Pot Is Good, But LSD Better
By Mary Miller
The Los Angeles Free Press is a newspaper founded on the premise that pot is good, LSD even better.
Written by and for a coterie of hippies, artists, bohemians and Sunset Strip drifters, it is topically against the draft, President Johnson, the war in Vietnam, Mayor Yorty and the entire Lon Angeles police force.
It is part of a refreshing syndicate called the Underground Press, a vague alliance of shoestring newspapers largely anti-Establishment in scope.
$15 START
The Free Press itself was started two years ago on an investment of $15. It is published in a shabby Hollywood office that also sells bumper stickers carrying such slogans as “Hugh Hefner is a Virgin,” “Hire the Morally Handicapped,” and “Familiarity Breeds.”
The Free Press asks such burning questions as “Does LSD on sugar cubes spoil the taste of coffee” and “Are marijuana brownies best served before or after dinner.” (Answer: Before dinner, of course. Then you can forget about serving the meal.)
Editor Art Kunkin believes the Free Press should be a. “forum for free expression of critical comment and dialogue.” To this end, he fills his news columns with stories that never make the regular press.
For example, a play graphically outlining a love affair between Billy the Kid and Marilyn Monroe was recently banned in San Francisco on obscenity charges. The Free Press immediately took up the cause and unabashedly editorialized their regrets to the author.
Likewise, when Lenny Bruce died, the paper printed countless tributes to the fallen hero and instigated a memorial graveside freak-in. Unfortunately the cemetery closed their gates in the face of a beatnik invasion so celebrants adjourned to a neighboring apartment where they alternately sang, cried, chanted, and laughed. Lenny would have wanted it that way.
Bruce was found dead in his bathroom this summer with a hypo stuck majestically in his arm. The Establishment press and police force pinned the cause of death on an overdose of narcotics.
The Free Press stoutly denies this however, and charges that everyone jumped to conclusions.
THE MOTHERS
The newspaper has a curious alliance with an even more curious group – the Mothers of Invention. Together they host freak-outs at the Shrine Auditorium.
The last one promised exotic, long hair freakos running amok. This only mildly describes the wild scene as thousands of hippies jammed the Shrine to watch the warped quintet perform remarkable gyrations. These and other exciting events are described in lurid detail, because the motto of the Free Press seems to be “If you don't mention LSD, pot or hip folk heroes at least three times in every paragraph, you're just one of those plastic people who lack soul.”
Read by OCR software. If you spot errors, let me know afka (at) afka.net