Comment by cc101
2 years ago
During 1968 through 1972 I lived a block and a half from Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Truck store, across the street from Kepler's Bookstore, and around the corner from the Mid Peninsula Free University. There hasn't been a time like that since, and I didn't know what I had until it was gone.
"It wasn't better back then, you were just younger".
The nature of the delights may have shifted, but the delights are still here. I was a teenager in the UK with my transatlantic subscription to CoEvolution Quarterly, weekly trips to Compendium Books in Camden and yeah, it seems like a better time. But I was just younger. Now I have Bandcamp and teh interwebz.
They paved paradise and put in a parking lot.
WEC: Eye-opener. Lot of fun to order exotic stuff (tools, foods, materials, clothing) from. A few for-examples: it got me to cane a seat on a (once-expensive) thrift-shop store ... and try some east-coast kinnikinic ... order tea from Canada (Merchies, still there) ... and a lot of previously unseen books (including Lloyd Kahn's). The cool comments (and stories) around the page-edges were a plus too.
Talking about paving paradise, Kepler's is now a huge multi-story store. Several decades ago I looked in vain for even a little table or shelf with leading-edge counter-culture literature. Couldn't find anything resembling that.
> Talking about paving paradise, Kepler's is now a huge multi-story store.
Unless there's another book store called Kepler's I'm not familiar with, it isn't. The building is multiple stories, but Kepler's is only on the first floor (and even there, it isn't the only tenant). The upper stories are unrelated office space.
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All that hippie stuff was never hard enough to actually counter the culture. It capitulated to "the man," and now we've got Amazon and SUVs. You're not going to find CrimethInc in Menlo Park.
Why didn't you know? Too young?
I thought it was normal.
"didn't know what I had till it was gone" is a standard phrase meaning "I didn't realize how much I appreciated it till I didn't have it any more"
"They took all the trees, put 'em in a tree museum / And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em / Don't it always seem to go / You don't know what you've got till it's gone / They paved paradise, put up a parking lot" -- Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWwUJH70ubM