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In the 1960s, Santa Cruz was a fountainhead of Hip culture.When I arrived in 1968 to join the new university, UCSC, the creative time was nearly over. By 1980, it seemed to me it had been such a miracle that its birth should be recorded. So I created the Santa Cruz Hip History Project in 2002, collecting oral histories and photographs in a website. This book is a compact summary of the 14 years accumulation of material from that website that was most relevant to the creation of the Hip culture of Santa Cruz. From 1964 to 1970, we will follow the stories of some of the main characters of the Hip miracle in Santa Cruz. These are primarily edited transcripts of interviews and verbal story telling. I chose the people that I personally knew as key characters in the Hip culture. And some of the important innovators of the 1960s have been unfortunately overlooked. I am sorry that most of the voices are male, but our time --- preceding the gender equality movement of the 1970s --- was predominantly patriarchal.

And I am very grateful for the support of our 11 contributors. During the 14-year incubation of this book, four of these old friends have passed on: Bob, Leon, Max, and Peter. Much more information may be found on our two websites and in the wonderful book by Holly Harman (see the References section.)

Here is a brief chronology of the main events of the time.¹

•1963.Peter, while running a bookstore in San Diego, visited Big Sur. In the hot baths with Ron Bevirt a plan was hatched to open a bookstore in Santa Cruz called the Hip Pocket Bookstore. The sign was to be made by Ron Boise, a sculptor living in Big Sur in a bread truck. A set of his works called the Kama Sutra sculptures was then showing at the Sticky Wicket.

-Peter and Ron Bevirt opened the Hip Pocket Bookstore on September 13 in the St. George Hotel. The Ron Boise sign and two nude sculptures (covered by a sheet) were on hand. Norman Lezin, the mayor of Santa Cruz, had agreed to unveil the sculptures at the opening, which was busted by the police.

-In the summer, the Barn opened in Scotts Valley by Leon. It featured dances similar to the acid tests, with fluorescent wall paintings by Joe Lysowski and Pat Bisconti. Great artists such as Janis Joplin and Country Joe performed there. A local band performed on musical sculptures created by Ron Boise. Light shows created by Joe were among the first in the US.

-February 26. In the local alternative newspaper, the Free Spaghetti Dinner, I wrote in my regular column “Scientific Advice on the Politics of Life,’’ under my pseudonym, Dr. Abraham Clearquill: Last Fall I felt that the emerging community in Santa Cruz was at a watershed, and that a development of some importance to the world was possible. Now I am convinced that this opportunity has passed, and the old structure is being recreated.⁴

I interviewed Pat in a cafe on February 26, 2016.

The recording was then transcribed by Becky Luening, and edited by Pat and by Judy Lomba.

Pat: I was born in Youngstown, Ohio, on July 18, 1945. My father, back from Europe after serving in the US Army during WWII, worked in a steel mill. When I was five my family moved to the then-beautiful Santa Clara Valley. I went to school in the Campbell -- Los Gatos area, and I started hitchhiking by myself over to Santa Cruz when I was about 11. That was probably 1956 or ‘57. That’s when I started coming over to surf on weekends and holidays. I would leave my surfboard with friends at Pleasure Point and hitchhike over until I was able to get my first car; looking back it seems kinda dangerous.

After graduating high school, I went to San Jose State. I was an art major. I went there for two years, got pretty good grades, then quit because I felt they were making me even more stupid; besides, I had other things I wanted to do. I didn’t really respect the degree very much, obviously, and probably I made a big career mistake.

But before that, while still in high school, I married my high school sweetheart, Nancy Garthwaite. We were just 17 years old. We’ve been married 53 years now, and we’ve had seven kids and 14 grandkids so far. She has been through it all with me, and is my strongest supporter. We were buying a new house in San Jose at that time, and I gave it to my brother.

Then we rented a little beach house at Twin Lakes Beach with a cabin in the back by the Lagoon to use as a studio, and we moved to Santa Cruz. This studio cabin is where my friend, and an extremely gifted artist, Steve Sprague, and I created the original manuscript for The Madjic Trip, a book about the basic five senses for very young children. A limited first edition in hard and softbound was later published by Madjic Books, at Big Trees Press in Felton, California. I have recently made a newly designed and formatted version of The Madjic Trip for unlimited editions, which is presently unpublished. Shortly after we moved there, Sharon Cadwallader and her son Leland moved into a cottage behind us. She later wrote The Whole Earth Cookbook and several other books and articles.

Not long after that, Max Hartstein, a New York artist, musician, film-maker, and psychic alchemist moved in with Sharon. He had been living and working in his studio in Mexico. We soon became friends and began collaborating on projects. Phil Hefferton was one of the original New York Pop Artists, and he moved into the neighborhood. I think Max enticed him to come to Santa Cruz. He spent a lot of time hanging out and playing music at our house.

Also Charlie Nothing, another New York artist and musician, migrated to the Twin Lakes Beach area. He had just released a long playing record album on Takoma Records titled The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing, which caused much controversy in the Jazz world, as nobody had heard anyone blow so free and relentless.

His friend, Tox Drohard, who was a master of rhythm, especially trap drums and conga drums, arrived at about the same time. He would play for hours at a time, and the ladies loved him. Later, he settled in Paris, France. At that time Joe Lysowski, an important Santa Cruz artist, lived in the neighborhood next to Tony Maggi, another artist and commercial fisherman.

Also Gary Dunn, an all around good guy and musician lived near by. Gary helped metal sculptor Ron Boise by storing Ron’s sculptures, and transporting them in his old painted Rio truck.

Also, Stan Fullerton, a very unique artist, was living and painting in Santa Cruz in a regal victorian on top of the hill near the Boardwalk. I still have one of his canvases titled, Ba Ba Yaga and his Cow Kite, an oil painting of a little boy in a field holding a flying cow by the tail, like in the Russian folktale.

All these very creative individuals, and so many more great spirits, were around at that time. In other places, locally and far away, similar ideas and feelings were being manifest. But Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay area, and Big Sur were definitely hot spots, and they still are. Remember, this was before computers and cell phones, the internet, black holes, space telescopes, etc. This was tape recorders, film, typewriters, the Beatles, Dylan, and lots of old modern technology. The world was changing about that time, I don’t think we changed it, but it did change, and we were a part of that. I think of it as an organic natural radical change, like a caterpillar changing into an eagle.

So, around 1964 we were living in this two bedroom house for $70 a month right across the street from the beach and that little lagoon at Schwann Lake. There was a studio cabin behind a row of these other cabins, and I got that for an extra $5 a month, and so that became my art studio, where I worked on The Madjic Trip graphics.

Max had come to Santa Cruz from Mexico and that’s where and when I met him. He was developing his Paradise Pageant idea, and got me involved in that project for many years. He was also making movies, and I helped him make Beach Head in Paradise which we filmed on the 4th of July at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

He had them all on 16mm, mostly with the soundtracks on separate tapes. It all has to be digitalized and transferred to modern media.

Pat: You’ve got the Boardwalk movie? Okay! That was the first one made in Santa Cruz. That was a lot of fun. Not much of a storyline, more of a social adventure. We shot it all in one day. Later, I started working on The Space Bass, Max’s documentary about the creation of a machine that actually was able to manipulate time and space and transcend three-dimensional reality. Work on this movie took a couple years and was filmed outdoors.

I think of this era as the calm before the storm. Things and people who were rather static, became more fluid, active, involved, about that time. Ron Boise had recently caused a large disturbance in the art world with his Kama Sutra sculptures at the Vorpal Gallery in San Francisco. The sculptures begged the question, “What is pornography / What is art?” The city police raided the gallery, took the sculptures, and arrested the relevant people. They had a much publisized court case in San Francisco. We can thank Ron Boise and Allen Watts (who spoke in defense of art and sex at the trial) for fixing that problem.

So Ron was chilling out in Santa Cruz, and in the mountains. He was living and working out of an old bread truck-type vehicle. He had a show at the Hip Pocket Bookstore in Santa Cruz that featured his kinetic sculpture which pointed to the future direction he was taking. He was incorporating electronic things like tape recorders, microphones, looping machines, vacuum cleaners, lights, timers, etc. into the sculptures to have them come alive and move and make noise or whatever. Joe Lysowski had painted most of them, and it was a ground breaking show in that respect.

Then he had an exhibition at the Steam Beer Brewery in San Francisco, which went really well. The large controversial couple sculpture from the Hip Pocket Bookstore in Santa Cruz eventually ended up on the roof of the brewery, where it could be seen from the very busy freeway. A few of us went up to the brewery with Gary Dunn to deliver some of the sculptures, and help set up the show which featured the amazing Thunder Machine painted by Joe Lysowski. The Thunder Machine was a metal sculpture shaped somewhat like a sea shell about 8’ x 8’ x 10’. The viewer went inside and sat on a seat with a harp-type thing hanging next to it. So the musician was able to be inside the actual sound chamber while playing. There were lights and other features built in also.

That was one of the most enjoyable art openings, because the brewery offered such a complimentary backdrop for the pieces, or maybe because everybody had a beer buzz. Shortly after that, Ron took his sculptures to Texas for a show. I think Gary took the Thunder Machine for that one. I remember him saying the folks on Haight Street went nuts when he drove through there, jumping on the truck, and following down the street. However, Ron got real sick in Texas and was flown back. Then for some sad lonely reason he didn’t recover, or survive.

And for me, this event marked the beginning of the end of the first phase of Flower Power. But, somehow, through Gary, I inherited Ron’s welding gauges and some miscellaneous tools. His leather welding gloves had holes burnt in every finger and thumb. I had them hanging in my studios as a rememberance for 30 years, at least. When I completed Space Bass, I gave Ron’s welding gauges to Charlie Nothing, after teaching him to weld. I wanted to help him get started making his Dingulator Suite, and he became a master metal sculptor himself, with his unique style. All of Ron’s and Charlie’s pieces are amazing and should be in a museum before they get lost.

So, I had started working on the Space Bass, which I made out of a WWII bomber gas tank that was of good resonating steel. I had been inspired by Ron’s Void Harp, but he was making his instruments out of copper, and copper really doesn’t resonate very well; it has a dull sound compared to American automobile steel. I was welding sculptures out of metal things I recycled: cars, metal appliances, etc. My family was from Youngstown, Ohio --- from the steel mills --- they were all in the steel business, so when they came to Santa Clara in the 1950’s they were involved in construction with all the schools, freeway overpasses, big buildings. Therefore, I was kind of expected to go into something having to do with steel, so in college I took sculpture classes and learned how to weld. Then I ended up with Ron’s gear and started working on the Space Bass. That turned out to be a two-year project. Max was filming the whole time, and when I finished it, we presented it at a big party at the old Holiday Lodge, the hippie commune in Felton, and he filmed that as part of both that movie, and also as part of another movie he made about the commune.

It was basically a row of small cabins and a big house along the San Lorenzo River with some acreage, lots of big redwood trees and a flat open garden area. Very pleasant, near Felton, on Highway 9. Max was making a 16mm documentary about the people living there, and what they were doing. It was a colorful mix of individuals, couples, and families, forming somewhat of a tribe, trying to live the dream. So they were having a Harvest Festival celebration or something, and I was invited to publicly present the Space Bass for the first time there. Max was to film everything, to use in the Commune movie and the Space Bass movie.

From the minute the Space Bass landed at the party it was surrounded by people who had never seen it, but instantly intuitively recognized what it was and started playing it. And that began one continuous song that lasted all day with different people playing it non-stop. It was outside and I think it was amped so it could be heard along with a rock band. Both movies came out very well, but they never were finished. We were working with film and tape at that time, if we had today’s digital technology then, we would have used it, and Max would have been able to finish his movies. He was a really excellent moviemaker, but in those days getting through the lab was out of his financial range, not having a producer. Max took his movies as far as he could, and then started a new one.

And eventually we had The World Premiere of The Space Bass at the Straight Theater on Haight Street in San Francisco. The Flower Children were still blooming, and we were there to introduce the Space Bass to the big city, and put on a show. Max had organized a band, and a light show, and a bunch of people. More than a busload of people came up from Santa Cruz to be part of the event. I remember standing on the street in front of the theater with the cold San Francisco wind blowing, before the show and looking at the words “World Premiere of The Space Bass Tonight” on the marquee, and thinking maybe something good might happen. Inside everything was set up, the Space Bass center stage with a light show behind. It all looked and felt solid. There were a lot of people having a good time.

So we started playing music and lights, and the thing really took off in a heavenly way, everybody was dancing and playing music, then all of a sudden --- FLASH --- after 10 or 15 minutes all the bright house lights went on, and the cops came in from everywhere and pushed us up against the wall and effectively shut us down. I guess somebody had stolen somebody’s guitar or something, but it kind of killed our thing.

And that was the way The World Premier of the Space Bass turned out. The Space Bass movie was designed to be shown with a light show on one screen while the commune movie was shown next to it on another screen.

Two movies shown simultaneously side by side in the middle of all these liquid projections. And at one point in time they both became the same movie. One was about the hippie commune, and the other was about the Space Bass, except for one section where they merged into the same scene and then split again back into two movies. Both movies end at the same time in a mind-blowing strobe light explosion and light show.

This was all designed to be part of Max’s main major master project, The Paradise Pageant, which was to be a public multimedia event with bands and built around the idea that “we” --- the 25th Century Ensemble --- had come back in a time bubble from the 25th century to remind everybody they are in Paradise, take care of it, and it will take care of you.

Max wrote The Proclamation Of Paradise to explain it all. We then recorded it as a song, and it evolved into about a 20 minute mind fugue. This was played on radio stations on the west and east coasts, and even in Vietnam. It was broadcast selectively and not much, but it was very effective when coming out of a radio, because it distorted time and space, and it was hypnotic. This was before there was any real environmental consciousness, or environmental movement to speak of.

This was even before the song, “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Before that time, there had been the beginnings of a return to the Earth, and a recycle energy taking hold in many places, especially in Santa Cruz.

But we weren’t focused on the planet as much as we were concerned with helping humans realize the paradise reality for their own good, and the betterment of everything. I think all the noise we made back then might have stimulated and catalyzed some of that energy into what we have going on today. Although today’s politicians have taken over the environmental movement, and are using it as a tool to better control us in the totalitarian nightmare they are creating that they call utopia. They use false science, biased research, and a powerful media to fool the fools who vote for them. So that is kinda disappointing, and not what we wanted, back in the day.

Max moved up to Boulder Creek, and I moved up the street from him and we shared a studio on the San Lorenzo River for a couple more years, and worked on several projects individually and together. I made a series of kalimbas and bamboo flutes and metal sculptures there.

This was around 1967, ‘68, ‘69 --- and we continued our music under the name The 25th Century Ensemble, playing Perfect Music, where there are no wrong notes. Every Thursday night the studio was open to the public to play music together. Many people from different places would show up, always new faces mixed with the usual suspects. Always spontaneous free expression.

I remember the nights during the winter storms best. Max recorded every session, and built a large tape collection of these sociological events. I think one of the best things we did was titled “The Legend of the Indian Dogman” with Max, Futzy Nutzle, Fred McPherson, me, and a few others.

As I remember, it was a winter afternoon in the studio by the river in Boulder Creek. Kinda gloomy, maybe rainy, with a nice wood fire in the pot belly stove. We were seated around the stove, and started the song by first meditating on silence, and the natural sounds of the river and the fire, and proceeded from the silence into this acoustic adventure, which amazed us how perfect it sounded when we heard the tape. The 25th Century Ensemble played what they called “Perfect Music,” which they said had no wrong notes, and everybody could play anything and it was perfect, but it rarely sounded perfect. This set was like throwing paint at a canvas and having it turn into the Mona Lisa. It is my number one choice of recordings that I would like to have seen produced from that time. There was talk of making it into an album. Futzy Nutzle did brilliant artwork for the cover. I never heard of it being produced, and I don’t know if any copies were made. I never got any copies of anything, and my instruments were involved in a lot of those recordings. I never wanted any copies, or asked for any, nobody did, but Max did make copies for disc jockeys or radio stations.

Ralph: Copies may not exist. I have a small box that arrived after Max died that his daughter had gathered. There are four or five 16mm movie rolls labeled “Protest in San Jose,” probably not an art event. And there are some audiotapes, two drawings, and a sketchbook with line drawings by Max in it. That’s all that survived as far as I know.

Pat: Yes, Max was very involved in Civil Rights issues, and was a World Peace activist. He actually recorded and filmed everything he could for years. He had shelves full of tapes and his studio was set up as a sound studio so all he had to do was turn on the tape machine to capture the set.

Fred McPherson is our original environmentalist. He was very involved in many of the paradise projects. He was considered a hard core member of the 25th Century Ensemble, and was always cheerful and positive, and willing to help out. I went with him for long treks into the mountain forests to investigate nature, and he would teach me about plants and insects and animals. He marveled at the bright yellow banana slugs that thrive in the redwood forests, and which later he helped to become the mascot for UCSC.

Fred once tried to get me hired as an art teacher at Pacific High School in the mountains where he taught science.

It was a private school built by the students, and later run by them after they rebelled and took it over. Anyway, as part of my interview, Fred wanted me to lead a workshop with some students to paint his classroom in the summer before school started. So I got the materials, and met with a group of very talented kids, and turned them loose, and after a couple days they got the job done, and transformed this new classroom into some kind of statement. I only painted the table they sat around. But as it turned out, the classroom we painted was not the one they were assigning to Fred, and somebody was upset because of an American flag painted over the new blackboard. So I didn’t get the job, but I really enjoyed being around the kids and watching them enjoy freedom of expression. Then, when school started that year, I heard the students fired the teachers, and moved into the school, and tried to create a better educational system. I didn’t hear what happened after that. Then, Nancy and I bought a little cabin in Zayante, and I kind of spaced out on Max and the 25th Century Ensemble, and took a somewhat different direction.

I had been doing things with Charlie Nothing since he came to Santa Cruz, but we only began playing music together publicly after I moved to Zayante. He had moved to Bonny Doon and was living off Empire Grade, on what they called The Bump, which was John Lingemann’s property. Charlie was given some acreage on the mountain top, and set up a camp and garden-farm where he lived and worked. He later decided to move this scene further out and off the property, but he still had to pass all the way through the property to get to his camp. It was down in a steep canyon, difficult to get to, and very remote. I once helped him carry beehives down the mountain from where the road stopped to his camp. That was kinda difficult, because it was a long slippery steep goat path, and the hives were full of angry bees. He had to carry all his supplies up and down that dangerous path, and at night it was pitch dark.

After some time, he made the place into a way-off-the-grid living reality. He had goats, chickens, rabbits, dogs, a couple of Arabian horses, a garden of vegetables and bonzai fruit trees, and he developed a gravity flow watering system. He lived in a shelter made of canvas tarps spread over some branches, a little fire pit in the middle, and a dirt floor. It was primitive and very Zen. His biggest problem was mountain lions that roamed the area, and were attracted by his water and animals. Charlie tied bells on the rabbit cages, and in the middle of one night he awoke to the sound of the bells, caused by the rabbits thumping their cages. So Charlie got his 30/30 and a flashlight, and went out to investigate. What he saw was a large mountain lion sitting on top of the cages snarling at him about 15 feet away. Charlie fired, and completely missed the lion. The lion jumped to the ground, growled, and casually sauntered off into the forest. The next morning Charlie was still shook up about what it all meant to the future of his farm. He began improving the place to better be protected, but there wasn’t anything that could ever fix the problem really. It was hard to understand how he could have missed hitting the mountain lion, because he was an excellent shot usually. He once shot and hit a chicken hawk that had been harrassing his chickens, from about 100 yards, when it landed in a tree.

Eventually, after years of living on the land he decided to move back to town, and get totally involved in computers. He would take them apart, fix them, rebuild them, and hot rod them. He began writing, printing, and binding a series of books with his own publishing company called Dead Trees Press. And he became a master beekeeper, being a regular writer for the International Bee Journal, and he ran a lucrative stinging insect removal business in Santa Cruz and Monterey. He did a musical Dingulation tour in Europe, and released a CD titled “My Cuntree Tits of Thee” shortly before passing of cancer.

We used to play at the Zayante Club on Sunday afternoons, and at other places, for food and drink, and that went on for several years. Then I was given an art grant to live free in what had been the main house on the Lingemann property. John Lingemann moved farther up the mountain and lived in many different dwellings which he made over the years. One of his homes was carved into the white sandstone, like a cave with a panoramic view of the Monterey Bay. These were actually troubled times because there were wars going on over the land and water between Lingemann and some of his kids.

John Lingemann, we called him Curly, had divided the original 160 acre parcel into several approximately 20 acre parcels, which he gave to his family and various people to try to set up living scenes. Charlie was a major player in the management and direction of how that played out. Gary Dunn, Phil Hefferton, and Joe Klein and their ladies were among several people who made valiant efforts to create sometimes brilliant solutions to the problems of living off the land. But only the most committed made a lasting go of it. After they failed, John would burn their places down.

The thing that was most difficult about living there was that there was only one spring on the 160 acres. It was supposed to be available for everyone to use, so all would have water. But apparently someone in the family deeded it to themselves, and sold the spring property to someone who built a big house, and cut the water off to everyone else. So, besides the difficulty of hauling water up a deeply rutted and washed out non-road to their parcels, everybody had to deal with the negative vibes, like a dark cloud that overcame the general scene, because of the dirty deal itself.

Ironically, John Lingemann was the well driller in Santa Cruz, a super well driller, and all his kids were professional well drillers also. So the 160 acres was covered with holes but no water from any of them. There were well drilling machines in the bushes everywhere, all kinds, because his boys had their own well drilling companies. Yet no water for us on the hill.

At the same time, we were all very much into gardening: goats, chickens, horses. We had some really good horses, Arabs, and spent much time training horses and riding.

Charlie and I were hooked up with The Front Porch Gallery in Venice, California, that later became the Zeneta Kertisz Art Gallery, and so we were doing a lot of art shows and musical performances in Venice and LA. That went on for a long time --- somehow living on a remote mountaintop off the grid, and doing art things in a busy modern world which we were not part of, kind of endeared us to a small group of fans.

And then I went to Seven Sanctuaries Gallery, which was run by Carol Cole and her husband John Ernsdorf. She was Nat King Cole’s daughter and Natalie’s sister, and once upon a time she was Charlie’s wife --- they were still friends, which gave us a good connection.

It was a very nice gallery in a good location, and I had a successful solo show there, sold a lot of things, and was held over for a month because it got a very good review in the Los Angeles Times. But I decided I had had enough of the big city, and wanted to just spend more time in my studio, and with my family, so I pulled out of LA.

And now Carol has passed and Natalie, her sister, has passed, and Charlie’s passed, and Max, and Sharon, Phil, and Gary, and so many others. John and Zeneta Kertisz sold their Venice Gallery, and moved to Ojai. We’re still sort of in touch; we’re the last of the original Superfabulous Dingulators.

While we were living on The Bump, I began looking for a place for just myself and my family, without the drama, and we finally found it in La Selva Beach. We bought a 10-acre horse ranch at Whiskey Hill Ranch, and raised our seven kids in a modern home that my brother designed for us.