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Laguna Beach's Great Hippie Invasion, 40 Years On
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2010/12/laguna_beachs_great_hippie_inv.php
By Nick Schou
Dec. 23 2010
This week's meteorological mayhem aside, not much seems to happen in
Laguna Beach that would qualify as strange, much less surreal. But
things haven't always been that way. And by far the strangest thing
that has ever happened in this otherwise sleepy coastal village, and
probably the strangest thing that's ever happened in Orange County,
was just starting to unfold there 40 years ago today.
On this morning 40 years ago, hippies from all over California and
beyond were massing in caravans that lined for miles on Pacific Coast
Highway in both directions. They were gathering for a rock concert
that originally had been billed as a "birthday party for Jesus" but
which quickly became known as either the "Christmas Happening" or
"The Great Happening." The concert, which was held in a grassy bowl
at the top of Laguna Canyon known as Sycamore Flats, began on
Christmas Day and ended three days later when hundreds of police
officers and sheriff's deputies, who had already blocked off the town
with barricades, forced stragglers onto buses and used bulldozers to
bury everything left behind.
Invitations to the show had been hand-delivered to hippie communes up
and down the Pacific Coast and beyoned, and each one contained a tab
of Orange Sunshine acid, the trademark brand of the Brotherhood of
Eternal Love, a group of Timothy Leary acolytes and hash smugglers
who just two months earlier had raised funds to help Leary escape
from prison. Halfway during the first day of the show, someone
parachuted into the show--despite rumors to the contrary, the man
wasn't Leary and nobody ever found out who he was--and later, another
airplane flew overhead and thousands more of of the acid-bearing
cards tumbled from the sky.
The Weekly first wrote about this amazing spectacle--which at least
one organizer, artist Dion Wright, believes was the "true death of
hippiedom"--12 years ago, in a fascinating story by freelancer Bob
Emmers, which you can read here. That article led yours truly on a
several years journey to discover more about both this strange event
and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love itself, which I wrote about
earlier this year in--shameless plug alert--my book Orange Sunshine:
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love
and Acid to the World, which is still on bookshelves and available online.
Documentary film-maker William Kirkley is making a film about the
Brotherhood also called Orange Sunshine, and he's busy compiling rare
footage of the show, including the apocryphal-seeming acid drop. You
can view a pretty mind-blowing trailer for his film here. There's
also a great piece courtesy of the Lama Workshop that features
photographs and other artwork pertaining to the show that makes for a
fun read.
For rain-soaked Lagunans, if nothing else, the thought of all this
probably breaks down in two distinct ways. Folks of the hippie-hating
variety can take solace in the fact that nothing like this is likely
to happen in their town again. For others, including some residents
who were actually there when the show happened, it's more likely a
sad reminder of how much things have changed, not just in their town,
but in our nation and world as a whole. Nothing that a few
plane-loads of acid couldn't fix, though...
.
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