Hippies hated New York City, in fact it was the epitome of everything they disliked. They wanted to go back to nature and live in communes. So it was natural for people who wanted to move to New York City in the early 1970s, in spite of its bad reputation, to rebel against hippie ideals. And a city like New York offers more realistic goals for the environmental movement, a hippie ideal, than going back to nature: your carbon footprint is lower when you live here, etc. I would like to open the show by playing a Country Joe And The Fish record, two songs from “Together”: One is “The Streets Of Your Town” (where they complain “Good-bye New York City! The subway is not the underground!” and “The Harlem Song” (so utterly racist that it’s impossible to describe).

With Roberta Bailey, Richard Hell, Mary Herron and more.