Los Angeles Free Press
A Picture of the Gone World: The founding meeting of the Underground
Press Syndicate (UPS), the through-the-looking-glass Associated Press of
60s hippie and radical papers, convened in a Washington D.C. loft the day
before 1967's March on the Pentagon. "Let's get this show on the road,"
said moving spirit Marshall Bloom, later a 60s casualty but resplendent
that October afternoon in a "Sergeant Pepper" get-up, as he set fire to
his draft card. Photographers leapt forward. A picture of Bloom, smiling
down at the flame, formed part of a collage on the cover of the following
week's "East Village Other" -- and no doubt wound up in his FBI file. A
crowd of sixty-odd cheered and whistled. I was standing opposite EVO
editor Walter Bowart ("a very dominant cat," another editor called him),
who wore tights in broad stripes of alternating red and white, like the
flag. Just another day in the life of the "underground" press, whose
founding papers were already serving up their witches'-brew of serious
journalism, innovative graphics, drug babble, New Age irrationalism, and
paranoia. Abe Peck's "Uncovering the 60s" chronicles their intermittent
glories and decline into wimpy "alternative" status. NameBase dug out a
few of these underground articles, figuring they deserved an afterlife.
There's no doubt that most of the best are buried forever.
-- Steve Badrich
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