News
Allen Cohen:

Human Beings, Being Together

January 14, 2017  •  Nicole Meldahl and Arnold Woods

Fifty years ago today, thousands gathered at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park for the Human Be-In–a happening that launched California counterculture on its path towards the Summer of Love. Organized by San Francisco Oracle co-founders Allen Cohen and Michael Bowen, the event was intended to gather diverse “tribes” from within the San Francisco Bay Area’s counterculture community, but it also caught the attention of curious (straight) locals, who brought their kids to see the fuss, and far-flung travelers. Learn More →

Who Saw the Summer of Love? Part I – Merchants & Diggers

October 31, 2016  •  Nicole Meldahl

There would be no story here if the Sixties had nothing to sell. Summer of Love style may have seemed strange to outsider straights, but its development is indicative of a cycle that continues to recur. Cultural fads originate among the poor, the young, the disenfranchised because necessity is the mother of invention. The beauty of youth is the gift of fresh perspective and the ability to experiment with minimized consequences. This combination manifests differently within individual people or groups, and is most evident in visual expressions such as art, fashion, and design. Each generation takes what has come before to forge the future, and underground trends see mainstream light because capitalism lives by folding the fringe into the middle. Learn More →

“News is a State of Mind”: Allen Cohen and The San Francisco Oracle

September 16, 2016  •  Nicole Meldahl

50 years ago today, September 16, 2016, the first issue of The San Francisco Oracle was hot off the presses and being distributed in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Revolutionary in content and form, The Oracle tapped the best naked minds of its generation to distill and manufacture current events, and its founder, Allen Cohen, funneled all the art and optimism of his generation into a psychedelic periodical that lives on as an irreplaceable archive of 1960s “advocacy press.” Learn More →