A TRIP TO L.A. IN THE MID 60'S FROM SAN FRANCISCO WITH MY ROAD DOG BART
Now it is always fun (in a perverse sense) to date one’s self. Now this is s.f. in the mid-60’s while living in San Francisco. Mid 1960’s or so….
Youth does make us adventurous , and putting our heads together, and conjuring up a trip to l.a.
So with a minimum of planning…..or what we considered planning off we went….
my dad lived in l.a. and we asked if we could stay over for a day, he was also a master chef so knew food wasn’t a problem…
(now this order may be out of sync but did happen) that evening, probably after a great meal from pops we headed out the hullabaloo (later to become the Aquarius theater ironically some of the icon bands lived around there and jammed), on sunset near vine…(I also found later-out they had a sunrise jam from 1 to 6 am, t other locals jammed for free then & the doors, love, Alice cooper,iron butterfly and more)
Now this was on TV, probably produced by dick Clark…there were go-go dancers, might have been in cages, with those white go-go boots-and all the trappings..
The strawberry alarm clock played their claim to fame was “incense and peppermints”….hmmmmmm…that’s old school sorta just about the start of hippies and you hear the song once in a while on rock stations…
Anyhow, we felt like we were at American bandstand…deal…
And that wasn‘t us……not out of arrogance …just dorky or even beyond for us…the music was o.k. but I don‘t remember what we heard…the crowd was l.a. not the s.f. crowd we were used to…in those days….we called people from l.a. plastic…or plastic-fantastic…..oddly enough I was actually born in l.a. in temple hospital. And then 3 or 4 years later moved to l.a.
So after concerts at the Fillmore, the Avalon ballroom (family dog), free concert in golden gate park (speedway meadows?)
This was a completely different setting, different people some cool and friendly most stand-offish not the Haight-Ashbury “EVERYONE” IS YOUR BROTHER OR SISTER…
So we exited stage left….back to pop’s in the parlance of the day “crash” at my dad’s pad…being a seasoned master chef he was out the door at about 4 that morning ……
So, lack so sleep, nor snow no hail nor gale winds nor dark of night was gonna stop us for us making our way to Hollywood and west Hollywood, the actual sunset strip area….
Got going we went thru Hollywood and headed out to the “strip“……and as to be expected, we got sidetracked and ended up on Santa Monica blvd…..(don’t think it was Melrose )
So sight-seeing and lost we were headed to the sunset strip …at least in the right direction, by no means by design….so we passed this one place and we could hear someone playing music…I can remember looking inside and saw some band….(we learned later it was the troubadour) so we listened for a while and watched them thru the door…
A while later ….back in s.f. we heard the band on the radio….is was the buffalo Springfield…..probably hear several of their songs before the album was recorded…
Just one of those cool but eerie webs of life that hold all events everything is it’s own sync…..that had us walk that way…..
We walked a bit more and looked in a bar, empty, but it had a wall of beers available (years later I went there, not a beer person, but with some friends and marveled at the variety that was there had to be well over a hundred, if not 2)..
We meandered to the more well know sunset strip and I remember there was a big statue of bull winking and I think he was holding rocky……there was a jay ward-store there…..
We saw the whiskey a go-go (later named the whiskey) ay Clark and sunset…. There was gazarris…Pandora’s box…and other clubs…this was our first intro and later in time one of my hangouts when in l.a.
More stories to come…….p.s. in the last story I told you of the pants Bart and I got well here they are …this is a photo of a band from l.a. in the 60’s with our pants…
Youth does make us adventurous , and putting our heads together, and conjuring up a trip to l.a.
So with a minimum of planning…..or what we considered planning off we went….
my dad lived in l.a. and we asked if we could stay over for a day, he was also a master chef so knew food wasn’t a problem…
(now this order may be out of sync but did happen) that evening, probably after a great meal from pops we headed out the hullabaloo (later to become the Aquarius theater ironically some of the icon bands lived around there and jammed), on sunset near vine…(I also found later-out they had a sunrise jam from 1 to 6 am, t other locals jammed for free then & the doors, love, Alice cooper,iron butterfly and more)
Now this was on TV, probably produced by dick Clark…there were go-go dancers, might have been in cages, with those white go-go boots-and all the trappings..
The strawberry alarm clock played their claim to fame was “incense and peppermints”….hmmmmmm…that’s old school sorta just about the start of hippies and you hear the song once in a while on rock stations…
Anyhow, we felt like we were at American bandstand…deal…
And that wasn‘t us……not out of arrogance …just dorky or even beyond for us…the music was o.k. but I don‘t remember what we heard…the crowd was l.a. not the s.f. crowd we were used to…in those days….we called people from l.a. plastic…or plastic-fantastic…..oddly enough I was actually born in l.a. in temple hospital. And then 3 or 4 years later moved to l.a.
So after concerts at the Fillmore, the Avalon ballroom (family dog), free concert in golden gate park (speedway meadows?)
This was a completely different setting, different people some cool and friendly most stand-offish not the Haight-Ashbury “EVERYONE” IS YOUR BROTHER OR SISTER…
So we exited stage left….back to pop’s in the parlance of the day “crash” at my dad’s pad…being a seasoned master chef he was out the door at about 4 that morning ……
So, lack so sleep, nor snow no hail nor gale winds nor dark of night was gonna stop us for us making our way to Hollywood and west Hollywood, the actual sunset strip area….
Got going we went thru Hollywood and headed out to the “strip“……and as to be expected, we got sidetracked and ended up on Santa Monica blvd…..(don’t think it was Melrose )
So sight-seeing and lost we were headed to the sunset strip …at least in the right direction, by no means by design….so we passed this one place and we could hear someone playing music…I can remember looking inside and saw some band….(we learned later it was the troubadour) so we listened for a while and watched them thru the door…
A while later ….back in s.f. we heard the band on the radio….is was the buffalo Springfield…..probably hear several of their songs before the album was recorded…
Just one of those cool but eerie webs of life that hold all events everything is it’s own sync…..that had us walk that way…..
We walked a bit more and looked in a bar, empty, but it had a wall of beers available (years later I went there, not a beer person, but with some friends and marveled at the variety that was there had to be well over a hundred, if not 2)..
We meandered to the more well know sunset strip and I remember there was a big statue of bull winking and I think he was holding rocky……there was a jay ward-store there…..
We saw the whiskey a go-go (later named the whiskey) ay Clark and sunset…. There was gazarris…Pandora’s box…and other clubs…this was our first intro and later in time one of my hangouts when in l.a.
More stories to come…….p.s. in the last story I told you of the pants Bart and I got well here they are …this is a photo of a band from l.a. in the 60’s with our pants…
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