Category Archives: tell your story

Deborah Taylor

tell your story

I was just sitting here on this drab Saturday thinking about some fond memories of my youth. Although I wasn’t born in Atlanta, I’ve lived here since I was 5.  I’ve seen Atlanta grow and grow and grow.  I truly believe that air-conditioning was the ruination of the South.

My hippie experience started when I was 15 and went on a family trip to San Francisco.  My aunt would take me down to the Haight-Ashbury look at the “hippies”.  WOW! I felt such a connection with them.  One day while visiting my family, I struck out on my own and went down to Golden Gate Park.  They were having some sort of concert there.  The people were unlike any others that I had met in my whole young life. I spent all day there.  When I returned, my Mom had our car packed and they whisked me away.  I was changed for life.  From then on, I didn’t care what people thought of me because I knew there were some people out there who were totally accepting.

Fast forward to 1969.  I had heard rumblings of hippies down on P’tree St.  I had to check it out.  My girlfriend and I would make up stories to our parents. We dressed “respectably” in their eyes and have our “hippie” clothes in our trunk. We changed at a gas station and we would head straight for the strip.  I spent many wonderful afternoons and nights there.  I remember getting thrown out of the Waffle House on 14th St. just for the way we were dressed.

I remember the riot in the Park, the overturned police car and the big clash on the baseball field between the “freaks” and the cops.  When I went home that evening it was on the news and I was in a panic that my parents would see me there.  My Mom watched and said “see what could happen to you if you went down there”.  I just kinda smiled.  I saw Canned Heat at the Sports Arena, The Allman Brother, Alice Cooper, The James Gang and many others at the Municipal Auditorium. Grand Funk Railroad, Ted Nugent at the Agora Ballroom.I love the “strip” and all the things that went along with it.  Met my first lover there.

I felt that things started to go bad around 1971 or 1972.  You couldn’t trust just anyone anymore. The park became dangerous after dark.  You had to watch out for thieves. It just wasn’t the same anymore.  But it was so much fun while it lasted.  I miss it.- Deborah Taylor

14th Street Art

history, tell your story

object009I came to Atlanta in 1965 after graduating NYU film school. I had gotten a job with Georgia Public Television. I moved into a stable/garage on 14th street, behind the house rented by WRFG co-founder Harlan Joy. When the shack burned I stayed a month at Bill and Linda Fibben‘s further down on 14th street which became a center for counterculture activities.

In 1967, having attended dozens of experimental film showings in New York I decided, with help from friends, to try to bring them to Atlanta. I rented the Art theater on 14th street for Friday and Saturday midnight screenings, booked films from the cinemateque in New York, and from October to January showed the works of Stan Brakage, Gregory Markopolus, Ed Emshwiller, Ken Jacobs, the Kuchar Brothers, Jack Smith, Adolpus Mekas, etc. It cost a $1.50 to attend and we sold out every night. (Local film distributors thought I had discovered a gold mine and wanted to know how to get in on the action.)

One night I showed an hour documentary on Lenny Bruce- the other hour the Hampton Grease Band performed. Another night I showed the actively enjoyed trippy feature “Lovers of Teruel”. The eclectic series ended when the backers, Diane Berger and Justice Randolph, realized that even though we were selling out, the costs of advertising and booking the films and the rental were losing us money. Alas, it was much fun while it lasted, and the theater itself soon followed us under. The attached is a poster that I stapled to trees on the Strip and the Emory campus. In 1969 I made a film for Vista featuring a buying cooperative in Cabbage Town for which I filmed the Fulton Cotton Mills in operation. I believe it is if not the only, certainly the last, film footage of the Mills up and running. The film is noteworthy also because of the interviewed Cabbagetown locals. Later, I established a film production company, Synapse Films, where I introduced numerous ex UGA art majors into the art of making money as grips in the motion picture industry. David Moscovitz

Shane’s Tale

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Well here goes, some of my favorite times on the strip or 14th street area happened after dark. like going into the Varsity on 14th street and being told you can’t come in dressed like that so shedding your clothes…. only once mind you! The times of copping behind Atlantis Rising from Derrick and wondering if he would ever return with your stuff only to realize he wouldn’t…flew to L.A. with the tickets he found in the pocket of a coat he “borrowed” from another mark. Hearing the wild stories of Jamaica from Stevie Parker or climbing out of windows on 13th street squats when the cops were coming in the front….Yeah those were the daze my friends we thought we’d never end….

KerryThornley used to give me handouts of his life…it was something I became used to what I never got quite used to was running into him. I was on a bus in south Atlanta that I had never ridden and he sits down beside me and starts showing me his latest printing just like it was the most normal thing to do, and it was after a while. It got so I could walk into a restaurant and he’d be serving me or eating whatever. I just got to a point where seeing Kerry was a matter of life and now I miss him, sleep tight little brother.

[Kerry J. Thornley, was an unusual  personage with an amazing life that defies Logic. Google him and Oswald and JFK]

Gypsy – Pat Rhodes Pursley

tell your story

My best experience?  The whole time period.  I basically spent the years from age

15 to 18 in the Midtown area.  We had a house over on Vedado Way we rented for

a while… I wish I could remember all the people who hung out there.  I remember

Buddy and Roger…  but, well, I must say, there were quite a few drug induced hazes

from that time period.

One of my good friends at the time was a gay guy called “Snowball”.

He was my 1st encounter with a cross-dresser and I loved him totally!

I’d say the worse thing was the cops.  We were hasselled all the time!

I remember one confrontation behind the Catacombs and one cop attacking one of my friends.

I remember jumping on his back but running away– and getting away amazingly

before back up came!  Getting things thrown at us from passing cars wasn’t so great either

but hey, we were who we were and we were proud of it!  We were the Age of Aquarius!

 

Oh and panhandling was so much fun. (yeah right) I got more money one day saying

my dog was in the pound and I needed to get him out than I ever got when I said I

was hungry…  of course, now that I’m an adult I understand that mentality.

 

All the concerts at Piedmont Park were great. I saw the Allman Bros there.

I  had a couple of girlfriends were very close to them. The horror of the day

Duane died is still so very clear in my mind. “Little Linda” introduced me to

quite a few bands in those years.

 

I attended both Atlanta Pop Festivals. Not that I remember a whole lot about them.

I do remember popping some bad Mescaline and being sick as a dog while I listened

to my favorite man, Terry Reid doing his set…

 

Saw many wonderful — and not so wonderful –bands at the Ballroom and Sports Arena.

Matter of fact, I got my 1st and only tattoo after having a few too many Sloe Gin Fizzes at the Ballroom!

Oh and remember the Krystal on Peachtree?  Use to hang out there alot…

and the Clermont Hotel… stayed there a while.  Hard to believe they are just now

closing it down… it was a real dump back then!!

 

Every time I smell Patchouli oil, I think of the head shop on 8th Street!

 

The memories from that time are some of my best.  How I lived through it I’ll never know.

How I had two beautiful and perfectly healthy children is a miracle!!

Known then as GYPSY because of the large hoop earrings I always wore.

I can truthfully say that if I could redo my life, I would repeat that part time and time again!

Thank you for listening,

Pat Rhodes Pursley

Hippie tales /runaway

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I came to the Strip as a runaway in ’67 at 15 years old.  I remember meeting a guy named Mike Ash and crashed with him and a bunch of folks at an apartment on 15th Street I think it was.

I was  “located” by my family and had to go home, but my parents allowed me to return weekends and hang out, simply because they knew I would run away again if I had to.

The Catacombs was the place to be at that time. I became friends with the guys from Celestial Voluptuous Banana. Good times.

I remember a few years later walking down 14th Street and folks talking about going

to Woodstock.  Everybody thought at the time it was just going to be a few bands.

Nothing special…

Arlo

photographers, tell your story

We’ve just met Arlo, as he wishes to be known. He was also on The Strip when it was aborning. But he had a good camera and knew how to use it. He has the only known picture of Middle Earth Headshop as well as the best pictures from July 7, 1969 when The Grateful Dead played a surprise concert in Piedmont Park with several bands that had played the just finished Atlanta Pop Festival.

strange workday at Atlantis Rising

Community, tell your story

The Hip Job service sent me to work with the crew renovating the grocery store into Atlantis Rising. It was the most unique and friendly place. Anyone felt welcomed to hang out under the inside tree in the gallery. There was an old wino, Jacob, who had been given acid which had dried him out. Now he was a philosopher mostly ex-drunk, still-bum expert on living on the fringes. He stood ready to share his advice and opinions with anyone who showed the slightest interest.  My directions were to listen to Jacob and do what he said until lunch, but then I was to take charge if Jacob was intoxicated and he would still follow directions very well. On the corner of 10th and Peachtree going East past the liquor store was a stereotypical Chinese laundry. The man who owned and operated it was called Mr. Chin. He  still dressed in Chinese robes and knew little English. What English he did know was almost impossible to understand because of his accent. He as known for his excellent cleaning and had over the years of hard work put three kids through college. They were all middle-class now and begged him to leave the area now Hippies had over run it. Mr. Chin liked Hippies. They were polite and did not mistreat or make fun of him.

At the end of each month Mr. Chin brought all the clothes that had been unclaimed over a month at his shop, to the free store the Diggers ran inside Atlantis Rising. Each afternoon he came to sip tea under the inside tree and play chess with speed freaks. His opponents mumbled away ninety to nothing. Mr. Chin talked excitedly and emotionally in Chinese and English, occasionally waving his hands. Neither opponent understood anything the other said, but they would at times look at the other and nod with deep understanding. I watched many games and could never discern any rules. Mr. Chin or his speed-freak opponent would pick up a piece and move it in any direction for any number of jumps. Sometimes checkers were added. This might be followed by excited talk and a piece being removed from or placed back upon the table. The same player might take several turns in a row. Sometimes disputes arose and  incomprehensible arguments ensued. Weirdly, babbling back and forth always seemed to bring them to mutual satisfaction and the game continued. At some point they  seemed to just as incomprehensibly decide one of them had won. They would shake, Mr. Chin would bow deeply. And each went their separate ways.

      Watching these wonderland games was the most intriguing thing of an already strange workday at Atlantis Rising.

– mystere2

Great Speckled Memories

tell your story, The Bird

Back when The Bird really was The Word.

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 for all 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.  “Step off the curb, MotherF—–!”.