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Short Stuff: Flower Power · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about flower power. So let's
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: start doing that right now.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Kind of specifically the two flower Powers, because there
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: was one flower Power movement and the nineteen sixty seven
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: specifically into sixty eight that had to do with politics
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: and protests, and then there was a second Flower Power
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: movement kind of either concurrently or on the heels of that,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: that was a little bit more about like, hey, man,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: like wear this cool shirt and listen to this music.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: We're in San Francisco.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a good point, and one more from
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the other. I think the whole thing originally had its
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: origin in nineteen sixty five thanks to Alan Ginsberg, who
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: would become one of the luminaries. He was, like Neil Cassidy,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: one of those rare beat generation guys who was able
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: to kind of make the transition over to hippie and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: so he became a luminary of this whole scene the
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: very beginning of like the hippie movement in the sixties,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and so by this time he was already a very
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: respected counterculture person. And so when a bunch of Berkeley
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: students decided that they were going to protest basically a
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: clamp down on political speech on campus. They asked Allen
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Ginsburg if he had any advice for him, and boy
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: did he ever.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He wrote a essay to give out to the
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: protesters called demonstration or spectacle as example as communication or
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: how to make a march slash spectacle.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And they said what and he said, just read it.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: He's I love Allen Ginsburg, great poet, and he always
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: had these kind of funny long titles.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Like that yeah, or very short like how well, yeah,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: good point, thanks man. So there was a lot to this,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: But the thing that really has to do with our
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: episode is that he was searching for a way or
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: advising them to look for ways to basically take the
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: psychology of war and people who are for war and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff and just kind of change it.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Like take this scary thing and this violent thing and
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: just turn it on its head. If you're trying to
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: protest it, just don't follow its rules of engagement, like
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: create your own.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, one of the things that was
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: they knew for sure was going to happen at this
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Berkeley protest was the Hell's Angels were going to come
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: in to counter protest the protests, or I guess just
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: counter protests. And he said kind of like kill him
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: with kindness. You know, he didn't actually say the words
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: flower power, but he mentioned flowers as what he called
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: a visual spectacle, like masses of flowers, a visual spectacle,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: especially concentrate in the front lines. And also little toy
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: soldiers and toy guns and candy and little tiny musical
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: instruments and to basically just sort of be like, yeah,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: just throw a bunch of like silliness and whimsy at them,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: and these hell's angels aren't know what to do. They
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: they might want to beat you up, but they'll probably
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: maybe even feel bad trying to.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Right, So this was really good advice, and that was
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: definitely the origin of flower power. And so you can
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: make a really good case and it would be totally
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: correct that the flower power movement or idea came from
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: anti war protests or even before that, free speech protests
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: among young liberals and counterculture types, even before there was
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: such a thing as hippies like Sonny and Cher were
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: just starting to get into this. It was so early, right,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: and so those students at Berkeley were successful. The administration
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: at the university was like, fine, say whatever you want,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: we don't care anymore. Just just get off the lawn.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: And then that got parlaid into Okay, well, this is
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: a we're creating a movement here, these kids really care
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: about stuff. How about we start targeting the Vietnam War.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: And that really quickly easily translated into it. And there
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: was a very very famous picture that was essentially the
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: culmination of this whole ideal that Alan Ginsburg suggested and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: that those Berkeley students first adopted. And it came in
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, I believe it, with a march on
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were more than one hundred thousand people at
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: this march, peaceful protest, and a very very famous picture,
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: like you mentioned, was taken by a guy named Bernie
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Boston of the Washington Star when he captured a young guy,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: eighteen year old aspiring actor named George Harris, when twenty
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: five hundred Reserve troops with M fourteen machine guns came
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: out and surrounded the place, he very calmly walked up
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: and stuck a daisy and the end of that gun,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: creating one of the most iconic photos of the nineteen sixties.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's called the flower Power photo.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: It's really great to see. And also his sweater is
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: just amazing.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: So I say we come back and talk about how
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: flower power morphed from that into what we think of
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: it today. How about that.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Let's do it all right, So, now we're in San Francisco.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: The hippie movement is genuinely underway at this point. That's
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: the epicenter of it all during one of the mini
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: summers of love that we've talked about, and flower powers
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: sort of goten morphed a little bit and it wasn't
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: so much political protests anymore. It was just like, hey,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: man like violence it in the way you got to
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: love your neighbor, you got to just get on board
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: with these cool clothes. It became more of sort of
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: a cultural even fashion touchstone that had not much to
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: do with protest, even though it was still about living
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: kind of a groovy, peaceful life.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: It got co opted, and that's a really great way
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: to defuse an actual movement is to commercialize it and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: sell it and repackage it to the rest of them
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the America. That's exactly what happened because a lot of
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: those hippies were like, yeah, I don't want to hurt anybody.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I don't want anybody to have to die in war.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: But really I'm kind of here for the chicks and
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the acid. That's really what I'm into. So it was
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: kind of easy for it to transition into yeah, just
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: a trend, a fashion trend. I mean, it eventually trickled
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: down to the Brady kids, for God's sake, that's how
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: far away it got from putting flowers into gun barrels
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: in protests of Vietnam. And that definitely happened. That transition
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: did definitely happen in nineteen sixty seven in San Francisco,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: and this was not lost on anybody who was really
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: into this movement at the time. I was really upset
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: to see it turn into a commercialized fashion trend.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, but that's kind of what happened in
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: the hate Ashbury District shop open there called the Psychedelic Shop.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: This is just shortly before ls was criminalized in the
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: United States, or at least in California. But at the
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: time you could go there and get education on doing
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: acid and like how to best do it and by it.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was legal that you just go down the.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Street to the psychedelic shop and buy some barrel acid.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So it's a it's a fashion thing
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: at this point. All the brightly colored sort of tide
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: ie stuff and literal like flower print dresses and things
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: like that was a It was a group of kids
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: kind of casting off finally, like the garments of the
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: nineteen fifties of their parents, where you know, women were
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: girdles and you know, skirts that weren't very comfortable and
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: too tight and too long, and they're like, hey, put
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: on this like free flowing linen flower frock and take
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: off that bra. Yeah, and tell me how that feels.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and burn it in this fifty five gallon drum
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: and we have a fire going.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: In right, which did not happen.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: No, that's awesome that you remembered that, because I had forgotten.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: So there, like I said, there were people who were
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: not happy about this transition. They really believed in flower
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: power and were kind of bummed that, like like all
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: of these people had just kind of come out and
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: we're missing the point. So they actually held a funeral
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: for the hippie in nineteen sixty seven. It was in
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: October nineteen sixty seven. They had a funeral march or
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: procession I guess through Hayde Ashbury, and they even burned
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the Psychedelic Shop sign. And I was trying to figure
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: outf the Psychedelic Shop's owner would have been like, yeah,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: that's the right thing to do, burn my sign, or
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: would have been like, hey, stop burning my sign. I
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: can't figure out how that would have gone down, but
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: it did go down like that. And also, for anybody
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: who's listened to our Biosphere in episode, this is about
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the time when the Synergians probably left for New Mexico.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. One guy was pretty happy that it waited
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: until later in nineteen sixty seven, at least because a
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: guy named Scott McKenzie had a big hit earlier that
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: year with the song San Francisco, which we for one
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: of our San Francisco shows. I believe it was the
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: one at the Palaci Fine Arch years ago. We played
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: this song as our walkout song, which was a mistake
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: because it's a little too mellow. If you're going to
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So he got that in just under the wire.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Less famously, the next line is or else those
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: hippies will mess you up real good. Yeah, but that
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: helped kind of spread flower power also to the rest
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of mainstream America because that song was such a big hit.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: All that stuff kind of combined really led to the
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: death of flower power and ultimately the image we have
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: of it today. But had tip to those kids that
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: gave it its original meaning and Alan Getzburg too.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, that picture's iconic and I kind of
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: take it for granted now because I've seen it so
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: many times. But it took a lot of guts for
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: that kid, an eighteen year old kid, to walk up
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: to a guy with a machine gun and stick a
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: flower in that barrel. That was a bold move.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a great one to put it. I
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: also want to give a hat tip to our former
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: colleague and host of Unladylike the podcast, Kristen Conger, who
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: wrote this originally for How Stuff Works so many years ago.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: That's right, Congs is great and I miss working with
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: her and I miss being in touch with her. This
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: made me kind of want to email her and just
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: say how you.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Doing, hey, man. With the spirit of flower Power, compels
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: you go ahead and do that chuck. All right, Wait,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't say short stuff is out.
• 11:36
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• 11:39
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• 11:42
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