LIFE IS FREE, Volume 0, Number 0, Winter 1988

A unique zine detailing the Philadelphia Squatter Scene. Published by [Karen Eliot] c/o The Wooden Shoe, Philadelphia 1988. Karen Eliot, Editor. Underground Anarcho-Squatters' Newsrag, softcover tabloid, printed on newsprint, 17" x 11.5", 8 pages, illustrated throughout with b&w drawings and collages, includes illustrated instructions for building a stove for your squat. VERY GOOD CONDITION: solid, bright, clean, and unmarked. Scarce, only four copies located in OCLC collections worldwide.

An underground zine made by and for anarchist squatters, filled with guidance on how to squat, where to squat, the steps needed to equip the squat, squatter support, and prescient revolutionary political commentary on gentrification. I found one source that stated Karen Eliot created this zine and paid for the 500 copies she had printed from the money she earned as a sex worker. Sounds completely plausible to me, there are no records of Karen Eliot and her cohort of fellow squatters except in the pages of this compelling zine.

The Shattering Screen : A Journal for Subversive Cinema. Issue No. 1

A scarce radical vintage film zine that presents a compelling exploration of Hollywood's powerful intentional politically reactionary messaging in the popular films of the time. Films include The Right Stuff, The Big Chill, Yentl, Chariots of Fire and many more. Also discusses the directors Stanley Kubrick and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. A revolutionary take on mainstream cinema.

Self produced by Shattering Screen, Chicago, Illinois, 1984. Edited by John Stevenson and Jeremy Turner. First and only edition. Softcover zine, tabloid on newsprint, 17.5" x 11.5", 12 pages, illustrated in b&w with dramatic collages and drawings throughout. VERY GOOD CONDITION: light horizontal fold, a touch of age toning, and a light dime size droplet shoreline on the rear cover. Scarce, only two copies located in OCLC collections worldwide.

ORIGINAL PINBACK BUTTON created for the November 15, 1969 Protest and March on the US Capital against the war in Vietnam. Organized by The New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (New Mob Comm) / produced by Horn Co., Washington DC / Philadelphia, PA, 1969. Printed in black, blue and white, 2.5" diameter. EXCELLENT CONDITION: a bright, wearable and relevant original piece from the era when protestors voices were heard.

Buttons were essential tools of persuasion in the antiwar movement. They symbolized the visual language of the counterculture in compelling, graphically innovative ways. Coalitions of American antiwar activists formed between 1966 and 1970 to organize large demonstrations in opposition to the Vietnam War. In the earliest major demonstration nearly 100,000 protesters gathered in Washington, DC. By 1970, two-thirds of Americans believed military engagement in Vietnam was a mistake.

End the War, Get Out Now!

St. John's Bread Wednesday Messenger: Volume I, Number I. November 19, 1969

Quarterly Journal of St. John's Bread Wednesday Messenger and Paranoid Flash Illuminator: [ca. 1970]

TWO ISSUES, published by St. John's Bread Church, Topanga, California, 1969, [1970], first and only printings. Edited by Paul Encimer. Zine, mimeograph, various paper colors, side staple bound, 8.5" x 11", 22 and 38 unnumbered pages. VERY GOOD CONDITION: with a fitting association to City Lights - both issues were originally mailed to City Lights bookstore in San Francisco with stamps, postmarks, address and penned printed matter on the rear covers, otherwise just some light edgewear, age toning, and the rear cover of one is pulling from the staples, overall tight, bright, clean and unmarked. Scarce.

Saint John's Bread Wednesday Messenger and Paranoid Flash Illuminator was one of the most curious counterculture publications of the late 1960s. A scarce primary source illuminating Discordia's hippie origins. An exploration of real and imagined spirituality, cabals, psychedelic drug fueled enlightenment, surrealistic discordia, poetry, fiction, esoteric confusion, comic paradoxical conspiracies, revealing secret knowledge of Discordianism for your perverse entertainment. Issued on multi hued paper printed on mimeograph machines, its ethos inspired the dawning of the zine age.

St. John's Bread publisher Paul Encimer (1938-2021) Discordian name, Dr. Confusion was an early ordained minister of the Universal Life Church. His friend and contributor Kerry Wendell Thornley, Discordian name, Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst was the co-founder of Discordianism and author of Principia Discordia. The first 10 pages of Thornley's poem Illuminati Lady, which Robert Anton Wilson described in Illuminatus! as "an endless epic poem which you really ought to read," is printed herein.

HAIL ERIS! ALL HAIL DISCORDIA!

Peoples Forum, Vol. I, No. 17, March 1, 1977. Published by Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, San Francisco, CA. First edition, broadsheet format, one folded sheet, four pages printed on newsprint. GOOD CONDITION: tender at the folds with tiny chips/wear, some edge tears/wear, and light age toning, otherwise bright and clean. Scarce.

In April 1976, Jim Jones' Peoples Temple launched Peoples Forum. Distributed on the street by Temple volunteers and dropped on doorsteps throughout San Francisco, it served as the Temple's monthly newspaper and main source of promotion and communication. The header shows three faces of different races, civil rights related imagery Jones used to advertise his interracial religious movement.

Jones' increasing radicalism and connection to the civil rights movement became apparent with the Peoples Forum. While early issues contain articles on "subjects as diverse as killer bees, Muhammed Ali, freedom of the press, and Jones hosting a TV show," later editions are more radical, illustrating Jones' support for Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party. In late 1976 Peoples Forum covered a story about the FBI's role in the death of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton. The cover photo from this March 1, 1977 edition shows Jones and Newton shaking hands. Peoples Forum exemplifies the increasing involvement Peoples Temple had in California with Black rights leaders, racial issues, and activism. Additionally, Peoples Forum denounced and exposed the rising dangers of neo Nazism in San Francisco.

Jim Jones' Peoples Temple is notorious for the way it ended in on November 18, 1978 with more than 900 people dying in a mass murder suicide at the Peoples Temple Settlement in Jonestown, Guyana. The majority of the Jonestown massacre victims were black women.

METABIOTICA / METABIOTICS. Monograph on the Brazilian Graphic Street Artist ALEXANDRE ORION.

SIGNED and DATED by ORION on the back cover.

Printed in Sao Paolo, Brazil, by EGM Grafica, 2006. Polyglot edition, text in Portuguese, English, French and Spanish. ISBN 10: 8598614033 ISBN 13: 978-8598614038.

Softcover book in printed slipcase, 12x12 inches (30x30 cm), 80 pages. Fully illustrated throughout.

Condition: NEAR FINE book, tight, bright, clean and unmarked; in a VERY GOOD slipcase that has a touch of wear at its folds. A lovely copy.

RARE, especially so SIGNED.

About ALEXANDRE ORION (from Wikipedia):

******Alexandre Orion, b.1978 in Sao Paulo, is a Brazilian street artist, multimedia artist and muralist.

He started as a graffiti artist in 1992, soon expanding into murals, photography and multimedia. Orion has held a number of solo exhibitions internationally and his work has been exhibited or acquired by such venues as the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Centro Cultural da Caixa, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Fondation Cartier Pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris, Centrum Beeldende Kunst of Rotterdam, Milwaukee Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Spencer Museum of Art, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.******

SUPERMARKET Words and Music By LEW WELCH and CHRIS ROBERTS

BROADSIDE, self published 1965, 13" x 9.75", reproduced holograph manuscript music score and chord chart for spoken word, voice and orchestra, printed on thin brown paper.

NEAR FINE CONDITION. This copy is from the personal collection of Donald Allen. Scarce, only one copy held in institutional hands located in the Lew Welch Papers at Special Collections & Archives UC San Diego, which was originally acquired from Donald Allen.

LEW WELCH (1926-1971) prominent Beat and cult figure, one of a handful of poets including Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure, who emerged from the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s. Welch was a misfit even among the Beats. He wrote for the hipsters, Beats and beatniks who gathered nightly in San Francisco to listen to jazz, drink cappuccinos and sip red wine. In 1971 he wrote a suicide note that read, "I never could make anything work out right and now I'm betraying my friends." Then, with gun in hand he wandered into the forest surrounding Gary Snyder's home in the Sierra Nevadas, his body has never been found.

DONALD ALLEN (1912-2004) Lew Welch's literary executor, Grove Press editor, publisher, and author of The New American Poetry 1945-1960, the landmark literary anthology that has come to define the canon of early Beat poetry.

RIGHT ON! A Documentary on Student Protest by Maryl Levine, John Naisbitt, Graphic Design by David L. Burke

Published by Bantam Books, New York, London, Toronto, 1970. First edition. Softcover, illustrated wrappers, 7" x 4", 249 + (7) pages, graphically illustrated throughout with b&w photographs, illustrations and stylized text. GOOD Condition: light shelfwear and some creases to the covers, the spine has a few creases but the binding remains sturdy, 2 penned remainder lines on bottom page edges (edge of the closed book), internally the upper corner has some light shorelining, otherwise tight, bright, clean and unmarked. A solid, respectable copy.

Illustrated in a graphic style similar to the influential Marshall McLuhan book "The Medium Is the Massage." A book design classic "Right On!" is a powerful visual collage of black & white photographs, graphics and text that captures the radical student protests of 1969 from fights for civil rights, Black Power, student power, Black studies programs and racial diversity to anti Vietnam War rallies and altercations with police. "Black studies are inevitable. Period."

This vintage counterculture monograph is based on a 1969 study of over 200 US college campuses conducted by the Urban Research Corporation of Chicago, a private commercial organization that monitored contemporary trends and prepared reports for a range of groups and institution. These protests occurred on campuses of all sizes and in every region of the country, but most occurred in large universities with more than 1,000 students.

Scarce ORIGINAL 1974 TIMOTHY LEARY EPHEMERAL TICKET

"TERRA II" Ticket To Ride. "The Universe Is Perfect!" ONE TRIP Use Before 1999 "Welcome Aboard Terra II My Friends! My Name Is Doctor Timothy Leary!"

Published in [Folsom Prison, Folsom, California, 1974], printed on blue paper, 8.5" x 2.5". Illustrated by Disney artist Dana Reemes who incorporated Robert Crumb's drawing of Timothy Leary (originally published in a 1973 issue of El Perfecto Comics), crediting "R. Crumb" beside the drawing. The ticket also has a facsimile Timothy Leary signature. The Promotional TICKET was inserted into some lucky copies of Leary's 1974 book TERRA II. The Ticket is for ONE TRIP off the planet earth on a spaceship commanded by Doctor Timothy Leary.

FINE Condition: bright and clean. An original Terra II Ticket is almost impossible to find, most seem to have vanished into space.

TERRA II was written by Timothy Leary in Folsom Prison while serving time for possession of marijuana in 1974. His TERRA ll was a prison escape fantasy which involved leaving Earth on an intergalactic spaceship to travel the universe in an endless voyage of discovery and harmony. This period, beginning with his imprisonment in 1973, is known as his "Starseed" period. Proceeds from the sale of TERRA II were intended to help pay expenses of costly legal appeals by Leary to win his freedom from prison. The appeals didn't work, Leary wasn't released until California Governor Jerry Brown pardoned him in 1976.

Timothy Leary (1920-1996) was extremely controversial. A polarizing figure who challenged the status quo with his famous mantra "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out." A Cultural Icon who advocated psychedelic drugs, Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg called him "a Hero of American Consciousness."

From the collection of Richard Synchef, a noted collector of Beat, Counterculture, and Psychedelic books and oddities.

GRATEFUL DEAD - TWENTY FIVE YEARS - EUROPE 1990.

SIGNED & INSCRIBED in SILVER on the FRONT COVER by KEN KESEY, Friend, Mentor and LSD Guru to the Grateful Dead:

"Hmmm... / that's either Bill Graham's ghost or a live version of / Ken Kesey".

SIGNED & INSCRIBED in GOLD on the first two page panel by KEN BABBS, an LSD laden Merry Prankster and friend of the Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey:

"I didn't Go! - DURN! - Ken Babbs".

Softcovers, side stapled, 11.75x11.75 inches (the shape of a vinyl album cover), 26 pages. illustrated with photographs of the band and its Dead members.

NEAR FINE condition, just lightly handled, tight, bright, clean and clear. A lovely copy.

RARE SIGNED & INSCRIBED ASSOCIATION COPY that combines the GHOST of BILL GRAHAM, with the MERRY PRANKSTER MISCHIEVOUS WIT of KEN KESEY, and the LSD mindset of Prankster and Dead Friend KEN BABBS.

A Unique Item from the Pranksters and the Dead.

About KEN KESEY (excerpts from Wikipedia):

******Ken Kesey, b.1935 d.2001, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Sometimes a Great Notion, Merry Pranksters, Acid Tests, Grateful Dead... After One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was published, Kesey began hosting happenings with former colleagues, miscellaneous bohemian and literary figures, and other friends (Ken Babbs et al), collectively known as the MERRY PRANKSTERS; these parties, known as ACID TESTS, integrated the consumption of LSD with multimedia performances. KESEY MENTORED THE GRATEFUL DEAD (THE ACID TESTS' HOUSE BAND) throughout their early years and continued to exert a profound influence upon the group throughout their career.******

About KEN BABBS (from Wikipedia):

******Ken Babbs, b.1936, is a famous Merry Prankster who became one of the psychedelic leaders of the 1960s. He, along with best friend and Prankster leader Ken Kesey, wrote the book Last Go Round. Babbs is best known for his participation in the Acid Tests and on the bus Further. He and Ken Kesey said The Acid Tests were conceived when the Pranksters met the Grateful Dead.******

About BILL GRAHAM (from Wikipedia):

******Bill Graham, b.1931 d,1991, was a German-American rock concert promoter from the 1960s until his death in 1991 in a helicopter crash. On July 4, 1939, he was sent from Germany to France due to political uncertainty in his home country. At age 10, he settled into a foster home in the Bronx, New York. In the early 1960s, Graham moved to San Francisco, and in 1965, began to manage the San Francisco Mime Troupe which eventually led to his becoming one of the world's greatest Rock Concert Promoters. His promoted concerts at the Fillmore and Winterland Ballrooms made such bands as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, world famous. The San Francisco Civic Auditorium was renamed The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in his honor.******

MACUNAIMA (1969). A Brazilian Cinema Novo masterpiece, considered one of the most important films in Brazilian history. Directed by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, in Portuguese with English subtitles. A box office hit in Brazil, it was released in a dubbed version for American audiences in 1972 by New Line Cinema.

Illustrated by underground New York psychedelic comic artist Frank Mell. His incredible work is similar to legendary R. Crumb Comics, but much less known. His work is in the collection of the Oakland Museum, he illustrated psychedelic album covers, posters, and his work can be found in counter culture periodicals.

Original MOVIE POSTER, Offset lithograph on paper, 37" x 24.5". GOOD Condition: stored rolled for decades, so the colors remain very bright, the bottom margin has some waviness and shorelining/staining, the top edge has some light creasing, there are a few light smudges here and there and a few signs of wear, but overall the poster is solid, bright and clear.

An epic psychedelic adventure fantasy on Brazilian themes and myths, based on a Modernist novel written in 1928 by Mario de Andrade (no relation to the film's director), the metaphorical, savagely satirical film has drawn comparisons to the work of Fellini, John Waters and Lina Wertmuller. A revealing allegory of Brazil's complex racial and cultural history with subtle references to its repressive military rule. Like the musical style Tropicalia gave the world a uniquely Brazilian beat, Macunaima exhibits a strong Brazilian identity.

When the film was first released in the United States, its most sensational elements were played up. In a comprehensive 1976 essay about it in the media review journal Jump Cut, author J.R. Molotnik wrote that the movie had been dubbed "Jungle Freaks" for its U.S. release and was advertised in the Village Voice as "95 Minutes of Brazil Nuts." "New Line Cinema, the film's U.S. distributor, was clearly seeking to attract the Voice's avowedly offbeat readers with promises of an exotic spoof," Molotnik wrote. "The movie buff likely to attend such an 'underground' film was thus readied for a far-out lighthearted film, one bearing little resemblance to the 'heavy' classics of Latin American revolutionary cinema."

Will be shipped carefully rolled in a sturdy mailing tube.