From The Archives- “Strobe Light’s Beams Creates Dreams”-The
Summer Of Love, 1967-The AARP’s Take
By Political Commentator Frank
Jackman
Early this year driven by my old corner
boys, Alex James and Sam Lowell, I had begun to write some pieces in this space
about things that happened in a key 1960s year, 1967. The genesis of this work
is based on of all things a business trip that Alex took to San Francisco
earlier this spring. While there he noted on one of the ubiquitous mass transit
buses that crisscross the city an advertisement for an exhibition at the de
Young Art Museum located in Golden Gate Park. That exhibition The Summer of Love, 1967 had him cutting
short a meeting one afternoon in order to see what it was all about. What it
was all about aside the nostalgia effect for members of the now ragtag
Generation of ‘68 was an entire floor’s worth of concert poster art, hippy
fashion, music and photographs of that noteworthy year in the lives of some of
those who came of age in the turbulent 1960s. The reason for Alex playing hooky
was that he had actually been out there that year and had imbibed deeply of the
counter-culture for a couple of years out there after that.
Alex had not been the only one who had
been smitten by the Summer of Love bug because when he returned to Riverdale
outside of Boston where he now lives he gathered up all of the corner boys from
growing up North Adamsville still standing to talk about, and do something
about, commemorating the event. His first contact was with Sam Lowell the old
film critic who also happened to have gone out there and spent I think about a
year there, maybe a little more. As had most of the old corner boys for various
lengths of time usually a few months. Except me. Alex’s idea when he gathered
all of us together was to put together a small commemoration book in honor of
the late Peter Paul Markin. See Markin, always known as “Scribe” after he was
dubbed that by our leader Frankie Riley, was the first guy to go out there when
he sensed that the winds of change he kept yakking about around the corner on
desolate Friday and Saturday nights when we had no dough, no girls, no cars and
no chance of getting any of those quickly were coming west to east.
Once everybody agreed to do the book
Alex contacted his youngest brother Zack, the fairly well known writer, to edit
and organize the project. I had agreed to help as well. The reason I had
refused to go to San Francisco had been that I was in the throes of trying to
put together a career as a political operative by attempting to get Robert
Kennedy to run against that naked sneak thief of a sitting President, Lyndon
Baines Johnson, who had us neck deep in the big muddy of Vietnam and had no
truck with hippies, druggies or “music is the revolution” types like those who
filled the desperate streets around Haight-Ashbury. Then. Zack did a very good job and we are proud of
tribute to the not forgotten still lamented late Scribe who really was a mad
man character and maybe if he had not got caught up in the Army, in being
drafted, in being sent to Vietnam which threw him off kilter when he got back he
might still be around to tell us what the next big trend will be.
The corner boys from the old Acre neighborhood
in North Adamsville are, as the article below demonstrates, not the only ones
who are thinking about the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love.
AARP with a sure grip on the demographics of its brethren has tipped its hat as
well. While I disagree somewhat with the author of the article about the connection
between the Summer of Love participants and later social movements like women’s
liberation, gay liberation and a serious interest in ecology no question 50 years
later looking at the art, the posters, photographs and listening to the music
makes me once again realize that in that time “to be young was very heaven.”
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