"When I arrived in San Francisco in 1957", writes Jerry Kamstra, "I discovered a community existing on the edge of the city unlike any other in America. Reckless, creative, frenetic, insane, it was too insane for a lot of people, for not many survived. I did, however, and in surviving came of age
in the cheap pads and artists' lofts in North Beach. In the process I lost my innocence and my youth, but gained an indelible memory of a bunch of crazy people who lived, fought, struggled, loved, and even died together with a sense of elan and community that I had never experienced before nor have found since.

"Writers often dream of being able to record what their friends say and do as they are saying and doing them. Some writers are able to do that, but for me time has to crystallize events, compress them like the elluvia of roots and flowers into hard bright diamonds before the light can be seen."

"Real people cannot be pinned up on a wall and examined at leisure, however, especially people who were moving at the frenetic pace of my friends. I had to let them stop, and go crazy, and die before I could properly see them."

So out of the time and memories of more than a decade and a half ago comes "The Frisco Kid"

THE HEALING POWER OF ART

The Voice Of One

Arthur Monroe

Horrible Cafe

Peyote

SUMMER OF LOVE 1967-1997

COSMIC RAY
 
 

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