CALIFORNIA
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implied that hippies were really honorary red men - or at least not white
oppressors - and he was listened to with quiet enthusiasm.
Sitting in front of me were two attractive youngsters, and we began
to chat. Harry began by asking me if 1 would like some LSD - he had
some in his pocket. (1 was naturally the object of some polite interest
since I was the only person in tie and jacket and shoes.)
Harry is eighteen, from the Bronx, a graduate of the New York
School of Performing Arts (in acting) and a dropout from City College.
His girl, Kate, is from California, eighteen years old, the daughter of
motel keepers, a high-school graduate who thinks she might sometime go
to San Francisco State College.
They were charming, gentle and friendly, long-haired and bare–
footed. They invited me to come to eat with them - as their guest - at
a hippy restaurant called the Macrobiotics. This is a hole in the wall,
vegetarian, natural-food-fetish place with meals of carrot and apple
juice, soy beans, brown rice and so on, all for 50¢. The customers help
themselves to the food, play flutes and guitars, sing and relax. Harry
and Kate spoke with great conviction of the virtues of nature, natural
food , Thoreau and the evils of tobacco and alcohol. And again pressed
me to try some marijuana and LSD.
We went back to the theater, and 1 listened again to the Indian
preacher until I was bored, and then asked Harry and Kate if they would
like to come to dinner at the St. Francis Hotel. Neither one, obviously,
had ever been to a fancy restaurant before, and they were very sweetly and
adolescently game for an adventure, laughing a little at their own willing–
ness to be corrupted. I warned them that some degree of formal dress
would be necessary, and they agreed.
I met them in the rather grand and red plush lobby of the St.
Francis at 6: 30, and they looked amazing. Harry, a slight beardless boy,
had brushed his long blond hair smooth, borrowed a shirt, tie and jacket
and an old pair of corduroys. In addition, he had put on some gold
pince-nez glasses with a gold chain pinned to his jacket and one large
gold earring. Kate had braided her long black hair - she's a handsome
and shapely girl - borrowed a plain mini-skirted dress and white
stockings, and both had found some fairly respectable-looking sandals.
I took them to the elegant French restaurant in the St. Francis
Hotel. I had been there before and the head waiter greeted me as an old
patron and showed no surprise at my young guests. We had the works–
cocktails (which they thought wonderfully wicked, since they were non–
alcoholics, and since they were only eighteen years old), shrimp,
vichyssoise, salad, filet mignon, French pastry, Tavel
Rose
1964 and
demitasses. I, of course, ate only a little of all this, and they, like all
