Well, glad that you like my stuff and concur with my stories. Funny how fast common knowledge is lost, or replaced with BS. I never traveled the hippie trail either, with exception of Highway 1 to Big Sur, and up to SF and Berkeley a gazillion times, and down to LA and Sandy Eggo, and up to Lake Tahoe. I am not sure where the hippie epicenter was, really. There was never much in Big Sur. Eselen, Nepenthe, The River Inn, and much later in 1975 Ventana (which was built with money made from the movie, Easy Rider). The Hait in SF or Telegraph Ave in Berkeley were more central, as was Laurel Canyon in LA. I also hung out at all those places throughout the 1970s on and off again. For me the center was Telegraph Ave in Berkeley, where I bought underground comix, books on weed, and got stoned and drank coffee with friends all day at a leather sandal shop called the Achilles Heel. In the late 1960s we would drive from Monterey to Carmel Valley to play tennis (I was raised a tennis brat by my tennis junkie mother). Before the freeway was built through Monterey, we would drive up Munras Ave over Forest Hill and down Highway 1 past Carmel, and there would be 200-300 hippies all lined up thumbing rides to Big Sur, or LA, or back up to SF. It was an amazing spectacle. We were at the epicenter of the hippie movement, especially in the summer of 1967, at the Monterey Pop Festival. A one time only gig. That was a mob scene. We lived a few miles from the Monterey Fairgrounds and I heard the entire concert from my bedroom. All I had to do was open my window and Janis was screaming at me, loudly. Jimmy Hendrix was even louder. We were spoiled rotten on rock and roll, weed, and life was good and cheap in California then. I remember going to the emergency room at Community Hospital for a knee injury, and I had an x-ray, saw a doctor, got an Rx filled, and the bill? It was 13 dollars. $13 clams! Now? Sheez, it would be $400 and change. My brother and I paid $175 a month for a 1 BR apartment on the beach in North Monterey. Later we paid $400 a month for a 2 BR house out at Asilomar in Pacific Grove. Now? That house rents for $2800 a month! I cannot go back, as I cannot afford it. I was only making $6 an hour then, but we lived like kings. Gas was what, 45 cents a gallon? I cold drive to Berkeley and back for $5 in my Chevy Malibu. Rent was month to month. Jobs were easy to get. Taxes were low. Weed was everywhere. And it was cheap. Good weed was a little more, but still dirt cheap. $20-40 a lid? And women were easy. I dated lots and lots of women. Hot tub parties were common. Parties with restaurant people were almost an every day affair. We went to lots of local rock concerts. We went to Disneyland. We went to the Golden Gate. We got stoned and went to Big Sur a lot. One time I went to Big Sur on my motorcycle (Suzuki GS 750) and I stopped at Nepenthe for a Tequila Sunset drink. Lo, they were having a zodiac party, and I ran into a hot blonde woman I knew. She asked me to dance, and one thing led to another, and I stayed with her at her place on Partington Ridge for about a month. Her place overlooked the ocean and I would sit on her deck and watch the ships sail up and down the coast. We partied all over Big Sur with friends. Finally my brother called and asked if I was still alive. I said yes. He said the owner of Rocky Point wanted me to work for him up the coast between Big Sur and Monterey. I knew the owner, and so I went to work there for a while. It was one of a dozen restaurants that I worked at as a chef.
Ah, my well spent youth. Reminds me of the song by Leon Russel, 'Back to the Island' on the Will of the Wisp album:
Well I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island
And watch the sun go down (sit and watch the sun go down)
Hear the sea roll in (listen to the sea roll in)
But I'll be thinking of you (yes, and I'll be thinking of you)
And how it might have been (thinking how it might have been)