San Francisco Trips Festival
January 22, 1966
Longshoreman's Hall
What can I say about the Trips Festival? Wild and woolly? Unprecedented? A landmark event?
.......... Yes! Were you there when they..........?
In the first place, how could the law allow so many people in one place at one time? It was sardine heaven. But instead of a tin can, it was a dome. I had arranged to meet an old girlfriend in front and we pulled that off. But I didn't see her the rest of the night! The law didn't want one hombre there because he had just been arrested a couple nights before on a rooftop for having a stash. He put the neurons to work and came up with a spacesuit disguise. Kesey was the name, I think. I bumped into him with my camera and didn't know who it was, by golly, till 33 years later. How's that for a flashback?
Well, thank goodness for the pictures, otherwise I wouldn't remember much of anything. I don't know what possessed me to take my camera that Saturday night, cause I just kept bumping into people with it. I was afraid to set it down and it sure made it hard to dance. So I just watched the
dancing.
And the dancing, it was ecstatic, beyond --- with color lights moving and pictures merging/changing/undulating on the walls. Some of those images looked like inside the womb or amoebas or something. Kinda like re-birthing or going way back to the beginning of life forms. We were in a dome that could have been a cave. Combined with that new freeform rock music the San Francisco bands were playing, it sure got under your skin. Talk about multi-media: that was the beginning, the signal event for mind-blowing entertainment for the rest of the century. There wasn't a dull minute to be had. There was no quick escape, either. Don't anybody hit the fire alarm -- pullleeeeeeeezzzz!
Now the idea was to make the whole thing seem like an LSD trip without the LSD. That appealed to me because I couldn't imagine wanting to be in a place with 1500 people all tripping on LSD. But still there was a rumor that the punch might be laced with the stuff, just like at Kesey's Acid Test parties and events. I never found out. I suspect a few people partook before they arrived. Garcia said everybody was zonked, but I don't think so. You didn't need to be, just like they said - promise kept.
This was one of the most anticipated events I can remember in the Haight-Ashbury the 5 years I was there between 1965 and 70. The Human Be-In would be right up there with it, but the Be-In was kind of a bust according to some; lousy sound. Too spread out. Too much daylight, maybe. Some of the Love-Ins and spontaneous things that congealed in Golden Gate Park (mostly the Panhandle) were more engaging as happenings. But the Trips Festival (I can't really speak for the other 2 nights) was one of those events where time seems to meet destiny. There was magic in the air and you didn't have to be chemically altered to feel it. But the chemistry could have had something to do with it.
Well, let's thank the gods for occasionally being in the right place at the right time.
Rod Mann, 1999
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