1965 -
“The New
Improved Jook Savages" by Stan Gotleib
When we moved to North Beach from
Lake Merit in Oakland, it was 1965. Friends from Minnesota were
living on Potrero Hill, in the Haight, and near the beach, but
nobody else we knew lived in North Beach, a neighborhood we chose as
the best compromise to see my wife Ellen off to her day job in
Hayward (via the Broadway entry to the Bay Bridge) and me on the
Stockton bus down to SP Depot. Our place was right on Columbus
Street,
across from the U.S. Café, just off Broadway, where Stockton and
Green came together.
Since most of our friends were
ne’er-do-well sorts, making their way as musicians, dope salesmen or
in other marginal employment (except for one who was an armed robber,
but that’s another story), we – yuppies before the name got invented
- got to be the clubhouse for the group, which had coalesced around
a bunch of hippy musicians calling themselves “The New Improved Jook
Savages”, a ragtag and stoned jug band playing such ultramodern
instruments as the hat box cover, the kazoo, and the straw (yes, you
heard me right: a plastic drinking straw, with holes cut in it,
played like some sort of squeaky piccolo) along with the usual
guitars, jugs, and a gutbucket bass.
For the better part of a year, our
agglomeration of righteously stoned entertainers would gather at our
place either before or during dinner (soup was always on), get waxed,
and then troop the few blocks to the Old Spaghetti Factory where we
would sit on the stage and blow. We were the opening act for the
Congress of Wonders, a couple of guys who dramatized the words of
the songs of John Lennon. We also spent a bit of time at the
Committee, where an old college friend from Minnesota was one of the
waitresses.
Later, the Savages (who had to pare
down their number for the gig) became the “chorus” in a play by
Scott Beach, one of the founders of the Committee, put on in
a defunct night club on Montgomery Street. We did not take part in
the play, but our friends still showed up regularly around dinner
time. By then, it was getting to be the summer of 1967, and we were
on our way to Europe, entirely convinced that Lyndon Johnson was
going to declare himself “president for life” in order to continue
to prosecute the war in Vietnam no matter what people thought.
Well, it was a very
strange time…
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