The Invisible Circus
February 24-26, 1967
Sponsored by The Diggers, Artists Liberation Front, & Glide Church
The Invisible Circus was San Francisco's digger underground answer to the Trips
Festival that had happened the previous year. The Diggers staged this happening at Glide
Church, where the Artists Liberation Front had held one of the first Free Fairs the
previous fall.
Originally advertised as a "72 hour environmental community happening," the
event started Friday night and finally dissolved into the dawn's breaking light on Sunday
morning. Nevertheless, the stories about those 36-plus hours became legend in San
Francisco's hip community for years.
Chester Anderson and Claude Hayward brought the Gestetner equipment that constituted
the free printing presses of the Communication Company, and set up shop in one of the
church offices. From there, they issued bulletins and news flashes every few minutes. The
resulting body of printed sheets comprises an instant archive of the event, of the free
space created within the walls of this liberated Tenderloin neighborhood sanctuary.
Chester was fond of telling about one such sheet, a story which typifies the
spontaneous nature of a digger event. He had taken a breather and went for a drink to a
bar across the street from Glide. There he overheard a heated discussion between two of
the bar's patrons. Chester, the ever-vigilant correspondent, whipped out his notepad and
jotted notes of this conversation. He then repaired to the Communication Company temporary
facilities and typed up his notes, ran off a few copies of this instant news bulletin, ran
back across the street and astounded these very patrons with copies of their conversation
memorialized in print.
Meanwhile, every cubicle of Glide was happening. The elevator to the basement opened to
a hallway filled with styrofoam. Wading through this fill was like a dream sequence of
being stuck in place while trying mightily to move. In another room, there was a panel
discussion on pornography. When it came time for the police vice squad officer to speak,
one of the diggers opened up a glass display case from its hidden access panel in the next
room, and laid his penis on the shelf. The audience broke apart in hilarity over the irony
of these two juxtaposed images, the staid cop discussing in a quite serious tone the
dangers of porn, while the anonymous flasher performed his silent interpretation of
"do your own thing" behind the podium. The cop never caught on.
I will try to put together a sampling of scanned ComCo sheets from the Invisible
Circus. In the meantime, if anyone has stories from that event, feel free to add them to
the archive.
|
 |
