Including Ephemera, Broadsides, Posters, Street Sheets, Collections, etc. for the
San Francisco Diggers, Communication Company, Free City Collective,
Kaliflower Intercommunal Network, Free Print Shop, Planetedge Manifestation,
Earth/Life Defense Commune, &c.
Category = | Keyword = ALL | Group = ALL | Issue = ALL | New = ALL | Followup = ALL | Order = DATE | Search = EMPTY | Records = 1309 | Page = 33 of 53 [Browsing category-filtered records]
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Cat. No.: DR-006a/b Full record BibCit: By Charles Perry. 7/29/1976. Leaflet. Letter size. Collation: 2 sht; stapled. Collection: SOLA-x(PB). Abstract: This 1976 letter from Charles Perry of Rolling Stone to Peter Berg offers a revealing glimpse into the afterlife of the Digger story, when journalists were beginning to turn the Haight-Ashbury experience into retrospective history. Perry writes after Berg apparently objected to being misrepresented in a Rolling Stone article and refused further interviews, assuring him that both the article and the book he was then writing would try to represent all points of view fairly. The letter is especially valuable because Perry names the problem at the heart of much later writing about the Diggers: without Berg’s participation, his account would have to rely on others—Jerry Garcia, Chester Anderson, Bill Graham, and material from Grogan, Coyote, or Murcott—leaving Berg’s own role in the Haight’s free institutions less fully represented.
The letter also shows the tension between journalism and lived history. Perry frames his work as an effort to recover what the Diggers “were up to,” while Berg’s refusal suggests distrust of the very process by which the counterculture was being packaged for public consumption. As a Digger-related item, the letter documents not the original moment of Free, but the struggle over who would tell its story, on what terms, and with whose cooperation.
Note: Perry’s article ("From Eternity To Here,” Rolling Stone, February 26, 1976) acknowledges the importance of the Diggers, but frames them in terms that Peter Berg may have found reductive: as theatrical provocateurs whose vision was “never consistently articulated,” whose practice of Free could be confused with welfare hustling or theft, and whose role in the Haight was tied to disorder as much as to revolutionary imagination.
Cat. No.: KF-NS3 Full record BibCit: By [Irving Rosenthal, anon.]. 4/30/1978. Kaliflower, vol. N.S., no. 3. Booklet. 12-1/4" x 4-7/8". 16pp.. San Francisco: [Free Print Shop]. Imprint: Kaliflower N.S. 3. Collation: Printed on 8 sheets, folded as one section and machine-sewn through the fold.. Collection: SOLA-o. Abstract: Published anonymously as Kaliflower, New Series 3, and distributed on April 30, 1978, at the first Haight Street Fair and at the memorial wake for Emmett Grogan the same day, this booklet was written by Irving Rosenthal as a retrospective manifesto on the Digger ideal of free.
Rosenthal traces a line from Gerrard Winstanley and the English Diggers of 1649 to the San Francisco Diggers, the Free City Collective, the Free Print Shop, and the intercommunal world of Kaliflower. His central argument is that free was never merely charity, nor simply a way of getting food, books, printing, performances, or services to people who could not pay for them. At its deepest level, free was a spiritual, political, and aesthetic refusal of the marketplace itself—a challenge to the idea that money should define the value of art, work, food, human relations, or communal life. Written ten years after the Digger Papers and distributed on the day Haight-Ashbury publicly commemorated Grogan, the booklet reads as both summation and transmission: a statement of what the Digger/Kaliflower lineage had meant, and what of it might still be carried forward.
Note: The scanned image is of Joseph Johnston's copy.
Cat. No.: CC-003 Full record BibCit: By X, the masked marauder. Broadside. Letter size. San Francisco: Communication Company. Imprint: CC. Collation: 1/cPU. Collection: SOLA-x(SS) | SS-o(L). Abstract: "army..WoRlD'sCoPs..war..ViEtNaM..kill..WaRcRiMeS..don't get caught...resist the Selective Slavery System." Proposes hassled hippie men "get together & help each other..keep out of the draft." For info on becoming a CO, etc.: the Free Store (Cole & Carl)
Cat. No.: CC-004 Full record BibCit: Broadside. Letter size. San Francisco: Communication Company. Imprint: CC/HA. Collection: SOLA-o(DW) | SS-o(L). Abstract: "..a series of three classes designed to save you from becoming a psychedelic casualty--six months' worth of knowledge in a mere three days, & all free ..-at- THE TRIP WITHOUT A TICKET 901 Cole Street"(Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays at 8 pm). Topics: Sex Lore, Street Wisdom, Health & Hygiene, The Scene, Drug Lore, Policemanship, Haight Street Seminar ("experienced hippies & others rapping, answering questions, ..telling it like it is, so you needn't be a helpless newcomer very long").
Cat. No.: CC-008 Full record BibCit: Broadside. Letter size. San Francisco: Communication Company. Imprint: CC. Collation: PiPa. Collection: SOLA-x(SS) | SS-o(L). Abstract: Lyrics with a twist. "..Wear a smile on your face, For the whole human race, Rioting in the ghettos, Won't effect you if you wear a flower in your hair, ..And if San Francisco doesn't work out, We can always do it in London, Sings John Philips."
Note: Variant in Anderson MSS, BANC, has B.S. on orange pa, r.s. being "The ORIFICE Vol 1, Page ? HOW TO TAKE LOTS OF METH (DROP) AND LIVE TO TAKE IT AGAIN AND AGAIN [..]"
Cat. No.: CC-011 Full record BibCit: Broadside. Letter size. San Francisco: Communication Company. Imprint: cc.ups.hps. Collection: SOLA-o(DW)+2 | SS-o(L). Abstract: ".. I LIVE is the motto of the American Indian tribe of Hippies of San Francisco who are now learning to communicate with each other without words.. A free booklet explaining the full meaning of I LIVE will be available soon.." at the Psychedelic Shop.
Cat. No.: CC-013 Full record BibCit: Broadside. Letter size. San Francisco: Communication Company. Imprint: cc.ups. Collection: SOLA-o(DW) | SS-o(L). Abstract: Urgent request by Diggers for linoleum block printing supplies "To be used for| Linoleum fabric and block prints (LFBP)|.| To be taken to Trip Without a Ticket 901 COLE SF CALIF USA EARTH XXXX| (TWOAT)". Flyer done in teletype style layout.
Cat. No.: CC-014 Full record BibCit: Broadside. Letter size. San Francisco: Communication Company. Imprint: cc ups. Collection: SOLA-x(SS) | SS-o(L). Abstract: Tells about KSOL not announcing the Free Store at 1099 McAllister. [Black People's Free Store] "across the street from a store that sells the same things for ridiculous prices that belong to them NOW YOU KNOW...DO SOMETHING | a free man"
