The
grass is always greener on the other side, especially when it’s grass passed
around in the back of an old-high school bus rumbling around San Francisco,
circa 1963.
What
is it about the 1960’s that never seems to lose our generation’s infatuation?
Smarter men than I have been quick to cull the essence of that decade,
pull out strands of its breathless, exuberant energy, immortalize the admirable
quake of youth—and slap on a steep price tag. What together is Free
People, Urban Outfitters, and Anthropology if not the corporate trifecta of haute
couture a la bohème?
With
signature Vanity Fair style, the July issue teaches an old dog an intellectual trick or
two, in the form of a 7-page profile on reliable favorite, 1967, Summer of
Love. The author makes a few worthy stabs in pinning cultural
significance to such Bacchanalian delights as LSD-spiked Kool-Aid and WASPish
Tom Wolfe's one-night stand with Lucy. But, it also blessedly delivers
the 3 reasons we pretend to avoid tawdry rags like Nation Inquirer: sex, drugs, and (acid) rock n'
roll. Wrapped up in a scholarly little bow, of course.
