In addition to the two bound "Free City" sets (Free
City Set 1, Free City Set 2) and the series of
Free
City News sheets, the Gestetner machines in the basement of the Willard
Street commune cranked out a plethora of beautiful artwork, inspiring
poetry, and announcements. For lack of a better category, the term
"Miscellany" will have to do.
Much of the material here was donated by
Linn (Freeman) House after a house fire and consequently appears singed
around the edges. Nevertheless, the value of the Free City Publishing
operation is clearly visible even amidst the smoke smudges.
For annotated transcriptions of a selection of these items, see the section
below the Gallery. Note: as of December 2023, we have implemented a new
"ONE CLICK" technique for expanding/contracting thumbnail/full-size
images. Click once to expand, click again to contract any image.
MEDIA CREATED THE HIPPIE WITH YOUR HUNGRY CONSENT. BE SOMEBODY. CAREERS ARE
TO BE HAD FOR THE ENTERPRISING HIPPIE. The media cast nets, create bags for
the identity-hungry to climb in. Your face on TV, your style immortalized
without soul in the captions of the Chronicle. NBC says you exist, ergo I
am. Narcicism, [sic] plebian vanity. The victim immortalized. Black power,
its transcendant [sic] threat of white massacre the creation of media-whore
obsequious bowers to the public mind which they recreate because they too
have nothing to create and the reflections run in perpetual anal circuits
and the FREE MAN vomits his images and laughs in the clouds because he is
the great evader, the animal who haunts the jungles of image and sees no
shadow, only the hunter's gun and knows sahib is too slow and he flexes his
strong loins of FREE and is gone again from the nets. They fall on empty air
and waft helplessly to the grass.
DEATH OF HIPPY END/FINISHED HIPPYEE GONE GOODBYE HEHPPEEEE DEATH DEATH
HHIPPEE
death 1. the act or fact of dying; permanent ending of all life in a person,
animal, or plant. 2. (D-), the personification of death, usually pictured as
a skeleton in a black robe, holding a scythe. 3. the state of being dead. 4.
any ending resembling dying; as, the death of fascism. 5. any condition or
experience thought of as like dying or being dead: as, it was death for her
to have to see him again. 6. the cause of death: as, the atomic bomb was
death to thousands. 7. murder or bloodshed. 8. (Obs.), pestilence: as, the
Black Death.
EXORCISE HAIGHT/ASHBURY CIRCLE THE HASBURY [sic] FREE THE BOUNDARIES OPEN
EXORCISE
exorcise 1. to drive (a supposed evil spirit or spirits) out or away by
ritual charms or incantation. 2. to summon or command (such a spirit or
spirits) 3. to free from such a spirit or spirits.
YOU ARE FREE. WE ARE FREE. DO NOT BE RECREATED. BELIEVE ONLY YOUR OWN
INCARNATE SPIRIT. Create, Be…..Do not be created. This is your land, your
City. No one can portion it out to you. The H/Ashbury was portioned to us by
Media=Police and the tourists came to the Zoo to see the captive animals and
we growled fiercely behind the bars we accepted and now we are no longer
hippies and never were and the City is ours to create from, to be in. It is
our tool, part of the first creation which the FREE MAN creates his new
world from.
BIRTH OF FREE MAN FREE SAN FRANCISCO INDEPENDENCE FREE AMERICANS BIRTH
birth 1. the act of bringing forth offspring. 2. a person or thing born or
produced. 3. the act of being born; nativity. 4. descent or origin. 5.
descent from nobility. 6. the beginning of anything, as the birth of a
nation. 7. an inherited or natural inclination to act in certain ways; as,
an actor by birth.
DO NOT BE BOUGHT WITH A PICTURE, A PHRASE,,,,DO NOT BE CAPTURED IN WORDS.
THE CITY IS OURS. YOU ARE ARE ARE. TAKE WHAT IS YOURS…..TAKE WHAT IS YOURS
THE BOUNDRIES [sic] ARE DOWN SAN FRANCISCO IS FREE NOW FREE THE TRUTH IS OUT
OUT OUT
truth 1. the quality or state of being true; specifically, a) formerly,
loyalty; trustworthiness. b) sincerity; genuineness; honesty. c) the quality
of being in accordance with experience, facts, or reality; conformity with
fact. d) reality; actual existence. e) agreement with a standard, rule,
etc.; correctness; accuracy. 2. that which is true; statement, etc., which
accords with fact or reality. 3. an established or verified fact, principle,
etc.
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the the [sic] consent of the governed. —That whenever any Form
of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their Safely and Happiness.
OCTOBER 6, 1967
October 6, 1967
The Psychedelic Shop
Born Jan. 3rd, 1966…. Died Oct. 6th, 1967
Led one hell of a healthy life
God….Let us work together
Survived graduate course education
in City administration,
Law and Order,
Freedom of the press
Freedom of Religion
Democracy in action
Diggers kicked us in the ass, Thank you
Love to the Diggers
Love to Chester
Hari Krishna Hari Krishna
LSD is good medicine
Love it to death
Death? is life….some kind of truism
We really were trying to do a good thing.
Glory, Glory Hallelujah
Dig the Great Spirit
Listen to the Indians
Listen to the trees
We live on the Planet Earth
revolving around the Sun
Hymn to the gentle Sun
The Sun is Free
You are Free
We are Free
God so loved the world
Once upon a time
There was a Psychedelic Shop
That tried to save the World
and succeeded
and then went on to save the Universe
God only knows
and we are God
and God is FREE.
[Printed on letterhead stationery for: "the psychedelic shop books records
art works / 1535 Haight Street San Francisco 94117 861-7074"]
October 6, 1967
[Recto:]
OCTOBER SIXTH
NINTETEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY SEVEN
DAY OF DEATH
Free sunrise October sixth Buena Vista Park
Hover over the city merge with morning magic
Early morning sweep down Haight Street
Brooms at Be Free 1535 Avenue of the Americas
Secure within the Great Spirit
Tourists provided with funeral stickers
Become official metal fume box death procession…
Share images of death
Procession circling the Media-Ashbury
Religious leaders following religious leaders
Exorcism within which personal exorcisms are free
Taking place all over death
As the funeral cars pass through
The Valley of the Shadow of Leadership
The Ungiveable given as the coffin
In solemn procession receives
And circles and burns on a garbage pyre
MAN IS DEAD. LONG LIVE MAN !
[Verso:]
[Swirling spiral design with the following inscribed
notations:
Oct.
6
1967
1966
1965
Hippie
Digger
$3.50
Love
Pizza
Speed?
Media
Time / Life / Look
Om
Krishna
Soul
Hopi
Thoreau
Pot
W.C. Fields
Ginsberg
Watts
Bogart
Snyder
Leary
FREE
POEMS
L.S.D.
Berg
Bird
NOW
Emmett Grogan
Fritsch
John Garfield
Gypsie
Beat
Stew
Hobo
Owsley
[and others unreadable]
Recto
Verso
November 5, 1967
THE END OF THE WAR
STRAIGHT THEATRE
NOV 5
8PM
Ca. February 1968
One of the various reproductions of the "1% Free" image that was first
created by the beginning of February 1968. The first version was
spray-painted on butcher paper and pasted on outdoor walls around the city.
Subsequently, it was reproduced in posters, newspaper articles, and cards.
This is one of the cards in 4" x 5" format. Peter Berg and Judy Goldhaft
talk about the idea and repercussions of the image in the oral history
interview on this site.
Dating: The first appearance of the term "1% Free" (along with a
reproduction of this image) was in the San Francisco Express Times, Feb. 29,
1968, on the cover and an inner page with a description of the Free City
Bank. Thus, the determination of "ca. Feb 1968" for dating.
Ca. February 1968
These were the faces and hands that were cut out and pasted onto the "1%
Free" large posters that were pasted around the city, ca. Feb. 1968. The
hand-written instructions read:
(filled-in black areas are to speed up cutting shapes out.)
Dating: See above "1% Free" card for explanation.
N.D. Ca. February 1968.
FREE STREET
FREE HUEY
Note: the photo of Huey Newton sitting on a rattan throne chair first
appeared in The Black Panther newspaper, Nov. 23, 1967, under the headline
"Huey Must Be Set Free." According to the timeline on the "Free
Huey Movement" web, the phrase "Free Huey" originated in December 1967
after the Black Panther Party formed a coalition with the Peace and Freedom
Party. This Free City sheet likely appeared in the coming weeks or months. A
large "Free Huey" rally took place on Feb. 17, 1968 at the Oakland
Auditorium. The first of three trials for Huey Newton's October 1967 arrest
for the murder of an Oakland police office took place in July 1968.
March 20, 1968 (Vernal Equinox Celebration)
ABANDON THE DEATHLY CLUTCH
the star ram wakes in the green heavens
his head is garlanded with flowers
and he sets his feet on the path of fire
the children walk beside him
offering themselves to each other
they walk through the fire and survive
the inn-keeper fears the flame
and tries to flee
but he has waited too long
the building is become a desert
and the landlord is a stranger to himself
the star ram walks the planet
and his hooves strike fire from the earth
all the seeds that have been planted
bloom
the flowering weed destroys the vaults of marble
the onlooker finds no shelter from the wind
the children build houses together
sharing their tools and their love songs
offering themselves to each other
they walk through the fire
and survive
new consciousness arises
CAN I?
BLOODLIGHT LOVE PLUNGE
YES
WHALE MEAT
WAIL MEET
VERNAL EQUINOX CELEBRATION MARCH 20
SPEEDWAY MEADOWS GOLDEN GATE PARK
April 14, 1968 (announcing Easter celebration at Polo Grounds, Golden
Gate Park)
BIG HUGE LUMINOUS THE FLOWING EYES OF GOD PLAYING BEAMS OF INEXHAUSTIBLE
LIGHT OF THE INNER BODY NOW ACROSS SPACE TO DEEP WITHIN OUR PLANET AND WE
THE PLANET'S PEOPLE — INTO OUR HEADS THESE EYES DISCHARGE WARMTH OF VAST
LOVELYNESS MAKING TO SWELL FROM ITS HIDDEN PLACE THE RESOUNDING BEAMS OF
HEART/FORCE SPIRAL SPREADING FUSION UPON FUSION OF GREETING LIKE THE RAINBOW
RAYS OF OLD MOVIE TRAVELOGUE WITH THE GUY'S HEAD AT POINT EMINATION CENTER.
YOU ARE ALL, EACH OF YOU, UNIVERSES — RISING ORBS THOSE EYES ROTATING UPON
THE LUBRICANT OF FINEST LIGHT, AND OF TIDES. WITHIN THE EACH OF YOU THERE IS
SPACE THE EQUAL OF ALL WITHOUT — YOU FIT WITHIN YOURSELF, AND THIS
PERFECTLY, AND THAT OF YOU WHICH FITS INTO YOUR SPACE IS ITSELF FITTED INTO
PERFECTLY. YOU ARE WITHIN A HUMAN BODY MANY TIMES, AND AT ONCE. YOU MAY
STUDY THE NIGHT SKY BY CLOSING YOUR EYES. AND THE BRIGHT AND SILENCE IS
THERE, FOR IT ALSO IS YOU. YOU LIVE SIMULTANEOUSLY MANY TIMES WITHIN YOUR
HUMAN BODY, AS DO MANY HUMAN BODIES WITHIN THE OUTER SPACE OF THE WORLD, AS
MANY WORLDS LIVE FURTHER UPON THE SPACE OF UNIVERSE — THE SINGLE SONG OF
UNIVERSE.
SECOND COMING
EASTER
POLO GROUNDS
May 1, 1968
[Poster announcing the Free City Convention]
HOW DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?
FREE CITY CONVENTION / A VOTE FOR ME IS A VOTE FOR YOU / MAY DAY /
CAROUSEL BALLROOM / MARKET & VAN NESS / 7PM / BRING SOME FOOD
[Lettering around the Seal of the City and County of San Francisco]
Ca. July 31, 1968.
HONKIE HEAVEN
The ongoing attempt commercialize the free community for thrills and
profit is perhaps most crudely represented at the moment by a racket called,
curiously, the Haight Ashbury Store. Honkie Heaven would be more like it.
With the characteristic self-depreciation of the self-conscious neauveaux-capitalists
[sic] (if I didn't do it someone else would, I'm only taking orders etc.)
the manager admits that he's pushing plastic shit. That being his shot he's
got a piece and admits to having used it on street people. The dudes call
the man quicker than you can say Police Community Relations. It's a sick
scene and a prime example of the kind of parasitic greed that sucks the
energy of the community.
The dudes are using their ill-got gain to expand their plastic pushing
operation into the front part of Moe's building next store. They've got the
bread and it would be an easy (albeit ugly) solution for Moe. (It reminds me
of Joe Alioto's easy acceptance of Eviloil Hunt's proposal for the Alcatraz
Monument to dominate the city. Hunt's a heavy evil magician and digs how
important it is to put the billion dollar technological wammy on Freesco
with a towering monument commemerating [sic] THE FREEDOM TO KILL.
MOE, with stipulations, said that the back of the place could be used by the
people. The place was sprung (liberated) Sunday and immediately began to
vibrate with the free old timey digger energy that all the
pseudo-revolutionaries are so nostalgic about this year. Angel, Panther,
Digger, Free Frame of Reference. Strong enough to give it away. Now. Free
Huey. Viva Reality. Congo drums. Heavy circle dance. Awed tourists digging
free. If Moe had been there he would have dug the magic. It fet [sic] free.
Free is beautiful. Dig it.
The Honkie Heaven dudes, acting piggier than Pigs ordered the communicants,
in what had come to be a High Free Communion, out. Drummers, dancers, pillow
fighters, kids, women and all. The manager with all the simpy bravado he
could muster punched me and persisted in knocking the drum out of my hands.
Some of us persisted and they retreated into their store.
To compound the lameness they're SELLING a slick white racist Disneyland
poster that says "The New San Francisco, Free City". Everyone of the sparkly
creatures in the poster is blond-haired and blue-eyed. The Master Race? The
cats insist on sticking it right in the middle of their plate glass insured
window even though they admit that it's plastic shuck.
Off the Haight Ashbury Store. The cats are killers. The people need and are
together enough to use the place as a freevolutionary energy bank. New form.
Hey, Moe, where you at. Join your brothers and sisters…Free Moe.
[fingerprint]
====
Dating: see the article "Free Moe Free Arthur Free" in
the San Francisco Express Times, July 31, 1968. Written by
Marvin Garson, the article describes the conflict that
prompted this sheet. Whether this sheet was printed as part
of the Free City Publishing project is a question.
No dating.
FREE CITY REDISTRIBUTION
LOVE IS VIOLENCE.
It's clear that we need to distribute food, free, redistribute goods and
release energy. Reform is overdue. Federal, State and local governments are
unable to respond to the magnitude of the social changes that are taking
place. Individuals are responding. Redistribution has begun on a person to
person basis in San Francisco. Free stores have begun; free food has been
distributed. A beginning has been made.
We are entering into a free economy. San Francisco is the heart of the
movement. White America is a dead myth. Black people have led the way. Soul
is alive. The debt unpaid to the Black people. The Great Spirit moves
through the land. The debt unpaid to the Native people. Free consciousness
is arising. Rebirth. Resurrection.
"Find the true fire: of which the fires of war are a satanic parody. Fight
fire with fire. The true teachers of peace are those who have the highest
power, who can work miracles, who are masters of fire…"
"The thing, then, is not to abolish war but to find the true war. Open the
hidden heart in wars of mutual benevolence, wars of love.
Young men and women are ready to take on the human responsibility of
manifesting life. In America, an arrogant power elite, with the consent of a
propagandized mass class, is resisting change. Those who have a vested
interest in the present power structure are manifesting death within and
without. That's over. A life affirming movement has begun, faith-seeds are
being planted…the future is now…the responsibility has been taken on. Where
are you at?
(I've learned) Let go. Break out of the mass class. Be free. Your identity
will no longer be established by what you own. Help establish public places
of giving; free energy banks. Public times and places where food, goods and
services can be freely given and taken.
Places are being begun now to serve as public energy banks. Where is your
time and place? Work to open churches, public buildings, campaign
headquarters, parks, empty lots, army bases, etc. Free space to manifest
life.
Martin Luther Ling broke unjust laws so that he might be free. It takes
great strength to break unjust laws, openly, in a mass society. You ready to
break out of deadening mass rituals and use your resources, energies'
insights to work with your brothers and sisters for a free society? You have
nothing to lose but your fear. Can you dig it?
No Date.
Momento
ICONS OF A DEAD CIVILIZATION — CLIP OUT AND SAVE
[Reproduction of the front and back sides of a $5 bill and a Selective
Service Registration (Draft) Card]
