Yellow becomes intelligent

July 21, 2009 12:05 PM

Drop the acid just before the bus leaves the station:In this January 14, 1967 broadsheet, probably distributed along the Haight on telephone polls, walls, and in windows, ComCo passes on some learned tips on good Bay Area headventure trips. ( Via digaman's twitter )
posted by The Whelk (33 comments total)

I assume a "headventure" is an adventure for a "head" - as the term "head" would have been used by a character in a Freak Brothers comic? Or does head refer to one's head? I had never seen that term used, and I read it as headventure. Like some kind of gay men's adventure, or a Iron John thing.
posted by dammitjim at 12:14 PM on July 21

Acid doth make us high elven.

That sentence doth maketh me laugh.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:20 PM on July 21 [1 favorite]

<>This guy was a digger.
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:22 PM on July 21 [1 favorite]

I love the tripped out prose, but I can't help but snark a little.

Muir Woods. Roundtrip busfare under $2.00. Sequoias old as the moon & taller than Jesus. Streams. Tart green clover you can chew. Drop the acid just before the bus leaves the station. Go in the morning. Stay all day. Bring a lunch, but not incense. Pray & be joyous there.

I'll give you "old as the moon," but "taller than Jesus" doesn't say much about any tree. We're talking about an incarnation of (a) god as a man, not Paul Bunyan. There are fruit trees that can tower over Jesus, and their fruit isn't blessed or anything like that. It's just a standard tree-sized-tree.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:22 PM on July 21

This guy was a digger.

[I screwed up on the preview. Many apologies]
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:22 PM on July 21

Dude! It totally means "head" as in "Pot-head" or "Acid-head" or even "Headshop."

Boy! Did that bring back memories. My Dad was a student at Berkeley at this time. I was about 5 or 6. Our family lived in a 2 bedroom apartment and every wacko relative rolled out to the coast to camp in our living room.

My uncle and his "old lady" came and they decided to sell sugar cubes in the Haight to the straights. Mind, that's all they were, sugar cubes.

My uncle died about three years ago and his obituary said that he was a member of the Diggers. Not exactly correct, he ate Digger soup, that's about it.

Hippies. Hilarious.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:23 PM on July 21 [2 favorites]

^
cool story bro
posted by Bathtub Bobsled at 12:24 PM on July 21

Ah, the sunny days when putting up a flyer on a telephone pole directly mentioning the consumption of LSD didn't mean immediate cop tracking and jail time.

Lots of posts with similar content lately. Maybe Uncle 'Cid is going to make an appearance? We could all use a nice little sit-down visit. Chat a bit, catch up on the kids, see how things are going, etc. Y'all know how it can go. :)
posted by hippybear at 12:32 PM on July 21 [3 favorites]

So the Golden Gate hums "E" 'like a mile-long guitar'? Neat.
posted by dabitch at 12:33 PM on July 21

MetaFilter: like a god on pension
posted by not_on_display at 12:34 PM on July 21

Hippies. Hilarious.

Perhaps. But the Diggers, NO. Start here if you have any doubts. The book is called Ringolevio and it has a lot to say about the secret history of 1960s America.
posted by philip-random at 12:38 PM on July 21 [1 favorite]

So the Golden Gate hums "E" 'like a mile-long guitar'?

Or, at least it does with a little of the ol' Owsley lurking your brain.
posted by hippybear at 12:38 PM on July 21 [2 favorites]

Lots of posts with similar content lately. Maybe Uncle 'Cid is going to make an appearance?

Well, MeFi's 10 years old now It must be time.
posted by philip-random at 12:42 PM on July 21

A 'head', in the language of hip, is a user of psychedelic drugs: LSD, marijuana ('grass'), mescaline, peyote, methedrine, benzedrine, and a half-dozen others that are classified in the trade as mind-stimulating, consciousness-expanding, or 'head' drugs. At the other end of the spectrum are 'body' drugs: opium, heroin, barbiturates and even alcohol. These are basically depressants, while head drugs are stimulants. But neither type comes with manufacturer's guarantee, and the Hashbury is full of people whose minds have been jerked around savagely by drugs that were supposed to induce peaceful euphoria.
(Hunter S. Thompson, 1967 in New York Times or p. 412 in The Great Shark Hunt, 1979)

posted by Free word order! at 12:43 PM on July 21

I'll give you "old as the moon," but "taller than Jesus" doesn't say much about any tree. We're talking about an incarnation of (a) god as a man, not Paul Bunyan. There are fruit trees that can tower over Jesus, and their fruit isn't blessed or anything like that. It's just a standard tree-sized-tree.

I dunno, this Jesus is 120' tall.
posted by juv3nal at 12:45 PM on July 21

Don't forget about the 900' Jesus.
posted by Burhanistan at 12:53 PM on July 21 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the Diggers are way more interesting than just your common dirt foot hippie.
posted by Divine_Wino at 1:07 PM on July 21

Think disturbing thoughts at Ronnie while you're up there. Confuse his vibes for him.

From back when Ronnie was just Arnold. Knowing his future really would have given them bad trips.
posted by pracowity at 1:08 PM on July 21 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: Helping make my travel plans since right fucking now.
posted by SinisterPurpose at 1:20 PM on July 21 [2 favorites]

Higher! Higher!
posted by adamdschneider at 1:30 PM on July 21

There are fruit trees that can tower over Jesus, and their fruit isn't blessed or anything like that. It's just a standard tree-sized-tree.

And just don't get him started on fig trees. He's a right ol' bastard when it comes to the poor fig trees.
posted by joe lisboa at 1:47 PM on July 21 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: like a god on pension

I loved this whole line:

Take your laysure like a god on pension.

I think I will take my laysure that way, thank you.
posted by nosila at 2:13 PM on July 21

Another Digger document from the same source: this is rather beautiful.

Also this line; "heads, vagrants, runaways, deviates, long hairs, beards &c &c" sounds like my friends from another generation.

Hippybear: You already had 10,000 points in my books for being a gay former raver but I had never heard of Owsley Stanley before your comment. I have a little owl named Owlsford who is always my companion while tripping; he's cute and comforting, he can hold a water bottle and licorice if I'm on E, he's a backpack so I can totally forget he's there, and if I start getting nervous he'll communicate psychic comforting owl messages to me. He's totally getting nicknamed Owsley. How appropriate.

10,000 more points.
posted by Juliet Banana at 2:29 PM on July 21 [3 favorites]

Hmmm, this is a fun coincidence: MeFi is 10 years old. There are a lot of acid posts today. I did acid for the first time in 10 years last weekend.

Well, it's not a strong cooincidence, but a coincidence nonetheless.
posted by keep_evolving at 2:46 PM on July 21

Muir Woods. [...] Sequoias old as the moon

This might be a 42-year-old nit, but:

Coast redwoods as in Sequoia sempervirens, not sequoias as in Sequoiadendron giganteum. Muir Woods is on the coast, bathed in fog. Sequoias are far inland, up by the Sierras.
posted by Jubal Kessler at 2:57 PM on July 21

So the Golden Gate hums "E" 'like a mile-long guitar'? Neat.

It does. Especially on a windy day and if you hide from the noise of the traffic behind one of the towers on the pedestrian walkway. I think there's a bit of universal G in there too.

Ever since I first heard it I've wanted to record it somehow.

I would like to actually shut down the bridge for about an hour on a foggy, windy day and record it with about a thousand contact mics attached to a variety of cables and a few hundred more regular mics and maybe some other non-traditional sensors like lasers mics and other ways to capture mechanical vibration data. Record it all in raw high resolution digital, a track for each mic or source, and then work on the mixdown later in studio.

Because it's a really big, weird sound. You couldn't really capture the real-life ambience of the noise it makes and the way your ears and body and the wind interacts with it, but you could probably get really close to simulating it with enough recordings of the different parts of the bridge singing in the wind.

I would also like to hand out harmless plastic bats to about a thousand people and have them bang on the bridge and cables while it's being recorded and actually play it as the world's largest instrument.
posted by loquacious at 4:33 PM on July 21 [4 favorites]

> I did acid for the first time in 10 years last weekend.

I did it for the first time last weekend.
posted by egypturnash at 5:45 PM on July 21

Another nit is that some of those "sequoias" are being pissed on and chopped down by the Bohemian Club.
posted by blucevalo at 6:27 PM on July 21

> I did acid for the first time in 10 years last weekend.

I did it for the first time last weekend.

Well then, please file your report
posted by philip-random at 7:36 PM on July 21

Yellow becomes intelligent

In its context, this proposition makes sense.
posted by Flashman at 7:39 PM on July 21 [1 favorite]

This guy was a digger.

He's also my uncle. True.

I would like a garage to restore broken machines, personally.
posted by jessamyn at 9:29 PM on July 21

Dropping before taking a bus is awesome. I did it once, leaving Portland for the long ride to NYC. i highly (hehehe) recommend it!
posted by Goofyy at 2:55 AM on July 22

In 1983 high winds closed the Bridge and played it like a harp.

I was a kid back then in Marin County, biking around after school through Sequoia sempervirens, and noticing that even through the trees in a canyon the wind was strong enough to push me up a slight incline without my using the pedals. That left a strong impression.

Got home, and on the news, a reporter was stationed by the north end of the bridge, holding onto her hat, and describing the music being played on the suspension cables.
posted by Jubal Kessler at 9:05 AM on July 22