Remembering Kusama: In 1968, artist, Yayoi Kusama joined Joey Skaggs’ Hippie Bus Tour to Queens. In a satirical ironic reversal, the group toured neighborhoods and snapped photos of suburbanites mowing their lawns and washing their cars. When the group stopped at Hillside’s Nirvana head shop in Queens, the “Group Image” band played while Kusama painted polka dots on the naked dancers.
Sadly, my friend Paul Krassner, satirist, activist, comedian, author, and publisher of The Realist, has passed away. Since the 1960s, he was always there for me, as I was for him.
Paul Krassner, right, in 1969 with, from left, Ed Sanders of the rock group the Fugs and Abbie Hoffman. Mr. Krassner helped start the Yippie movement and was the founder of The Realist magazine. Credit The New York Times
He was a prankster, a master of the put-on that thumbed its nose at what he saw as a stuffy and blundering political establishment. Continue reading “Paul Krassner, RIP”
The Haight-Ashbury movement left an undeniable impact upon the world and the reverberations of the psychedelic sixties are still being felt today. Strangely there is no museum dedicated to keeping the history alive and relevant for the millions of visitors who come to San Francisco searching for inspiration and authenticity. A non-profit community supported museum will permanently cement San Francisco as the home of psychedelia. Our intention is for the museum to become an attraction in and of itself that will educate and inspire visitors for generations to come to reinvent the world according to how they want to live.
