Bibliographic Full Form

Our Fearless Correspondent
Love and the Buck
Charles McCabe

The most beautiful word in this or any other language is sure taking a beating in these parts lately. The word is that four letter sigh and expletive called love.

Love has been around for quite a while, but it was not well and truly discovered until last year when the hippies, here and elsewhere, started working it the way the Forty-Niners worked the Mother Lode.

The hippies created a very groovy scene out in the Haight-Ashbury. They kissed cops, gave flowers to drunks, invaded downtown department stores with lovely bright balloons, and turned on with strange drugs. Everything they did was brilliantly merchandised under the name of love.

Whether the hippies know as much about love as, say, St. Francis of Assisi, is much to be doubted. But likewise, it cannot be doubted that to think of love is a good thing, and to think of it often is almost certain to increase the supply of it in this sorry world. So more power to all lovers, everywhere.

It is the merchants of love who are another matter. These camp followers of the lovely life are enough to curdle your marrow. They are debasing the currency of brotherhood. They are the carnies who follow the missionaries into uncharted land. They rightly stink.

A couple of months back the Diggers and other Haight militants picketed a "Love Dance" on account of it cost three bucks fifty to get the body in. A jewelry store called "Happiness Unlimited" has a window sign: "We love you; we hope you love us."

About the same time a bar on Haight Street converted itself into a hot dog and hamburger establishment. The hamburger is called, naturally, a LOVEburger. The hot dog is a LOVEdog. And this cuddly establishment has applied for permission to change its name to "THE LOVE CAFE."

Look at that civic cancer, the topless phenomenon of North Beach. This whole nauseous scene is a direct outgrowth of the rather engaging nihilism of the beatniks who took over Grant avenue and its suburbs in the mid-50's. Because Ginsberg and Kerouac used feelthy words in their efforts, the area got a faintly orgiastic reputation. The tourists came from Fresno and Gilroy and dreamed feelthy thoughts as they looked at the beats, and saw pretty white girls walking arm in arm with black men.

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When the landlords, and the beats themselves, wearied of the North Beach scene, the merchants of love knew they no longer had the product, but they still had the customers. Ergo, mothers of eight swinging their nates, and heaving their mammaries, while the salt of the earth slaver and think those same feelthy thoughts. (Next week: The First Topless Nun!)

In the end, the punishment of the hippies will be brutal and biblical. Their own imagination and talent for self-advertising will do them in. Their love, and their flowers and their balloons will bring the creeps. The creeps will prove unendurable. And this too will pass.

[Communication Company commentary:]
Remember the Love Circus?

Remember love for $3.50?
Remember the Banana Rantra?
Remember goons punching our people to the ground?
Remember those hoods Michael Bowen threw out of the Psyche Shop?
Remember North Beach gangsters trying to cash in on your scene?
Remember the Mafia?

Revolution for $3.50 is an impossibility.
Revolution is free because it is yours.