Many people in the hip community made cash by selling the Bird. The Bird deal made it so you couldn’t lose money and could, by selling regularly, make a decent living by hippie standards.
Birds were mailed to me at Oxford College and I sold them in the cafeteria evenings. It was considered uncool to not pay over the stated price and magnanimously say, “Keep the change!”
Fridays I would race in my slow but steady Celestial Omnibus VW in I-20, up I-75 to the Birdhouse on 14th, to start. If I had money, I’d buy Birds. If not, they would front a few to sell, return and repeat until you had cash to buy Birds to carry wherever to sell.
Weekends I’d try to get 14th and Peachtree where the Uniform company had a lawn shaded by huge trees. People would hang out and talk to you or nap in the shade. The job was to barker Birds. You could walk along the edge of the street holding the latest cover up to see and try to catch the eye of each driver. Acting a bit for the tourists always got money.
It was always a a trip. friday and Saturday nights young, rich hipsters headed to the park would pay not 25 cents, but $5 to the “real” hippie selling Birds. Determined to be wild suburban middle aged couples where the woman wanted to “kiss a real hippie”, you’d let the husband show off by leeringly asking for marijuana by some cool, unknown nickname he had heard who knows where, and ask if it was true it was an aphrodisiac. Or pass you party favors of one style or another to be hidden under the tree until you were ready to leave. You also met a lot of good friendly folks.
Cops would come by and stop. Some decently friendly. Some on power trip staring and trying to make you nervous enough to step in the street and be arrested for “impeding traffic” even if the street was empty.
My worst experience came on my second day selling at that corner. A really fat young crewcut cop on a tricycle pulled up stopping just inches from my feet. he took his time standing up on the trike and swinging over one ham leg and stepping down. A moment to work that gunbelt around and up to where there should have been a waist. straighten his cap. Then suddenly pull his gun and crouch pointing it at my face a few inches away. I had grown up in a small town and until that very minute I had thought all cops were peace officers just making everyone safe. This cop changed my mind when he said a word aloud I had only seen in print before, and rarely then.
“Come on MotherF__ker! Give me a reason to shoot! Please, you hippie Mother___ker!” he screamed blowing spit like some redneck sheriff caricature in a drive-in movie. His manner, the gun in my face and what he had screamed outloud scared me to death, and it showed. He held the pose oblivious to the horrified faces in cars streaming by. He held it through a stoplight cycle and a half, as judged by cars stopping. He laughed cruelly and put up his gun. Chuckling he walked back and laboriously swung his ham back over the trike’s gas tank. Like any good silly movie, it wouldn’t crank till the third try then sputtered alive. He charged forward and I had to jump aside as he rode off very pleased with himself.
This was absolutely shocking to me and was a step in radicalizing my view of mindless authority.
One of the best days selling the Bird was before the start of the Second Atlanta Pop Festival. There was no bread to spare at my house so we were not planning to go down to Byron. Then a parade of incredible vehicles of hippies just checking out The Strip before heading down to Byron proceeded down Peachtree. Amazing painted cars and schoolbuses revamped into sculptures on wheels. A sparkling city dump truck with music blasting from inside. The driver laughed, pushed a lever and the tail end rose open like to dump. Inside was furniture, an 8-track blasting and about ten stoned laughing people trying to run up the curved shiny insides.
By dark I raced home and told Gabi to get some stuff and let’s call some people and head down to this party. We’ll just play in the parking lot, we don’t need to get in front of the stage to hear the good music. Anyway there is suppose to be a free stage off in the woods a bit. We packed the Celestial Omnibus and drove through the night to Byron. The expressway was clogged as we got near.
We crossed the median and went back an exit and drove the wrong way down a parallel access road with lights out then turned out through a field towards lots of lights. Soon we had stumbled into the festival past cops trying to turn back the multitudes already peacefully ignoring them. It was worth the trip.