[Ads-l] head shop (Apr. 1966)

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sat Jan 18 02:30:09 UTC 2020


I love that reference to “intentional LSD art”!

As for early "head shops” under that rubric, I’m guessing it would be worth checking (if available) issues of the Berkeley Barb and L. A. Free Press from the same era.  Don’t know who had pride of place.

LH

> On Jan 17, 2020, at 6:09 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> The earliest cite in OED3 for "head shop" is from July 1966 as the name of
> a shop in the East Village:
> 
> ---
> 1966   N.Y. Times Mag. 10 July 32   One may buy intentional LSD art at the
> city's first psychedelic bazaar, The Head Shop, in the East Village, where
> brightly colored mandala prints cover two walls.
> ---
> 
> This can be slightly antedated now that the East Village Other is available
> as part of the Independent Voices open-access digital archive:
> https://voices.revealdigital.org/
> (Lots of other good stuff from alternative publications in that archive.)
> 
> The shop discussed in the NYT Mag article is mentioned in this Apr. '66
> item written as a letter from "Betsy" to her mother about the Lower East
> Side:
> 
> ---
> https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BFGHCGB19660415.1.9
> The East Village Other, Volume 1, Issue 10, Apr. 15-Mar. 1, 1966, p. 9
> Soon I’ll open The Head Shop, where beautiful things, many by local
> painters and makers, will be sold. Sometimes at night we turn on the
> electric jewels and people.
> ---
> 
> "Betsy" is surely Betsy Glick, who opened The Head Shop with her husband
> Jeff at 304 E. 9th Street. Here's an image of them back in the day:
> 
> https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-betsy-and-jeff-glick-in-head-shop-their-store-news-photo/510423841
> 
> This article says the Glicks opened The Head Shop in May '66, so that fits
> the timeline.
> 
> https://sunflowerpipes.com/new-york-smoke-shop-culture/
> 
> --bgz
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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