#878 Haight Ashbury- Cookie Mueller
This is an atmosphere memoir type story about San Francisco
in the summer of 1967. It has all the drugs and hippie flair you would expect
from such a story:
“The air was thick with the smell of marijuana, patchouli
oil, jasmine incense and Eucalyptus trees. Black guys were playing congos and
flutes; white guys were playing harmonicas and guitars. It was as crowded as
Coney Island on the Fourth of July. Hippie Hill was like this every day of the
week.”
Although fun for what it is, Mueller clumsily tries to show
exactly how cool the scene is while also trying to show her disdain for it, and
thus how much cooler she is than the whole thing. She name-drops all the
regulars like Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison, Carmichael. Like the others from this
collection, I see the value of her writing, clearly an edgy and important voice
for her time, but one that loses its importance this far removed from the
scene.
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