The San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive is full of gold. There is tons of material here from the ’60′s including lots of great footage of the Black Panthers and plenty of Haight Street hippies to be had.
The Maze is a television news documentary that was made in 1967. It features 2nd generation Beat poet Michael McClure as a tour guide on this ramble through the patchouli-choked purgatory that was the Summer of Love. Part Paradise, part fool’s vision, that season passed like all the others and took much of its idealism and peaceful potential with it. However, at that time, it seemed like McClure and his ilk just might change the world. As the narrator here observes:
“Some call Haight-Ashbury another bohemia, like the Left Bank, Greenwich Village and others … But it’s more like Brigadoon: a magical land that appeared only yesterday and may be gone tomorrow. But if it lasts, the effect on the rest of society could be far reaching. And that’s why the outside world must try to understand what is happening here.”
Check out The Maze and the SFBATA here.
