What you catch glimpses of, aside from the period-costume detail everyone expects from this time and place—incense sticks, love beads, bad dancing—is the grime of actually existing hippiedom: chainsmoking guys with scabs on their noses and dirt under their fingernails who stole their friends’ records, ate chili dogs and shot A, huddled in stuffy rooms, “rapping.” So this is the vaunted innocence my elders cry over, huh? (…)
If this type of footage is “your bag,” there’s a lot more at the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, where a search for “KPIX 1967” yields over 1,000 results.
UPDATE: A loyal 5FF reader reminds me of Ed Driscoll’s frequent, always edifying citations of Tom Wolfe’s observations about Haight hygiene.
