I watched The American Experience on PBS this week. It was about the Summer of Love. Wow. What a huge, ugly mess. It started out pretty cool, like the Gathering of Tribes in January, but by the time tens of thousands of 13 and 14 year old runaways had migrated to San Francisco that summer, things got pretty ugly -- bad trips, not enough food, people living in the parks, no health care, serious personal hygiene issues. Bummer. The most amusing part was the bus tours of Haight Ashbury with the tour guide's descriptions of the hippie lifestyle and a glossary of hippie terminology. Like they were monkeys in the zoo.

Oh, and there was some cool footage of the early Grateful Dead.

The disappearing cats part was really bad.

Was this the 1987 PBS documentary, called "It Was Twenty Years Ago Today"? ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093285/ ) I'm sure Beatles fans have been trading copies of it for, oh, about twenty-one years now, but it really is well worth seeking out as it really did put both Sgt. Pepper and the whole "Summer Of Love" thing into perspective for somebody who (like me) was born after 1967.

No. I'm not even sure they mentioned the Beatles. It was all about what was going on in San Francisco in 1967. Typical documentary format. It was an hour long. Not that much music was included.

No mention of George's visit? Interesting. I usually see his visit in the documentaries and how it really turned him off the scene and acid in particular. Yeah, the area certainly changed radically from its start on 66.

"It Was Twenty Years Ago" was an excellent doc put together by the late Derek Taylor, who worked for The Beatles, The Beach Boys and John Lennon. I wish they release this legit, every once in awhile I see boot copies for sale. I have an old VHS copy that I made, I need to replace this.

AMW, your assessment of the doc is correct, nice of history told by the people who lived it!

Rick A.