People & Places, Reviews, Talk
Hippies in Atlanta! However did they get in?
Tales of Old Atlanta – The photo journalism of Boyd Lewis 1969-79.
These are the photographs of a bygone time and place. Paris had the 1890s. New York City the 1940s and 50s. San Francisco of the 60s. Atlanta of the 1970s had something in common with and had something unique compared to these epochs. We had the legacy of hometown hero Martin King.
The city, like Atlantis, sank long ago. Those were the rare old times.
I took the pictures. Hope you enjoy old times not forgotten.
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Taken in 1969, this is the me that arrived in Atlanta that summer just after the Great Atlanta Pop Festival. I missed that one but was at Second Pop in 1970. Kathleen and I had been living and working in Meridian, Miss and the shock of arriving in the Regional Capital was like a couple of bumpkin agricolae stumbling into Imperial Rome at its height.What a wonderful city. Cheap rent, hole in the wall barbecue joints, jobs growing like the city’s building boom itself and a perky overall smugness of a city too busy to hate.
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The girls encounter the hippie vans in Piedmont Park 1970. The park became the spiritual home for the tribe of thousands who discovered Atlanta as an oasis of tolerance and hospitality is a region that has been smarting about outside agitators since losing that damn war and just plain hated hippies.
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Merry fellows at 880 Myrtle Avenue embody the good natured spirit that marked Atlanta’s hippietime. They weren’t aggressively in your face about their transcendent spiritual superiority like the S.F. counterculture. Nor like the icy irony of hippie sightings in the Northeast. Atlanta longhairs were very much “take it or leave it” about their laid back Let it Be lifestyle. Hell, they lived in a rough neighborhood. Rebellion wasn’t appreciated by some erstwhile Rebels.
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This is Susan Klein, the Annie Hall of the advertising staff of Creative Loafing in the mid 1970s. The Loaf, a fiesty free independent weekly paper, had fiesty, free and independent staff members who looked and behaved in ways indistinguishable from the hippie tribe. Of course, the real tie-died-in-the-wool hippies were over at The Great Speckled Bird, the lauded underground newspaper founded in 1968 after Dr. King’s killing. By 1976, the time this was taken, the Bird was in eclipse as the paper immolated itself into political irrelevance. Hippies turned to the disco culture for sex, drugs and Ru Paul and Roll. Debbie Eason’s Creative Loafing was, for a time, healthy and profitable. It expanded to include hard core journalism (I was its first news editor). But profits were diverted from operations to ill-conceived projects and the paper was brought to bankruptcy.
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The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers had this weltschmertz.
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WSB-TV, bless their little hearts, tried to stem the use of pot, acid, ‘ludes and assorted chemistry in the quest of hippies to get high. This ad appeared in 1970 during Channel 2’s production of the Lester Maddox variety show. No smokin’ while the guvnah’s on TeeVee.
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Any musician could draw a crowd in Piedmont Park. Hippie bands regularly played in the outdoor venues. Solitary strummers and drummers could be found in secluded nooks in the woodland over by the drainage ditch.
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Long haired antiwar protestor nabbed by State Patrolman. Hippies in Atlanta were more political than most tribes elsewhere in the country. The city’s legacy as headquarters for much of the civil rights movement made politics relevant and timely for hippies. Trespassing on the grounds of the state capitol in this May 1970 scene got you apprehended by the long arm of the law. After the tribes disbanded, love beads put away and hair trimmed, hippies turned to neighborhood organizing against a ruinous expressway through the heart of the city, electing the city’s first black congressman and mayor and continuing to agitate for jobs, peace and freedom.
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Piedmont Park was the center of hippie life in Atlanta for years. The city was tolerant of the misbehavior that sometimes cropped up. What did people do when they all met in the park on an afternoon? There was music, flirting, and in this 1972 photo, sunbathing.
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Toni Shifalo, left, and Alton Leonard, with the uke to her right jam with other musicians in 1973. They were members of the Last Great Jive Ass Jug Band, a fixture of Atlanta’s hippie scene. I lived in their commune at Big Shanty in Decatur.
This free webzine is meant for your entertainment and information only. All photographs copyright Boyd Lewis/Atlanta History Center. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976, these images may not be reproduced in whole or in part with permission in writing from copyright owner. For information, contact Boyd Lewis.
Tales of Old Atlanta is also available at: www.talesofoldatlanta.com.
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Cliff Green says: Boyd, I remember that glorious section of Peachtree between 10th and 14th , which was known as “tight squeeze” at the time. You could find anything you were looking for there, good or evil: bad dope and art-house films, troubled sex and Jesus. If I could shed several decades from this old body, I’d love to do it all over again.
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Mary Lee (aka Bootsie Lucas) says: Thanks for the blast from the past. Was it really that long ago?
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George says: Good memories of a great time to be in Atlanta. I’m glad I didn’t show up in any of your pictures.
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Michael Garbutt says: Sigh…such a fun time and such a wide open city! I moved here in ‘75 and it was just the right juxtaposition of youth and opportunity. There was that laissez-faire attitude on so many fronts and it was filled with expectations of a brighter tomorrow.
Thanks, Boyd, for the trip down memory lane! -
Terri Evans says: And to think that the Krystal in the midst of it all is now a Starbucks. The Atlanta Cabana is gone, along with Matthews Market. Any time I had witnessed too much “normalcy,” I always stopped in at Matthews for a glimpse of real life.
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C Smith says: I’m supprised that you haven’t included the Atlanta School of Art and Design that drew many so-called “Hippies” to Atlanta and the 10th & 14th ave. area in the late 60s and early 70s.
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Boyd Lewis says: The Memorial Arts Center was at the heart of the original home to Atlanta’s hippie kingdom. The Bird published around the corner on 14th street (Emory students and dropouts).
Before Colony Square, there was a big old apartment building at the corner where artists and bohemians parked their bongs. Artists of course get there long before we do. Any change in society goes through the portal of art first. Nobody has researched the role of the Memorial Arts center in creating the city’s hip community. I didn’t take photos there because it cost you your scalp to take art classes and I was a poor citymouse. I stuck to the streets, not the suites.
selah, -b -
Mary Civille says: I moved to Midtown in September of 1979. All the landmarks mentioned above were still there. There was a drugstore on the corner of Piedmont and Tenth Street; four MARTA buses ran up and down Piedmont, Juniper and Peachtree (10 [or was it 23?], 31. 36, 92), carrying me Downtown, to Ansley, Lenox. Emory, Decatur and Perimeter Mall with nary a transfer between bus and train and bus and . . .. I remember eating wonderful ice cream cones from the original Gorin’s at 14th and Peachtree, getting my hair cut at Pershing Point, and walking up to Rhodes Center to see a movie. Sigh.
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C Smith says:
That old apartment building was located on Baltimore Place with a neighbor bar below street level called “The Bottom of the Barrel”. Local musicians would try out their latest compositions there. My brother lived there while he attended the Art school. Strange but very memorable times. 1969-1971 He was drafted in ‘72. Do you remember what that meant then.
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Jim Smith says: The Bottom of the Barrel was the haunt of Jeff Espina, accomplished folk musician and guitarist. He had a vast repertoire that extends far beyond the dusty reaches of my memory, as well as an easygoing style that made the Barrel feel like home for an evening. Anybody know what became of him?
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C Smith says:
http://www.bistroatlanta.com/
Jim follow this link to a memorial of “The Bistro” that was on W.Peachtree. There is a list of entertainers that preformed there (Jeff is listed) and some names I recognize from the Barrel. I seem to remember they would come to the Barrel to relax and have a beer and sometime they would preform a song or two but mainly enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere.
There are some memories that pop up from time to time that are enjoyable. -
Mary aka "Suzy Q" says: I remember an old haunt of mine…The Lighthouse. Loved the Krystal…get a cheap burger (very cheap) burger and fried while trying to come down off the orange barrel. Those were the days. Was there in summer of 72 with the rest of those who matter.
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JZ says: It’s Myrtle Street not Avenue.
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Sandee says: Hey, nobody mentioned the Stein Club and listening to music at the Twelfth Gate.
This brings up many, mostly good, memories of Piedmont Park back in the day. But one that has come up for me recently was of almost becoming a victim of racial profiling while walking in the park with Gene. The policeman who stopped us was threatening to bust me for being a runaway because I had carried no i.d. with me for a walk in the park, and thus could not prove that I was older than 16. I was about 25 at the time.
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Sandee says:
Wasn’t Creative Loafing’s tag line, “Covers All the Do in Dixie”?
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