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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 corn
by cc101 3y 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.
- fuzztester 3y agoWhy didn't you know? Too young?
- cc101 3y agoI thought it was normal.
- fsckboy 3y ago"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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWwUJH70ubM
- 8bitsrule 3y agoThey 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.
- cc101 3y agoTalking 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.
- duskwuff 3y ago> 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.
- cc101 3y agoSorry about that. I claim old age. : )
- rexpop 3y agoAll 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.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago"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.