Word: utopia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...state of mindlessness. The Erewhon of America's "pot left," a 10-by-15 block midtown section, has over the past year become the center of a new utopianism, compounded of drugs and dreams, free love and LSD. It is a far cry from the original Utopia, envisioned some 400 years ago by Sir Thomas More, whose denizens demanded six hours of work each day: the 7,000 mind-blown residents of San Francisco's "Psychedelphia" demand a zero-hour day and free freak-outs...
Speed & Acid. Utopia on the Bay is bounded at one end by the greenery of Golden Gate Park, split down the middle by the fragrant eucalyptus trees of "The Panhandle." Tourist buses have already made The Haight-Ashbury (its residents insist on the definite article) a regular stop. Down the center of Psychedelphia runs Haight Street (which hippies hope to have renamed "Love Street"); the region itself-once the residence of such formidable families as the silver-mining Floods and the couture-vending Magnins-is studded with steamboat-Gothic mansions and psychedelic gathering places like the "I and Thou" coffee...
Getting Together. Not that The Haight-Ashbury Utopia needs any new source of supply. Narcotics arrests in the district last year more than trebled (from 148 in 1965 to 485 in 1966). A "lid" (22 grams) of marijuana sells for $10 (v. $25 in New York City) and a 100 microgram "tab" of LSD can be had for $4. Some pot peddlers even pass out supermarket-style trading stamps with each purchase. Apart from narcotics arrests, however, the crime rate shows no drastic escalation. During a January "Human Be-In" at Golden Gate Park, 10,000 hippies turned...
Reaction to the New Utopia among "straight" San Franciscans has been remarkably bland. "They only steal if they're hungry," shrugs one Haight Street grocer. "I'd do the same." One of the district's most sympathetic observers is the Rev. Leon Harris, 60, pastor of The Haight-Ashbury's All Saints' Episcopal Church, whose favorite anecdote concerns a stuffy woman parishioner who came in to complain of the New Utopians. Says Harris: "I told her to take a careful look at the church windows. She gasped when she realized that the saints, too, wore...
...someone as passionately devoted to a cause as was Chambers to Communism cannot readily resign himself to futility. Whittaker Chambers had made many sacrifices for utopia and could not bring himself to abandon the vision. So he about-faced his ideals to the realm of practically. Eventually he utilized his past connection to Communism as a vehicle for his own--as well as the country's--success and glorification...