Mountain Girl: I’m gettin’ stoked about comin’ down to SF for Bicycle Day! It’s gonna be really fun and an important celebration of not only just our past but our future engagement with psychedelics. We’re gonna do our best to explain the whole LSD story, how it affected our lives and how our journey with that particular substance has affected everybody else’s life as well. It’s gonna be a happy celebration and bring together a number of notable and sometimes usually invisible players in the original cycle we had that included quite a bit of LSD on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury and elsewhere. I came into that as a teenager and fell right in.
I was fascinated with the concept of what I would call “neurological supremacy” where I could sense things. When I went home to see my parents I would go out to Millbrook which was close by where I grew up and visit Ralph Metzner and Dr. Leary. At 17. They were so nice to me! It made me realize I was on the right path that these marvelous intellectual powerhouses thought I was cool! When I came back to California, I was working nights at Stanford, my crazy job at the organic chemistry lab, of all places! That was just about the time when the LSD phenomenon began to really start. I realized I was sitting in the middle of a storm of coincidence. I went off with the Merry Pranksters, we put on the Trips Festival [Jan 21-23, 1966], giving away the magic sacrament in a plastic garbage can full of kool-aid and L. It made for a very engaging time!
Haight Street Voice: At Kesey’s memorial in 2001, you said, “I feel a responsibility to keep the show going so the community and events keep happening.” And here you are coming to Bicycle Day 2022!
MG: I’m delighted to be part of this! I’ll talk about meeting Albert Hoffman in Switzerland at his home just a few days before he passed. It was my great privilege. Somehow the universe conspired to put me there. He was so nice to me. He was darling. I’m looking forward to sharing that.
HSV: Is the energy of what Kesey was all about still in the air, still moving forward?
MG: It’s a bit thin around the edges. You have to lean into it together. It takes a group to move these thoughts out in a cogent enough way so that people can understand what the heck you’re talking about: mental liberation, understanding what a hallucination is. It needs a description to each generation. We’re not seeking to create a big bubble, we’re seeking to do something together as a group. I want to connect with some of these folks I haven’t met yet who were big activists back in the day. The Acid Tests only lasted a few months and we had to go on the run. It’s about speaking the truth instead of always covering everything up. It’s so much better to be able to just speak freely! Woohoo!
HSV: “You can’t go back and you can’t stand still, if the thunder don’t getcha …
MG: “…then the lightning will.” Yes! We’re gonna bring lightning to SF on April 19!
I’m still learning from you, but I’m making my way to the top as well. I definitely love reading everything that is posted on your website.Keep the posts coming. I liked it!
Hey Jamaal! Thanks for the kind words! Peace from the Haight!