October 2, 2024 • 11 mins
What we equate with acid, hippies, and garish polyester prints actually began as a theatrical way of protesting bans on free speech and the Vietnam War. When the hippies got hold of it, it definitely transformed.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck,
and we're going to talk about flower power. So let's
start doing that right now.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah. Kind of specifically the two flower Powers, because there
was one flower Power movement and the nineteen sixty seven
specifically into sixty eight that had to do with politics
and protests, and then there was a second Flower Power
movement kind of either concurrently or on the heels of that,
(00:33):
that was a little bit more about like, hey, man,
like wear this cool shirt and listen to this music.
We're in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, that is a good point, and one more from
the other. I think the whole thing originally had its
origin in nineteen sixty five thanks to Alan Ginsberg, who
would become one of the luminaries. He was, like Neil Cassidy,
one of those rare beat generation guys who was able
(01:00):
to kind of make the transition over to hippie and
so he became a luminary of this whole scene the
very beginning of like the hippie movement in the sixties,
and so by this time he was already a very
respected counterculture person. And so when a bunch of Berkeley
students decided that they were going to protest basically a
(01:24):
clamp down on political speech on campus. They asked Allen
Ginsburg if he had any advice for him, and boy
did he ever.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah. He wrote a essay to give out to the
protesters called demonstration or spectacle as example as communication or
how to make a march slash spectacle.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And they said what and he said, just read it.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
He's I love Allen Ginsburg, great poet, and he always
had these kind of funny long titles.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Like that yeah, or very short like how well, yeah,
good point, thanks man. So there was a lot to this,
But the thing that really has to do with our
episode is that he was searching for a way or
advising them to look for ways to basically take the
(02:14):
psychology of war and people who are for war and
that kind of stuff and just kind of change it.
Like take this scary thing and this violent thing and
just turn it on its head. If you're trying to
protest it, just don't follow its rules of engagement, like
create your own.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah. And you know, one of the things that was
they knew for sure was going to happen at this
Berkeley protest was the Hell's Angels were going to come
in to counter protest the protests, or I guess just
counter protests. And he said kind of like kill him
with kindness. You know, he didn't actually say the words
flower power, but he mentioned flowers as what he called
(02:53):
a visual spectacle, like masses of flowers, a visual spectacle,
especially concentrate in the front lines. And also little toy
soldiers and toy guns and candy and little tiny musical
instruments and to basically just sort of be like, yeah,
just throw a bunch of like silliness and whimsy at them,
(03:15):
and these hell's angels aren't know what to do. They
they might want to beat you up, but they'll probably
maybe even feel bad trying to.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Right, So this was really good advice, and that was
definitely the origin of flower power. And so you can
make a really good case and it would be totally
correct that the flower power movement or idea came from
anti war protests or even before that, free speech protests
among young liberals and counterculture types, even before there was
(03:45):
such a thing as hippies like Sonny and Cher were
just starting to get into this. It was so early, right,
and so those students at Berkeley were successful. The administration
at the university was like, fine, say whatever you want,
we don't care anymore. Just just get off the lawn.
And then that got parlaid into Okay, well, this is
a we're creating a movement here, these kids really care
(04:07):
about stuff. How about we start targeting the Vietnam War.
And that really quickly easily translated into it. And there
was a very very famous picture that was essentially the
culmination of this whole ideal that Alan Ginsburg suggested and
that those Berkeley students first adopted. And it came in
nineteen sixty seven, I believe it, with a march on
(04:28):
the Pentagon.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, there were more than one hundred thousand people at
this march, peaceful protest, and a very very famous picture,
like you mentioned, was taken by a guy named Bernie
Boston of the Washington Star when he captured a young guy,
eighteen year old aspiring actor named George Harris, when twenty
five hundred Reserve troops with M fourteen machine guns came
(04:53):
out and surrounded the place, he very calmly walked up
and stuck a daisy and the end of that gun,
creating one of the most iconic photos of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's called the flower Power photo.
It's really great to see. And also his sweater is
just amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It is.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So I say we come back and talk about how
flower power morphed from that into what we think of
it today. How about that.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Let's do it all right, So, now we're in San Francisco.
(06:00):
The hippie movement is genuinely underway at this point. That's
the epicenter of it all during one of the mini
summers of love that we've talked about, and flower powers
sort of goten morphed a little bit and it wasn't
so much political protests anymore. It was just like, hey,
man like violence it in the way you got to
love your neighbor, you got to just get on board
(06:22):
with these cool clothes. It became more of sort of
a cultural even fashion touchstone that had not much to
do with protest, even though it was still about living
kind of a groovy, peaceful life.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
It got co opted, and that's a really great way
to defuse an actual movement is to commercialize it and
sell it and repackage it to the rest of them
the America. That's exactly what happened because a lot of
those hippies were like, yeah, I don't want to hurt anybody.
I don't want anybody to have to die in war.
But really I'm kind of here for the chicks and
(06:58):
the acid. That's really what I'm into. So it was
kind of easy for it to transition into yeah, just
a trend, a fashion trend. I mean, it eventually trickled
down to the Brady kids, for God's sake, that's how
far away it got from putting flowers into gun barrels
in protests of Vietnam. And that definitely happened. That transition
(07:19):
did definitely happen in nineteen sixty seven in San Francisco,
and this was not lost on anybody who was really
into this movement at the time. I was really upset
to see it turn into a commercialized fashion trend.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah for sure, but that's kind of what happened in
the hate Ashbury District shop open there called the Psychedelic Shop.
This is just shortly before ls was criminalized in the
United States, or at least in California. But at the
time you could go there and get education on doing
acid and like how to best do it and by it.
(07:57):
Oh yeah, it was legal that you just go down the.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Street to the psychedelic shop and buy some barrel acid.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, for sure. So it's a it's a fashion thing
at this point. All the brightly colored sort of tide
ie stuff and literal like flower print dresses and things
like that was a It was a group of kids
kind of casting off finally, like the garments of the
nineteen fifties of their parents, where you know, women were
(08:25):
girdles and you know, skirts that weren't very comfortable and
too tight and too long, and they're like, hey, put
on this like free flowing linen flower frock and take
off that bra. Yeah, and tell me how that feels.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, and burn it in this fifty five gallon drum
and we have a fire going.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
In right, which did not happen.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
No, that's awesome that you remembered that, because I had forgotten.
So there, like I said, there were people who were
not happy about this transition. They really believed in flower
power and were kind of bummed that, like like all
of these people had just kind of come out and
we're missing the point. So they actually held a funeral
for the hippie in nineteen sixty seven. It was in
(09:09):
October nineteen sixty seven. They had a funeral march or
procession I guess through Hayde Ashbury, and they even burned
the Psychedelic Shop sign. And I was trying to figure
outf the Psychedelic Shop's owner would have been like, yeah,
that's the right thing to do, burn my sign, or
would have been like, hey, stop burning my sign. I
can't figure out how that would have gone down, but
(09:32):
it did go down like that. And also, for anybody
who's listened to our Biosphere in episode, this is about
the time when the Synergians probably left for New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, totally. One guy was pretty happy that it waited
until later in nineteen sixty seven, at least because a
guy named Scott McKenzie had a big hit earlier that
year with the song San Francisco, which we for one
of our San Francisco shows. I believe it was the
one at the Palaci Fine Arch years ago. We played
(10:01):
this song as our walkout song, which was a mistake
because it's a little too mellow. If you're going to
San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
So he got that in just under the wire.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah. Less famously, the next line is or else those
hippies will mess you up real good. Yeah, but that
helped kind of spread flower power also to the rest
of mainstream America because that song was such a big hit.
All that stuff kind of combined really led to the
death of flower power and ultimately the image we have
of it today. But had tip to those kids that
(10:37):
gave it its original meaning and Alan Getzburg too.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah. I mean, that picture's iconic and I kind of
take it for granted now because I've seen it so
many times. But it took a lot of guts for
that kid, an eighteen year old kid, to walk up
to a guy with a machine gun and stick a
flower in that barrel. That was a bold move.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great one to put it. I
also want to give a hat tip to our former
colleague and host of Unladylike the podcast, Kristen Conger, who
wrote this originally for How Stuff Works so many years ago.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
That's right, Congs is great and I miss working with
her and I miss being in touch with her. This
made me kind of want to email her and just
say how you.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Doing, hey, man. With the spirit of flower Power, compels
you go ahead and do that chuck. All right, Wait,
I didn't say short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck,
and we're going to talk about flower power. So let's
start doing that right now.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah. Kind of specifically the two flower Powers, because there
was one flower Power movement and the nineteen sixty seven
specifically into sixty eight that had to do with politics
and protests, and then there was a second Flower Power
movement kind of either concurrently or on the heels of that,
(00:33):
that was a little bit more about like, hey, man,
like wear this cool shirt and listen to this music.
We're in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, that is a good point, and one more from
the other. I think the whole thing originally had its
origin in nineteen sixty five thanks to Alan Ginsberg, who
would become one of the luminaries. He was, like Neil Cassidy,
one of those rare beat generation guys who was able
(01:00):
to kind of make the transition over to hippie and
so he became a luminary of this whole scene the
very beginning of like the hippie movement in the sixties,
and so by this time he was already a very
respected counterculture person. And so when a bunch of Berkeley
students decided that they were going to protest basically a
(01:24):
clamp down on political speech on campus. They asked Allen
Ginsburg if he had any advice for him, and boy
did he ever.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah. He wrote a essay to give out to the
protesters called demonstration or spectacle as example as communication or
how to make a march slash spectacle.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And they said what and he said, just read it.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
He's I love Allen Ginsburg, great poet, and he always
had these kind of funny long titles.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Like that yeah, or very short like how well, yeah,
good point, thanks man. So there was a lot to this,
But the thing that really has to do with our
episode is that he was searching for a way or
advising them to look for ways to basically take the
(02:14):
psychology of war and people who are for war and
that kind of stuff and just kind of change it.
Like take this scary thing and this violent thing and
just turn it on its head. If you're trying to
protest it, just don't follow its rules of engagement, like
create your own.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah. And you know, one of the things that was
they knew for sure was going to happen at this
Berkeley protest was the Hell's Angels were going to come
in to counter protest the protests, or I guess just
counter protests. And he said kind of like kill him
with kindness. You know, he didn't actually say the words
flower power, but he mentioned flowers as what he called
(02:53):
a visual spectacle, like masses of flowers, a visual spectacle,
especially concentrate in the front lines. And also little toy
soldiers and toy guns and candy and little tiny musical
instruments and to basically just sort of be like, yeah,
just throw a bunch of like silliness and whimsy at them,
(03:15):
and these hell's angels aren't know what to do. They
they might want to beat you up, but they'll probably
maybe even feel bad trying to.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Right, So this was really good advice, and that was
definitely the origin of flower power. And so you can
make a really good case and it would be totally
correct that the flower power movement or idea came from
anti war protests or even before that, free speech protests
among young liberals and counterculture types, even before there was
(03:45):
such a thing as hippies like Sonny and Cher were
just starting to get into this. It was so early, right,
and so those students at Berkeley were successful. The administration
at the university was like, fine, say whatever you want,
we don't care anymore. Just just get off the lawn.
And then that got parlaid into Okay, well, this is
a we're creating a movement here, these kids really care
(04:07):
about stuff. How about we start targeting the Vietnam War.
And that really quickly easily translated into it. And there
was a very very famous picture that was essentially the
culmination of this whole ideal that Alan Ginsburg suggested and
that those Berkeley students first adopted. And it came in
nineteen sixty seven, I believe it, with a march on
(04:28):
the Pentagon.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, there were more than one hundred thousand people at
this march, peaceful protest, and a very very famous picture,
like you mentioned, was taken by a guy named Bernie
Boston of the Washington Star when he captured a young guy,
eighteen year old aspiring actor named George Harris, when twenty
five hundred Reserve troops with M fourteen machine guns came
(04:53):
out and surrounded the place, he very calmly walked up
and stuck a daisy and the end of that gun,
creating one of the most iconic photos of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's called the flower Power photo.
It's really great to see. And also his sweater is
just amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It is.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So I say we come back and talk about how
flower power morphed from that into what we think of
it today. How about that.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Let's do it all right, So, now we're in San Francisco.
(06:00):
The hippie movement is genuinely underway at this point. That's
the epicenter of it all during one of the mini
summers of love that we've talked about, and flower powers
sort of goten morphed a little bit and it wasn't
so much political protests anymore. It was just like, hey,
man like violence it in the way you got to
love your neighbor, you got to just get on board
(06:22):
with these cool clothes. It became more of sort of
a cultural even fashion touchstone that had not much to
do with protest, even though it was still about living
kind of a groovy, peaceful life.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
It got co opted, and that's a really great way
to defuse an actual movement is to commercialize it and
sell it and repackage it to the rest of them
the America. That's exactly what happened because a lot of
those hippies were like, yeah, I don't want to hurt anybody.
I don't want anybody to have to die in war.
But really I'm kind of here for the chicks and
(06:58):
the acid. That's really what I'm into. So it was
kind of easy for it to transition into yeah, just
a trend, a fashion trend. I mean, it eventually trickled
down to the Brady kids, for God's sake, that's how
far away it got from putting flowers into gun barrels
in protests of Vietnam. And that definitely happened. That transition
(07:19):
did definitely happen in nineteen sixty seven in San Francisco,
and this was not lost on anybody who was really
into this movement at the time. I was really upset
to see it turn into a commercialized fashion trend.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah for sure, but that's kind of what happened in
the hate Ashbury District shop open there called the Psychedelic Shop.
This is just shortly before ls was criminalized in the
United States, or at least in California. But at the
time you could go there and get education on doing
acid and like how to best do it and by it.
(07:57):
Oh yeah, it was legal that you just go down the.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Street to the psychedelic shop and buy some barrel acid.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, for sure. So it's a it's a fashion thing
at this point. All the brightly colored sort of tide
ie stuff and literal like flower print dresses and things
like that was a It was a group of kids
kind of casting off finally, like the garments of the
nineteen fifties of their parents, where you know, women were
(08:25):
girdles and you know, skirts that weren't very comfortable and
too tight and too long, and they're like, hey, put
on this like free flowing linen flower frock and take
off that bra. Yeah, and tell me how that feels.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, and burn it in this fifty five gallon drum
and we have a fire going.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
In right, which did not happen.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
No, that's awesome that you remembered that, because I had forgotten.
So there, like I said, there were people who were
not happy about this transition. They really believed in flower
power and were kind of bummed that, like like all
of these people had just kind of come out and
we're missing the point. So they actually held a funeral
for the hippie in nineteen sixty seven. It was in
(09:09):
October nineteen sixty seven. They had a funeral march or
procession I guess through Hayde Ashbury, and they even burned
the Psychedelic Shop sign. And I was trying to figure
outf the Psychedelic Shop's owner would have been like, yeah,
that's the right thing to do, burn my sign, or
would have been like, hey, stop burning my sign. I
can't figure out how that would have gone down, but
(09:32):
it did go down like that. And also, for anybody
who's listened to our Biosphere in episode, this is about
the time when the Synergians probably left for New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, totally. One guy was pretty happy that it waited
until later in nineteen sixty seven, at least because a
guy named Scott McKenzie had a big hit earlier that
year with the song San Francisco, which we for one
of our San Francisco shows. I believe it was the
one at the Palaci Fine Arch years ago. We played
(10:01):
this song as our walkout song, which was a mistake
because it's a little too mellow. If you're going to
San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
So he got that in just under the wire.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah. Less famously, the next line is or else those
hippies will mess you up real good. Yeah, but that
helped kind of spread flower power also to the rest
of mainstream America because that song was such a big hit.
All that stuff kind of combined really led to the
death of flower power and ultimately the image we have
of it today. But had tip to those kids that
(10:37):
gave it its original meaning and Alan Getzburg too.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah. I mean, that picture's iconic and I kind of
take it for granted now because I've seen it so
many times. But it took a lot of guts for
that kid, an eighteen year old kid, to walk up
to a guy with a machine gun and stick a
flower in that barrel. That was a bold move.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great one to put it. I
also want to give a hat tip to our former
colleague and host of Unladylike the podcast, Kristen Conger, who
wrote this originally for How Stuff Works so many years ago.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
That's right, Congs is great and I miss working with
her and I miss being in touch with her. This
made me kind of want to email her and just
say how you.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Doing, hey, man. With the spirit of flower Power, compels
you go ahead and do that chuck. All right, Wait,
I didn't say short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Josh Clark
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