Elder-Eldergays, tell me all about 1969

Can't you find a book op?

The fact that OP undergay could even type so many historic events is worth a medal.

It was a fascinating, fun and interesting time. People were aware of the world around them, issues, politics. etc. And there was great music including "This Girl is a Woman now" by Gary Puckett and The Union Gap!

Pay no attention to the bald guy with the ponytail behind the beaded curtains, OP. While there were many new freedoms, and the culture (especially the music) was superior to today's dross, in many important regards the 60s sucked shit. Kennedy's assassination ended our innocence, the Viet Nam war was grinding up innocent young people on both sides. The decade closed with Trickie Dickie as president, and Gipper Governor Ronald Reagan was practicing for his future presidential agenda by decimating social service agencies in California. Campus unrest, race riots...the only people that could be nostalgic for such a period spent their young adult years in the adult kindergartens we call universities, stoned out of their minds. Throw in the serial killer phenomenon on the ascendant then (especially in the Bay Area) and you have what one well-known writer once called, "a cesspool of a decade". It most certainly wasn't all beer and skittles-or pot and patchouli, for that matter.

Sorry, no pretty pictures from me. It wasn't a pretty period. The 60s put the skids under America, now all that's left is a rusty hulk.

Here: some joyful noise that's better than a lot of the overrated "important" crap from the period.

We did 1969 already....several times.

Only one thing happened in 1969 and it was the greatest tragedy in the history of homosexuality, if not all mankind:

i really loved my Legos.

I can and have read many books and articles about 1969, R1, but few with a gay perspective (barring Stonewall, of course).

Bump

R4 You express yourself and write very well.

Trickie Dick

I got my first real six-string, bought it at the five-and-dime. I played it 'till my fingers bled! It was the summer of 69. Me and some guys from school had a band and we tried real hard. Jimmy quit and Joey got married, I should of known we'd never get far. When I look back now, that summer seemed to last forever. And if I had the choice, I'd always wanna be there. Those were the best days of my life.

Ain't no use in complaining, when you got a job to do. Spent my evenin's down at the drive-in, and that's when I met you. Standing on your Mama's porch, you told me that you'd wait forever. And when you held my hand, I knew that it was now or never. Those were the best days of my life.

I was born on October 14th OP.

I don't remember anything about the year of course.

Hippies were phobes.

One look at the era is in Best Little Boy in the World, but it is his look.

The albums of the year were Abbey Road, The Band, and Let It Bleed.

The war, drugs, women's lib and free sex were tearing the country apart. Never in their history were Americans so divided as a country.

Er, never mind.

69-70 was my senior year in high school, so I guess that makes me an "elder-elder gay," per OP, right? Sigh.

R10

Wherever you may be, I'm thrusting my fingers through the blinds and it's your face I see in the sun coming through the clouds.

Luv ya's. Thank you.

Speaking of 1969..... hehe.

Jackson Browne beat up his first groupie

In the summer of '69, we were visiting family in Atlanta. I remember vetting to stay up late so I could watch Neil Armstrong. I'm from Houston, so I was used to hearing about the spa e program. Yesterday I passed a Houston high school whose team is the Apollos. I wonder how many people realize now the team was named for the space program, not directly for the god.

Who is the twat with the Jackson Browne boner?

Lay Lady Lay

OP:

Ya better not ask any more questions, ya little piggie! I'm not fooling.

Lame, R12.

Eldergay here. If you were a young out gay man in 1969, that year and the few that followed were fabulous, esp. if you lived in NY or SF. I was an outlaw! What fun! What thrills! And we won!

And then we started dying. The 80s weren't such fun.

Op, I graduated from high school in 1968, was in an art college in San Francisco in 1969. For me, it was a wonderful time of fun and adventure. I became aware of pot in my senior year in high school when some friends and I planned a summer trip to a cabin in the mountains and one brought some along. I don't know what was in it, it was my first time trying any sort of drug, but we were high for three days.

Not long after so many kids I knew were taking drugs, many of them were left brain damaged or dead. Once classmate was killed in an execution style murder in the Haight. I discovered early on I didn't like drugs having seen so much destruction early on. I've tried my share but in the end I've never really got into smoking, alcohol, or drugs but so many of my friends absolutely did. So much whoring around, too. OK, that was fun, but diseases ran rampant, and as you know, eventually AIDS joined the scene.

So many changes happened all at once, a lot bad, but many good. Sexual freedom, the eventual assimilation of gays (who were already a very visible part of the community where I lived), fair housing laws, civil rights activism, anti war activism, feminism, a real flowering of music and art. Everyone was a creative, into art, music, crafts, new ways to cook food, entirely new diet, travel, adventure, communes, crazy clothes. I loved it! I worked in the arts and advertising with so many creatives, it was wonderful.

A lot of really bad things happened that had never happened before. The Sharon Tate murders and other things you mentioned above, Op, then within 10 years, the Jim Jones, and the Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk assassinations. When I look back to those days, I just took so many things in stride. So many awful and wonderful things compressed into a short amount of time.

And, before clothing style radically changed, a lot of us looked like this.