Berkeley Barb

A Picture of the Gone World: The founding meeting of the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), the through-the-looking-glass Associated Press of 60s hippie and radical papers, convened in a Washington D.C. loft the day before 1967's March on the Pentagon. "Let's get this show on the road," said moving spirit Marshall Bloom, later a 60s casualty but resplendent that October afternoon in a "Sergeant Pepper" get-up, as he set fire to his draft card. Photographers leapt forward. A picture of Bloom, smiling down at the flame, formed part of a collage on the cover of the following week's "East Village Other" -- and no doubt wound up in his FBI file. A crowd of sixty-odd cheered and whistled. I was standing opposite EVO editor Walter Bowart ("a very dominant cat," another editor called him), who wore tights in broad stripes of alternating red and white, like the flag. Just another day in the life of the "underground" press, whose founding papers were already serving up their witches'-brew of serious journalism, innovative graphics, drug babble, New Age irrationalism, and paranoia. Abe Peck's "Uncovering the 60s" chronicles their intermittent glories and decline into wimpy "alternative" status. NameBase dug out a few of these underground articles, figuring they deserved an afterlife. There's no doubt that most of the best are buried forever.

-- Steve Badrich

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