Psychedelic Culture

San Francisco • City Lights Bookstore, publisher of the most important Beat

Generation literature influenced a “free” artistic, bohemian community starting in the 1950’s

• Human Be-In 1967 (30,000 people)• The Fillmore Auditorium most important concert venue of the

psychedelic era – most acid rock bands were from San Fransisco and got their start there, but bigger bands played there as well

• 1967 Montery Pop Festival 1st large scale rock concert / festival (90,000 people)

• Hippies were first called “Flower Children”• 1967 “Summer of Love”– Estimated 100,000 young people (inspired by the B-In)

moved to Haight-Ashbury to join in the hippie movement: “melting pot of drugs, leftist politics, music, sexual freedom

Concert Posters:

R. Crumb• Worked for American Greetings making greeting

cards as well as Topps making illustrated baseball cards.

• Was dissatisfied with his job because he felt he could not express himself, didn’t fit into the 9-5 world. After taking LSD he moved to San Francisco to join in the counter culture movement

• Published his first comic, “Zap #1,” which was enormously sucessful in the underground scene, began the trend of “Underground Comix”

• Highly influenced by Looney Tunes, Donald Duck, Popeye, rock music and LSD as his primary influences.