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by the U.S. Army which was somehow being sold in hip communities across the country.

Everyone was sad that the doctor contented himself with making speeches about drugs like "68" which nobody had ever heard anything about, instead of seriously devoting himself to the care of the community's health. It was also a waste, as well as a shame.

Besides the H. A. Medical Clinic, the district sprouted a group of short-order lunch counters which sold "Loveburgers" and "Love Dogs" and gave away a "Love Guide" to the HIP shops. Film producers, like Sam Katzman, used the community as a location for cheap, Hollywood quickie-films like The Trip and a young entrepreneur started a firm that rented one or more hippies for parties called Hire a Hippie Unlimited. Storefronts in the area were being leased for forty thousand dollars and Grayline ran a bus tour through the district for tourists. Droves of evangelists descended on Haight Street to bring the young people closer to Jesus, and the S.F. police department jumped on the publicity bandwagon by organizing a series of ridiculous narcotics raids for reporters, which only netted an ounce or two of grass. An example was the "Super Jean" fiasco where the cops claimed to have broken up one of the Bay Area's biggest dope rings but really only arrested a harmless pothead.

The street people of the Haight reacted to the police harassment with Sleep-Ins at night in Golden Gate Park to protest the city's ordinance against such activities, and with Mill-Ins at the main intersections of the district to demonstrate for the repeal of Penal Code 370 and express their belief that "the streets belong to the people!" Realizing that the overly centralized Haight-Ashbury was only necessary for the shop owners, the older residents of the area-- folks who had been there a while and had their own pads--started to move away to Marin County and Berkeley, trying to get out before the "Summer of Love" arrived. The underground press continued to ignore things like this migration of the old-timers from the Haight and remained concerned with other, more frivolous matters. For example, the straight merchants in the district tried to con everyone into believing they'd get high from smoking dried banana peels and the underground papers got wind of the story. The Berkeley Barb even devoted its entire center fold as a pullout, which explained various recipes for browning and baking the banana skins and described several methods of smoking them, once they'd been dried. [end page 291]

 

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