Sunday, September 24, 2017

#878 Haight Ashbury- Cookie Mueller


#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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