy or the Eve of Destruction.  The sun was going down.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Back at the Ball Room, Hawk saw the denizens of San Francisco lining up for tickets to the Mantra Rock.

Where the mob crowded at the entrance were burly men, long hair in pony tails, rugged beards and tattooes, wearing cut-off leather vests and nazi helmets. Parked at their side were Harley Davidson choppers. They were the Hell’s Angels, stoned on acid and providing security for the Grateful Dead as agreed with the Diggers, the anarchist-Hippie Salvation Army. The Angels carried police night-sticks and looked like they meant business. Seeing Hawk, they recognized him from the Digger’s “Free” Store and let him in. “You’re with the Krishna’s right? Tell the Swami we said hello, he said with a menacing grin.”

Hawk jostled his way through the gathering audience in the ball room and made it back stage. Krishna John was there with Emmett and Schwartz Prabhu. Bhakta Congo was rehearsing a bit of drum magic with Jay Ram. The members of a rock group were fiddling with a bottleneck slide riff and a bit of rhythm. And in the back of the green room drinking red wine were a couple of newcomers chatting with Allen Ginsberg.

“Ah, Hawk,” said Ginsberg. “You made it. This is Hawk. We spent a lovely night together over at the Radha-Krishna temple, didn’t we Hawk. I was just telling these gentlemen some of the stories you told me about the 21st century. Hawk is a time-traveller, isn’t that right?”

Hawk couldn’t remember much about last night’s conversations besides Ginsberg’s rambling. Had he really told him about the 21st Century?

A kindly British gentleman with a wineglass and a twinkle in his eye lifted his head and said, “Time travel?”

Hawk recognized him from an Eastern Studies survey course he had taken at Stanford: It was Alan Watts. The man next to him was the Harvard Psychologist and LSD preacher, Timothy Leary. They had come to see Allen Ginsberg in action. Ginsberg was to kick off the mantra rock event with a short poem and a harmonium mantra chant.

Hawk began, “Well...”

He was interrupted by Dr. Leary. “What this young man is trying to say is that time transcends space and always has. Time is not bound by space; it has to do with consciousness which goes beyond. The key to time travel is pharmacological. Never forget that. Chemicals are the key to consciousness and consciousness controls time. Never refuse an opportunity to travel in time, I always say.”

“But Tim,” said Zen-master Watts. “Isn’t time really just a mental construct that keeps us from losing our egos? After all, as long as we’re addicted to time, we’re stuck in space. The wheel of time is really the wheel of birth and death, isn’t it? But then, the non-linear reality of time is more widely understood outside western culture, don’t you think? I wonder what the Swami would say. Allen?” Watts tipped his wineglass back. Leary leered.

As his coal-black beard waggled, Ginsberg’s eyes rolled in his head: “Why don’t we listen to Hawk? Tell us your story, man. Give us a Kerouackian rhapsadoodle blues on relativistic mobility through the warped waves of temporal sanity. Where did it start?”

-->

“Well, I think it started at the Paradise Hotel.”

Paradise Hotel Continuation

Krishna John's Story

As they walked together toward the entrance of the park, Krishna John told his story. He had been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam who had watched his gunner mow down screaming children and water buffalo with machine gun fire from the fiery skies over Khe San.

Upon his return, in 1965, he had renounced violence. Krishna John had been the king of the hippies before he joined the Swami. He knew all the lost and lonely hustlers who lived on the street and they respected him. He used to make his living playing a bamboo flute for nickels and dimes in the Tenderloin district in front of the strip shows that advertised live co-eds dancing on a glass table in front of your very eyes. He had walked the earth in white robes preaching the message of Jesus and giving tarot readings predicting the end of the world, before he found Krishna. But he was disgusted with the hypocrisy and lies of organized religion and the Vietnam war and found his guru in the Swami when he preached the maha-mantra at the Morning Star Ranch .

Krishna John beamed an angelic smile and said, “Hare Krishna, Prabhu. Walk with me.” They strolled past a derelict Chevy with the wheels on blocks parked on the street, and turned the corner into Buena Vista Park.

Krishna John fell silent as they entered the Park. An owl descended from the branches of a live oak and swooped past them, landing atop a clump of elm trees. The cool San Francisco mist shrouded the path in fog as they were shadowed by the majestic pines. Krishna John removed a small bag from his flowing robes. He reached inside and withdrew the loop of wooden rosary. Adjusting its length he returned it to the pouch which he held around his neck with a strap. He began muttering:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare...

Here, smothered by huge trees, the din of the city was remote and it was easy to forget the madness outside. The path led to a moss-covered stairway. Krishna John led the way.

They past a tangle of orange and purple flowers and wild nasturtiums. Hawk found the roses growing in the hollow of a live oak that he had seen the night before. The winding trail through the hilltop forest opened a bit and the fog lifted, allowing a ray of sunshine through the canopy. A pair of mourning doves flitted by noisily flapping their wings. Krishna John stopped, as if sensing something.

Ahead on the path, underneath a huge redwood, stood a robed figure dressed in saffron. The clouds shifted again, illuminating the Swami. He was strolling through the wooded grove, taking the holy name. We could hear him:

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

Krishna John approached him. It was an impressive sight to see this gentle giant fall on his knees before his gurudeva and then prostrate himself completely, stretching himself full length in the dust of the path. Hawk followed his example. A curious hummingbird stopped in midair.

Krishna John said,

नम ओं विष्णु-पादाय कृष्ण-प्रेष्ठाय भू-तले श्रीमते भक्तिवेदान्त स्वामिन् इति नामिने

नमस् ते सारस्वते देवे गौर-वाणी-प्रचारिणे निर्विशेष-शून्यवादि-पाश्चात्य-देश-तारिणे

nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale śrīmate bhaktivedānta svāmin iti nāmine

namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe

“I offer my respectful obeisances unto His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who is very dear to Lord Krishna, having taken shelter at His lotus feet. Our respectful obeisances are unto you, O spiritual master, servant of Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami. You are kindly preaching the message of Lord Chaitanyadeva and delivering the Western countries, which are filled with impersonalism and voidism.”

The Swāmi looked up and noticed Krishna John. He smiled in acknowledgment and signaled for them to come near. Hawk and Krishna John walked to where he stood.

“Krishna John,” he said, “Why are you not back at the temple? And who is this boy?”

“This is Hawk, Swamiji. He was at the program this morning, a friend of Allen’s.”

“Ah yes.”

“I was taking him for japa walk. We’re trying to remember Krishna before going to the event. It’s really crazy on the street.”

“Yes, it is Kali-yuga.”

Hawk said, “I see many young people are coming.”

The Swami began walking up the path. “These young people are lost. But they are sympathetic. Wherever we preach our message we will find young people who are sympathetic. They are naturally attracted. Krishna is naturally attractive, just like a magnet.”

As they turned up the trail, a view of the City of San Francisco appeared, framed through the branches of cypress trees. The setting sun shined at the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“This Hare Krsna mantra is so easy to utter, that any man can utter. That we have experienced. Any part of the world, we chant Hare Krsna, and they can very easily imitate and chant. Even child, they also. So by chanting, he gradually becomes Krsna conscious. His heart becomes cleansed and he can understand what is science of Krsna, what is science of God. ”

They began winding back up the trail to the city.

Hawk said, “And what about these Hippies, Swamiji.”

As they reached the entrance to the park, they came upon a group of flower children with hippie beads smoking marijuana with some bikers. The Swami flashed an engaging smile: “I have come to make all the hippies into happies,” he said as a Volkswagen minibus pulled up to the entrance of the park. It was Atmaram. “Do your best to remember Krishna and always chant the holy name,” said the Swami as he rounded the car. The door swung open and The VW took off.

Krishna John said, “Come on we have work to to.”

Back at the temple, it was time for action.

Drawings

Now that I'm officialy on school vacation I'm working on charcoal sketches. The idea is if I continue working a bit every day, I'll improve. Maybe after about 500 of these I'll know more about drawing. 

This is  "Hari-katha" a group of sadhus maybe from a distant age, discussing life and sharing their truths.

I tried a sketch of Avadhut Maharaja...

Here's Goswami Maharaja, preaching. 

This is a pastel sketch of Govinda Maharaja. I like the way it came out.

Here's a yogi...

This is a sadhu, maybe explaining something...

This is called "Initiation." 

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.”