Category Archives: Hippies

Diamond Lil

RIP Diamond Lil 8/10/2016 @ 80 ( a secret no longer kept)

 

diamondlil

Coming into Atlanta from small town South Georgia in 1968 I had never met an openly gay person before and was a bit shocked at first. Lil regularly hung out at her friend Erica’s who lived with her husband and son Jolie at The Zoo, Penn @ 8th. Lil was a most interesting person. She had mastered the Southern Belle art of implying awful things about someone or something by an extravagant compliment as carefully worded as a stiletto. And her acute observations were usually what needed to be said rather than malicious. She amused me to no end with her intelligence and wit, and then I saw her perform and transform strutting the stage and singing. The girl could rock a crowd.

Creative Loafing “God Save the Queen” about Lil in 2003

diamondlil best

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 God save the Queen | Creative Loafing Atlanta

DIAMOND LIL, 1935-2016

lilDrag legend, 80, dies of cancer

Performer’s influence on scene in Atlanta lasted over 40 years.

By Shane Harrison sharrison@ajc.com

Atlanta drag legend Diamond Lil, born Phil Forrester in Savannah on Dec. 28, 1935, has died at age 80. The performer had been ill with cancer for more than a year and was moved into a hospice care facility in recent months. Her influence on Atlanta’s drag scene is profound.

“Nothing could have prepared me for the first time I saw her perform,” said fellow performer,friend and fan Lily White in a Facebook post. “Little did I know that her talent and influence would change my life. Her love for her fans never wavered, and her crazy outlook on loving each other and having fun is still what I judge myself [by] to this day.”

Lil moved to Atlanta in 1965, beginning her local performing career at Mrs. P’s, a restaurant and lounge in the basement of the Ponce Hotel, just up the street from the Sears Building (now Ponce City Market).

Rupert Fike interview

There is nothing run of the mill about Rupert Fike.

His life sounds like a novel starting with the UGA SDS being taken as a joke at the Levitation of the Pentagon in 1967, to The Farm in Tennessee, a still running commune, by way of the Haight and the Saturday class and SNCC. Rupert is a writer, poet and philosopher handyman, among other attributes. And not only did he live it, he is a good story teller.

      All recordings copyright the strip project

Meeting Stephen Gaskins

Kathy

Virginia-Highland

The Rainbow Family

Bust

The Strip

Driving Dr. King

Alley Pat

Officer Don

The Catacombs

Others enter

The Dead come to Piedmont Park and The Cosmic Carnival

Atlanta Pop Festival

Hendrix

freaks in The South

Hassled in Little Five Points

Draft Induction

Tai Chi

Marty K.

Altamont

Speed

Riot freaks South

Narcs

Olampala

Levitate the Pentagon 1967

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The Fugs –  Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon

Allman Brothers

Mansions

Piedmont

 

 

Charlie Brown interview

Charlie Brown, Darryl Brooks and some friends came to Atlanta from Chicago. They quickly became part of life around the area. Charlie tells a good tale, so have a listen to Tale of The Chicago Boys.

      All recordings copyright the strip project

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Lynard Skynard

The Bands

retire

Tom the Birdman

Little Five Points

VW

rest

It was noisy, but here are Charlie and Darryl at Manuel’s Tavern.

Richards

The clubs

Walker

Part 5

Part 6

Leather

Kids

The Strip stores

George Ellis

The Strip

The Street

Peachtree

Governor’s Mansion

The Allman Brothers

Janis Joplin

Pop Festivals

Hitchhiking

Joe South

Vedado Way

Bo

Jacob on The Strip

The Chicago Boys

9th Street

plants

sandals

Little Five Points

George Nikas interview

nikas arrestGeorge was arrested for identifying a narc in Piedmont Park. Meanwhile…There was a police riot.

We stood and fought back: The Parks belong to the People.
We stood and fought back: The Parks belong to the People.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were lucky enough to get George to sit and tell us the story behind his part in what became a police riot. He was also on ‘the scene’ from the early days and sheds a lotta light. Listen in…

All recordings copyright the strip project

Names on The Strip

People on The Strip

the Police Riot

Newt

Stores on The Strip

Strip art

Tight Squeeze area

The Strip name

Hip community area

Atlanta musicians

14th Street Theater

Chit

Chat

Religious

George’s worst experience

Age Amaze

 

 

“Acid king” Atlanta Schroder

magicbusFrom Atlanta and Environs: a chronicle of its people and events; years of change and challenge, 1940-1976:  “In December, though, a twenty-seven-year old Atlantan who police said was the king pin of the LSD traffic at pop festivals was arrested while attempting to deliver fifteen pounds of marijuana and 900 LSD tablets to Cocoa, Florida. A long-haired man, he was known in hippie circles as “Atlanta Schroder.” When his apartment, which he shared with several others, was searched, 5,000 LSD tablets were confiscated. Schroder, being absent, was not among the eighteen arrested in this raid.”

Shroder was on the scene and has some great tales.    Here are some adventures backstage at festivals and beyond for your edification.

  All recordings copyright the strip project

Morning Glory

Miami Pop Festival

Truckin’

The Phooey Party

Lightshows

Ted Nugent

Sculpture Park

Yoga in Prison

Atlanta Schroder

Tester

Shroder and Renee

Jeff Lee

Texas Pop Festival

Heroin

The Pianist

The River House

The Texas Pop Festival tent

The River House Bust

   All recordings copyright the strip project

 

 

Bongo Interview

bongoBongo, Peter Jenkins, was Atlanta’s digger who fed the masses in Piedmont Park, ran crash pads for transient kids, and mediated between bikers and hippies.

He has some interesting tales.

 

  All recordings copyright the strip project

Hello from Bongo!

An outside agipotato

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Coming to Georgia from Texas

Crashpads

Names

Feeding the people

Reverend Bongo

The Zoo 8th at Penn

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Photo courtesy Carter Tomassi

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bongo the biker

Bongo Busted!

Leary

Hard Drugs

Why?

The Strip rules

Tree Climbers International

The Allman Brothers

Bongo meets Gov. Maddox

Chit -chat

memories

Peter’s new life

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Peter and Patti at the Bird Bash 2008

 

 

Terminus directed by Kelly Morris at the Seed & Feed Theater

The Great Speckled Bird Oct 31, 1974
Vol. 7 #44 pg. 8
Terminus
 
directed by Kelly Morris at the Seed & Feed Theater

To be truly great, a theater must bring forth great original works of art, goes the thinking of local director Kelly Morris. By thus promoting his Seed & Feed Theater’s first production of a new work specifically written for the company—Tom Cullen’s Terminus-Kelly, you might say, is asking to be shot down. Yet, miraculously, he has covered his bets. Terminus is not only a formidable dramatic achievement, it gives renewed vigor to the company from which it sprang. Terminus, in fact, is the first work to challenge the full capacities of the Seed & Feed players since the theater’s opening production of Tom Paine.

Like Paine, Terminus is American history reconstituted. For Tom Cullen, as for Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, history is a nightmare from which he is trying to awake. So, to keep the visions of human “progress” from haunting and bedevilling his consciousness, he diverts himself by conjuring up a riotous assemblage of characters past, present, future and never-never (well, almost never). The scrambled sequences and dislocations that result make for an evening of theater that is joyous almost to delirium. Bring your cough drops; the throat gets mighty scratchy from uninterrupted laughing.

Cullen’s perspective—which he shares with a host of American writers is that every historical moment contains every historical possibility, that we in habit an eternal present instant whose boundaries are infinite. “God” is just convenient shorthand for the writer’s imagination, and “God” makes the universe over from scratch every time he or she draws a breath.

Looking at the world from an angle like that, Cullen thus finds it natural to turn figures from the Battle of Terminus (the original name of Atlanta) in to mythic, modern, primitive, yet-un born creatures all at once. The Rebel General Hood becomes Wagner’s Tristan, lusting for his own death; becomes Curtis LeMay, lusting to bomb the enemy back to the Stone Age; becomes Bear Bryant rebel-yelling for Auburn’s scalp. His counterpart and opposite number, William Tecumseh Sherman, is a business tycoon, a roaring capitalist, who equates demolition with progress Henry Ford, Attila, Adolf Hitler, Tamburlaine, Nero, Nelson Rockefeller, Don Shula, Faust.

In a brilliant stroke, Cullen pits these two Neanderthal types against one another in a contemporary wrestling ring. As a parody Cyclorama guide runs breathlessly through an incomprehensible narrative of the great battle, Sherman and Hood imitate the antics of contestants in the Municipal Auditorium, wrenching limbs and tearing out facial features with gleeful abandon. The great climactic Moment that shattered Scarlett’s dreams, reduced to play-acting, farce, burlesque.

Presiding over this shadow-boxing we solemnly call human history are three know-it-alls with delusions of divinity. First, there’s Dr. Croker, your Clockwork Orange mechanist with a rapier wit and bottomless contempt for the human race. Above him on the anti social ladder is Lorena, your seer, sibyl, oracle, earth mother, nature goddess, Norn, Fury, Fate—beautiful, passionless, indifferent. And finally, last and least, from whom Lorena draws what she passes off as wisdom, is Aborigine, the father, son and holy ghost of us all simian, impish, inquisitive, smartly dumb, his lips sealed by a Lucky Strike.

So much for the peripheral figures. Towering above and encompassing all of them is Ants Lumpkin the bump kin, Mr. Nobody, clown, redneck, rebel, fool. He surfaces first in hilarious Grease Sisters drag among a bevy of Southern Belles, an anti-Lorena if there ever was one. He outwits Dr. Croker’s assistants, who dress him up as an anti aborigine, his coveralls down around his ankles, a loincloth strapped over his union (!) suit, his consciousness flicking impatiently in and out of play-acting. He ascends to anti-godhood to challenge Croker on the wings of a glorious speech embracing lost causes and sits on the right hand of nobody to judge the quick and the slow in the wrestling ring.

Ants Lumpkin is the best Cullen has to offer us, “just a man” as he calls himself, “a moron” as his mother calls him, a born loser. In the person of Ants Lumpkin, Man (the play was written before Euripides stumbled on women’s lib) is truly the measure of all things. The rest of us stand or fall with him. Seeing ourselves in this hayseed, this racist, this dropout, this TVnik, this good old Georgia boy, is the measure of our ability to laugh at ourselves, to accept our own frailties.

The production stands or falls on the performance of Lumpkin. He is played to perfection by John Whittemore, a comic actor with the genius of Keaton and Chaplin. Kelly Greene puts on his usual brilliant virtuoso lunatic act as Sherman and Steve Johnson makes a delicious, rubicund, smirkishly prancing Hood. Cathy Simmons as Croker’s assistant Miss Comfort helps turn the anti-Aborigine scene into the  most achingly uproarious stage episode since Falstaff got dumped out with the laundry.

Not that all is joy in Marthasville. Terminus loses its momentum following a ten-minute intermission and flounders around trying to regain its stride. It is not clear that Cullen had thought through what it meant to have Lumpkin take over as presiding divinity from Dr. Croker, and so he threw in a perfectly horrible scene (staged in an appropriately idiotic manner with garish spotlights , and indecipherable keening) intended to show the dire consequences of Lump kin’s control. It may have been supposed to recall Dante’s Inferno, but it packs the full wallop of Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte.

There’s a serious flaw in the dramatic thinking here, and that’s what makes the scene such a stinker. Surely the significance and the actual concrete result of victory by whatever Historical force is antithetical to Crokerism can be shown on stage. Supposing the South had won? Then what? It’s a fun hypothesis to play with. Let’s play.

My own hunch about what went wrong is that Cullen’s timing was thrown off by what he considered the necessity of an intermission. Intermissions in the middle of an organic work are almost always calamities, requiring awkward, forced climaxes and fresh crankings up of energy after the audience is settled down. The Greeks had the good sense not to mess up their dramas with coffee-breaks, as did Shakespeare (the act-and-scene divisions we are familiar with in his plays were in vented by the late 17th century Pythagorean nut who compiled the Third Folio and who believed that God or Nature intended all drama to be divided into five parts). Their plays shook, heaved and rattled along without interruptions, rising and falling by the necessary beat of their own internal pulse, not by the exigencies of a groundling’s bladder.

Indeed, serious playwrights and directors have no business worrying about the creature comforts of spectators. Let the suburban dinner theaters cater to jaded appetites. Kelly’s Seed & Feed has already said to Atlanta, “You needn’t accept pabulum.” Now Kelly’s audiences should demand, in turn, that they be given the best he has to offer, no compromises. Terminus should be a non-stop, round-trip, excursion fare— to Bedlam and part way back. Cutting out the intermission and cauterizing the wound created by the gap would strengthen the play considerably.

Now that I’ve ridden my hobby horse, let me descend to earth with this stern injunction: If you let the next three weekends go by without seeing Terminus, you are going to deprive ^c yourself of a really unique opportunity to watch your own history, your own culture, undergo refashioning. Not to mention robbing yourself of an evening’s first-rate entertainment.

I’m not sure I understand all that Tom Cullen intended to express in his piquantly ambiguous conclusion, but when the icy Lorena forces Lumpkin to say he liked “it” (unspecified) because it was necessary to do so, I feel she is also addressing the audience and coercing their acceptance of the play they have just witnessed. After all, we are all players and participants, however unwilling, in the drama of history, and much as we may sympathize and laugh with Lumpkin, we’d better not be lured into facile, sentimental endorsement of his values. It’s a conundrum worth puzzling over.

—bill cutler

Kelly Morris fired!

The Great Speckled Bird Nov. 29, 1971
Vol. 4 #37 pg. 10
 
EMORY Politics: KELLY MORRlS FIRED
Kelly Morris came to Emory two years ago as the first full-time director of the Emory Theatre since 1957. His experience with experimental theatre had been considerable, and he came with a list of credentials and contacts as long as your arm. One of his first projects was to organize a guerilla theatre troupe, “The Asa Candler Memorial Marching Atrocity Band,” which played highly visible roles in events such as the October and November Moratoriums of 1969, the ROTC-off-campus demonstrations in April, 1970, and the Cambodia-Kent State uprisings in May. {now incarnated as the Seed and Feed Marching Abominables after Kelly’s Seed and Feed Theater.]

With his wife, Le,slie Morris, who trains and choreographs the Dance Unit (see following story), Kelly began to build a remarkable theatre. He has produced modern playwrights whose names are well-known in theatrical parlance, but whose plays are rarely produced; has premiered several plays, and, in general, created a unit that would be (and is) considered formidable in any part of the country. He and Leslie have brought to Atlanta major theatrical events, such as the Bread-and-Puppet Theatre from New York, who time to play a significant role in the May demonstrations of 1970. Their unorthodox approach, and their capacity to involve, has drawn a broad spectrum of the Emory Community into the Theatre to make it now, undeniably, one of the major student activities on campus.

These accomplishments have been made against staggering obstacles, primarily, the gross mishandling of the Theatre facilities by the administration. The makeshift , theatre (once a cafeteria) that has served since the 1950’s has been torn down for renovation. The Fine Arts Building, which Emory has been planning since the forties, has been discarded. Requests for the abandoned railroad station and for a storage shed, which students have volunteered to fix up themselves out of Theatre money, have been turned down by the Vice President of Student Affairs, Thomas Fernandez. The Theatre desperately needs space, because its operations and audiences are large. But it has, in effect, literally been driven underground.

Kelly Morris was fired in September this year by Fernandez. This action was protested strongly by both students and faculty, in resolutions passed by various bodies, in confrontations and consultations.

The rationale for his action is budget-cutting. The strange thing about this is that students last year anticipated budget-cuts and set up an Economics Priorities Committee, which was accepted enthusiastically by Fernandez.

Film Forum

The Great Speckled Bird Oct 31, 1974 Vol. 7 #48 pg. 1ellises

George and Mike Ellis, the kind and talented managers of the Film Forum in Ansley Mall for the past several years, have been evicted from the theatre that everyone thought was their own. The theatre, which is known for its fine films that can be seen few other places, its one dollar ticket prices, its real popcorn, and its friendly greeting at the door, is now being run by businessman Louis Osteen. Osteen is trying to run the theatre as if nothing had changed. Already, George Ellis’s thousands of friends are beginning to tell him he will not be able to get away with it.

The history of George Ellis is synonymous with the history of the showing of good films in Atlanta. In June 1966 Ellis opened the Festival Cinema downtown. The Festival, specially designed for Ellis and winner of design awards, was one of the most comfortable and inviting places in the city. Despite its tiny ninety seat capacity, the theatre turned a living profit with its fare of fine art, and not so art, films that could be seen nowhere else.

By the beginning of 1969, however, things began going badly for the Festival. Even free coffee and whipped cream in the lobby did not seem to help. It began to look as if the theatre would go under and many friends of the Festival and George Ellis, invested money at the rate of a dollar a share in order to try to save it. Although this effort worked for a while, eventually the Festival with its menu of good films simply was no longer fiscally feasible.

By the middle of 1969, Ellis had, in an effort to make a continued living and to pay back his small investors, gone over to a straight diet of medium-hard porn. His intention was to spend a couple of years building up a financial cushion with the porn, and then to go back-to his original type of bookings.

Fulton County authorities intervened. At the end of 1970, Ellis and his theatre were busted for obscenity. Judge Dan Duke told Ellis that he would give him probation if Ellis would agree never to show porn again. Ellis agreed and soon after sold the Festival.

Ellis’ accomplishments at the Festival were not limited to showing good films. During the early years of the anti-war movement and the middle years of the civil rights movement, Ellis opened his theatre to literature tables, fund raising, and benefit films. He established a reputation as a businessman with a difference he was at least as concerned with serving the needs of his customers as he was with making a profit.

Ellis was not out of the theatre business for long. By the middle of 1971 he had made an agreement with Modular Cinemas, owners of the then Ansley Mall Mini Cinema, to take over the theatre. The deal called for Ellis and his son Mike to be totally responsible for the management of the theatre in return for a straight 50% cut of the net profits. The Film Forum, with the same type of films as the Festival and—wonder of wonders one dollar tickets, was born.

Shortly after Ellis took over the theatre, Modular Cinemas became Conners Capital Corp. The contract however, remained in effect.

Since that time, the Film Forum, with its small capacity of about 174, has been a financial and entertainment success. The theatre and the Ellis’s have built up a dedicated following, and the Film Forum has been a small but consistent profit maker.

In January 1974 Louis Osteen, a former principal of Modular Cinemas, contracted to buy the Film Forum from Conners Capital. Although there is currently some question of what exactly transpired at this point, Osteen apparently told the Ellis’s that their arrangement would continue, even though the written contract had expired. At any rate, the Ellis’s did not demand a new written contract.

The end, for the time being, came for the Ellis’s on the night of November 18. George Ellis was in New York City and his son Mike was running the theatre. At about 8:30 Osteen, with no previous warning, walked into the theatre and told Ellis that he was relieved. George Ellis flew back from New York immediately and. the next day, went to see his old friend Osteen to see if something could be worked out. It couldn’t.

This reporter has talked to Louis Osteen and asked him his reasons for taking over the Film Forum. Osteen told the Bird, “There’s just been a management change here that was effective this Monday night past. The decision was made by the owners (a corporation headed by Osteen) of the business who relieved Mike and George Ellis of their connection here. The reason is. … at this time I don’t think I would like to get into it since there are some things I would have to resolve.”

The issues to be resolved include whether an oral contract exists between Osteen and the Ellises. If one can be shown to exist, it is as binding as if it were down on paper.

Another issue that needs to be resolved is whether the theatre can survive under its new management. 0steen intends to keep the current format at the theatre. He told the Bird, “It’s been very successful and we don’t feel there’s a need to change it.” Why then were the Ellis’s relieved? One can only assume that 100 per cent of the profits is a lot better than 50%. But, as many of George and Mike’s friends are saying, 100% of nothing is nothing.

Osteen knows he is in for rough sailing. He told the Bird, “It’s gonna be a hard thing to carry on the Film Forum like George and Michael did.” Osteen doesn’t know how right he is.

We have already received many calls asking what happened to George and what can be done about it. Although current employees of the Film Forum simply say “George is off tonight” when asked what happened to George and Mike, the word of what really happened is finally beginning to get out.

People feel strongly about this question. It is a rare businessperson indeed who cares as much about their customers as they do about profits. Mike and George Ellis are in this category. This paper will carry no Film Forum ads and run no Film Forum reviews until George and Mike are back at the theatre, or safely installed somewhere else. Creative Loafing, one of our competitors, has also pulled their ad this week. Other papers, despite hard times and low ads, may join. There is talk of phone campaigns, pickets, and legal action. By this time next week, some or all of these should be underway. If you are interested in helping George and Mike, call us here at 875-8301; we’ll plug you into whatever is happening.

There is nothing wrong with Louis Osteen. By all accounts, he is not a bad man. He simply has more of an eye for profits, and less for people, than have George and Mike. The Ellis’s have given to the Atlanta community for years. Now let’s help them back. —jon Jacobs for the Bird

Feed Your Head

feedhead

Remember what the dormouse said,  “Feed your head!” 

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This meant with all kinds of ideas and thoughts and experiences. Yes, that included smoking marijuana and tripping. using mind altering drugs. But it also included reading and learning from people’s all over the planet.

Here are books that shaped the thought memes of that time.

Texts to download and read: The Sixties Reader   Beat Books

The Man who Turned on The World    Underground Comix

 

A book that opened my mind was:    How To Talk Dirty and Influence People by Lenny Bruce.  Paul Krassner editor. There was a picture of Lenny looking forlornly through jail bars. The caption said so much with just one letter change.

“Americans love non-conformity and often reward it with the metal of honor.”
“Americans love non-conformity and often reward it with the metal of honor.”

 

Grok this in fullness! Share water!    Stranger in a Strange Land.

Robert Heinlein’s religious metaphor.

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,

A Separate Reality,  Tales of Power, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan 

by Carlos Castaneda

People’s Chronology 

  Be Here Now by Ram Dass

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Zap Comix (Number 0)

  The Tibetan Book of the Dead (The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between) by The Dalai Lama

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

 Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson

The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

 Joy of Sex : A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking by Crown

Whole Earth Catalog by Peter Warshall, Stewart Brand (editors
Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver

The Bhagavad Gita

I.Ching

I seem To Be a Verb by Buckminster Fuller

 Howl by Alan Ginsbergginsberg

Meetings With Remarkable Men by G. I. Gurdjieff

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Brave New World , The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Man and His Symbols, Synchronicity by Carl Jung

Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus by Henry Miller

1984, Animal Farm by George Orwell

vw_alive_553

How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

For myself and many other of counter culture, This book was the only reason I could afford to keep transportation running.

I am forever in debt. Zen Dharma meditation beneath.

I learned so much beneath the Celestial Omnibus staring up and reading this book.

Periodicals of the times.

Independent Voices