The death of a hippie

in 1967, shortly after the Summer of Love, the Atlantic published the prevalence of hippies, introducing San Francisco's burgeoning youth culture. "almost the most interesting thing is that they are the children of the American middle class at heart," the author points out. " What annoys people who want to call the police most is that this time it is not blacks with different skin colors or eccentric immigrants, but boys and girls with well-off families. After formal education, they can find a good job and commute regularly if they want; they have a beautiful house with a bathroom in which they can shave and freshen up. "A middle-class boy with a good financial situation: that's my mother's cousin Joe Sandberg. When they were growing up, she spent every Thanksgiving in her cousin's upscale house on the outskirts of Long Island in Roslin Heights. His father was a successful businessman, but he had a far-left view that was somewhat inconsistent with this identity. Throughout the sixties, Joe and his four brothers became more and more radical. Two of the Samberg boys finally went to Cuba to cut sugar cane for Castro's revolution.

in 1969, when Joe was 22, he moved to California. By that time, the Haight Ashbury pageant described in the Atlantic article had almost moved across the bay to the Telegraph Street in Berkeley. The rent there is a little cheaper, and for those who can't afford it, the weather is warmer. The college town also showed more sympathy for the long-haired children who jammed the sidewalks day and night-they talked, protested, kissed, danced, fought, and smoked a lot of drugs.

"What I find interesting about this picture is the onlookers," Joe said. "the guy with the Dutch boy's hair on the right is trying to stop a fight. Then you look to the left, and the guy in the tie-dyed shirt has a 'hehe, this is interesting' expression on his face, smoking his cigarette. Then there were three black girls holding each other, staring closely at the black Archie, hoping he would win. And then Vanessa, one of the white girls, seemed to be amused by how nervous the black girls were about the fight. By the way, Archie did win, but in fact, the two men who fought were exhausted. " (Joe Samberg)

Joe is part of this historical scene, but he is a little out of it, watching everything through his camera lens. Years later, he had become a highly respected professional photographer-after he settled down and became the father of three children, including comedian Andy Samberg-he, showed me some pictures of Telegraph Street he had taken in his early years. They linger in my mind like the well-known images of peace symbols, daisy wreaths, and Aquarius circle dances. What Joe saw was as described by the Atlantic author: groups of children were drawn to California by utopian ideals and plunged into a life full of sex, drugs, and lethargy.

Joe often jokes that he set off westward for the same reason as Jojo in the Beatles song: "came to a farm in California." But like most children who came to San Francisco in the late 1960s, he had very personal reasons for saying goodbye to his old life. In 1965, his college girlfriend died in a car accident when they were about to get married. Six months later, his mother died of cancer. "I'm starting to sink," he said. "I can't concentrate. I can't find anything in school that will keep me focused for a long time. "

so he dropped out of Emerson College and moved south from Boston to Manhattan, where he found a job in a color lab downtown. He spends his spare time in Harlem, meets James Brown and other RenewampterB singers at the Apollo Theater, or lingers in Andy Warhol's circle on rough Alphabet Street in the East Village. He watched the underground velvet band perform in the inevitable plastic explosion and then returned to his dilapidated apartment to smoke methamphetamine. "what I did was painful," he said now, "but I was too young to understand it. All I know is that I'm desperate to feel good again. "

left: children walk up the steps of Telegraph Hilton, a dilapidated apartment above a clothing store called rag theatre. Right: two traveling companions on the side of the road. "my father sends me 200 dollars a month, which I use to pay for an apartment I rent with my brothers. I try to eat almost nothing. There are places where I can get something to eat for a dollar, and that's where I've eaten once in so many days. " (Joe Samberg)

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in 1969, just after he was fired, his brother Frank came to town. Frank had been living in Berkeley, and he persuaded Joe to go back there with him. They have been driving for three or four days, and there are almost dull and cold areas along the way. They fell to the ground in Ohio. In Wyoming, they locked themselves out of the car, and the local sheriff opened the door for them, examined them from head to toe, and told them not to go back to the city. They crossed the mountains in Blizzard and could hardly see the way. In the end, they felt that the car was going downhill instead of uphill.

"then," said Joe, "all of a sudden, we found ourselves in this lush valley. It looks like a first-rate enlightening book. The green hills are undulating, as soft and curved as a young woman's body. The sky is so blue. Clouds are like cotton, you know? Pure and white, shining. I'm very curious."did we rush off the road and fall into heaven?

when we drove into Berkeley, there were hippies everywhere-they stood on every corner and lined up every street. Joe has never seen anything like this. "people don't understand this now, but at that time, in most parts of the country, you couldn't have long hair and you were in danger of being beaten," Joe explained. "in Boston, a car would suddenly stop and jump out of a guy who tried to kill me. I had to run. " Even in New York, as long as he left Greenwich Village, "I was constantly harassed and someone spit at me and shoved me away." And Joe is not even a real hippie. "I'm a hippie." He said. "that means boots, black jeans, black T-shirts, leather jackets-you might see the Rolling Stones wearing that kind of stuff.

"in this photo, you can see that all the Krishna have shaved their heads, except for the most eye-catching one." he has long blond hair, "Joe said. "the story I heard was that he was from Hawaii, where Krishna didn't need to shave his head. The others were cold to him-they thought his long hair showed vanity. So he's out of the crowd. " (Joe Samberg)

Flower's children have reached their peak in California. "people want to find their style," he said. "they are no longer trying to emphasize what hippies should look like. I find it exciting. This is a big project for a photographer-though, by any middle-class standard, the lives of these people are miserable.

Joe found a place to live and began to spend day after day on the sidewalk. "I don't have any clothes except the one I'm wearing," he said. "I seldom eat. When I have money, I first spend it on drugs, movies, and food that's the order. "

there are two types of drug addicts on Telegraph Street. An unrepentant injection of heroin. Others use hallucinogenic drugs, but they believe that opium is an evil way for "Big Brother" to prevent the poor from climbing out of the slums. At first, some children put up signs proclaiming, "there is no heroin seller here." As time went on, Joe said, those signs fell and more and more people began to take hard drugs. "it turns out that those consciousness are just getting weaker and weaker."

"do you see these children who drink Jin Fuli Jiao Liquor? The two bottles in the picture will be finished in no more than two minutes. These children are thirteen, maybe fourteen. But they have to consume whatever they encounter. " (Joe Samberg)

look at Joe's picture, it's clear how young some of those addicts are. A group of junior high school girls called Mini thugs often show up in Mickey Mouse T-shirts. "someone controlled the kids," Joe said. " Their people told them, "Listen, you don't have to go to school. Everything you need to learn in life is on this street, right here.

Berkeley has changed a lot since 1964 when thousands of students-including those in suits and ties-gathered in Splauer Square to defend civil rights and demand freedom of speech. The campus has always been the source of the boldest ideas in the counterculture, where young activists mobilize against apartheid and the Vietnam War, and where they study political theory and oriental philosophy.

left: a man dressed as Christ is sitting on a trash can. Right: a local in a top hat named "wonderful" (late) marched down the street with many of his friends. "there will still be some sparks of ideas about a new society and a better way of life. But all this is in decline. " (Joe Samberg)

now, college dropouts and renegades and runaways gather on the other side of Sasser Gate. The anger is still there, but the questions that trigger it are ambiguous. While Joe was wandering the Telegraph Street, his brother Paul published an anthology of satirical articles in the underground newspaper called "Fire!" ". The book mocks the overall concept of higher education.

in the suburbs, "working hard, our life is no fun, but the child will get what we can't give him." the husband and wife are full of longing for college. The campus is a well-hatched nest of eggs, where "I don't understand that he's always been a good boy" and "Oh no she's not that kind of girl" climb the ladder of success hand in hand, their little heads immersed in gentle classes taught. Only children never met the professor. He developed a new type of improved tear gas to make children cough in the laboratory, while the university president was above it.

protesters destroyed the barbed wire around the people's Park. "in my family, there are always socialist publications," Joe said. "I have read it all and understood it all. It's just that I've never believed in it as much as the rest of my family. " (Joe Samberg)

even at the time, Joe said he was "too sarcastic" to buy radicalism. "ordinary people on the street are almost completely ignorant of politics," Joe said. "all they care about is drugs, drugs. They are nihilists and hedonists. They just support the opposites of all existing systems. All of these have no knowledge base. Everyone is talking about the feeling of love, a new era, and radical politics-is essentially heading for a tragic death.

Joe finally got married, had a family, and became middle class, but he never moved out of Berkeley. There are still homeless people roaming Telegraph street, but as Joe points out, they no longer pretend to be hippies. The movement itself is dead, and those who have promoted the development of the movement and the scenery are gone.

Over overtime, Joe said he saw "psychic expansion" drugs giving way to heroin. "I never had the financial resources to be a real drug addict," Joe said. "I never had enough money. And I've never been willing to sell my camera. " (Joe Samberg)

"that's my problem with the whole thing," Joe said. "if people continue to rely on drugs, they won't make much progress. It all starts with a higher level of thinking-expanding your mind to make you more aware of what's going on. And once drugs get the upper hand, all these big ideas disappear. "

Mark Harris, the author of the Atlantic article, came to a similar conclusion. He was a pre-baby boomer generation, but he was a white New Yorker who wrote for Eboni and Black Digest, and he had a high degree of sympathy for the young activists of the 1960s. It's just that he doesn't think hippies have brought about any meaningful change. Drugs hinder their emotional development, leaving them at the mercy of "their hallucinations, irrationality and devil theories, inexperience in life and perception of failure". Instead of promoting fraternity and equality, they occupied public space, plucked all the flowers in Golden Gate Park, and refused to turn down the volume of their music to let their hard-working neighbors Rest. And because they beg for money and frequently visit free clinics, these suburban children suck resources away from the people in the city who need them most.

nevertheless, hippies end up having a lasting impact on American culture-even if they don't expect it at all. "after a while, I began to pay attention to something," Joe said. "people who once wanted to beat me up for my long hair-now they have long hair, too!" In the mid-1970s, when Leonard Skinnard sang "Alabama my Sweet Home" in front of the giant federal flag at the Oakland Stadium, they looked strangely similar to the hippies on Telegraph Street. "so, yes," concluded Joe, "I think there's been a revolution."

Joe (Maggie Samberg) in 1970