Chapter 1 of 8 - WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?
- 16 years ago
Our Journey started August 28th 2006. The interviews that you see at the beginning of the movie took place at a vineyard near Austin, Texas the day before we left for San Francisco. You may remember that at that time, President Bush enjoyed a 42% approval rating and the Republican Party controlled the United States Congress. The hymn of change that seems to be in the air today didn't exist then. In fact, many people had become cynical to anything having to do with politics.
It was a dark period, but what we found fascinating, even at that time, was that while other segments of the population seemed to be trapped in a political funk, young people seemed poised to start something new, something extraordinary. Perhaps something like what happened in the sixties. And we wanted to be in the midst of it.
We decided to try to recapture the spirit of the sixties. You see, the only way us young folk can experience the sixties now is by listening to nostalgic tales from our parents (or friends of our parents), by reading in between the lines of our history books, or by getting a hold of those old recordings of MLK and/or activist artists like John Lennon. So the idea of finding that spirit in our own lives today sounded wild, mischievous, and like bells of revolution to our ears.
We traveled from the University of Texas at Austin to Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco in just 36 hours. We had no money so a friend who worked at a moving company schemed to get us a truck for free. The only thing we had to pay for was gas. Don't ask me how he managed to get us the deal; we're still a little confused about the whole thing ourselves. Gas was at 3.099, which - at the time - seemed like death. If you look closely at the part when we are at a gas station, you can see the price. Boy if we could fill up our tanks at that price now, huh!
Before we knew it we had arrived at the most innovative bastion of liberalism of the 1960s. Revolution was in the air and our spirits were high. But things were about to change...
It was a dark period, but what we found fascinating, even at that time, was that while other segments of the population seemed to be trapped in a political funk, young people seemed poised to start something new, something extraordinary. Perhaps something like what happened in the sixties. And we wanted to be in the midst of it.
We decided to try to recapture the spirit of the sixties. You see, the only way us young folk can experience the sixties now is by listening to nostalgic tales from our parents (or friends of our parents), by reading in between the lines of our history books, or by getting a hold of those old recordings of MLK and/or activist artists like John Lennon. So the idea of finding that spirit in our own lives today sounded wild, mischievous, and like bells of revolution to our ears.
We traveled from the University of Texas at Austin to Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco in just 36 hours. We had no money so a friend who worked at a moving company schemed to get us a truck for free. The only thing we had to pay for was gas. Don't ask me how he managed to get us the deal; we're still a little confused about the whole thing ourselves. Gas was at 3.099, which - at the time - seemed like death. If you look closely at the part when we are at a gas station, you can see the price. Boy if we could fill up our tanks at that price now, huh!
Before we knew it we had arrived at the most innovative bastion of liberalism of the 1960s. Revolution was in the air and our spirits were high. But things were about to change...