On Being at the Human Be-In

I was one of the many who came to the Polo Fields fifty years ago to gather with others and listen to music and poetry. I left UC Santa Cruz early that morning with five friends in my 1959 Ford Galaxie convertible. (I’d bought the car from Joe Gillespie, an easy-listening KSFO disc jockey whose livelihood was being eroded by the music we were going to hear.) One passenger was Paul Mann, whom I was just getting to know. Paul was the lead singer for the Flowers of Evil, a Santa Cruz group often included in lists of psychedelic bands; today he is a professor of literature at Pomona College, and he and I remain close friends. Learn More →