Diggers (theater)

One of the first Digger activities was the publishing of various broadsides, which were printed by sneaking into the local Students for a Democratic Society office and using their Gestetner printer. The leaflets were eventually called The Digger Papers, and soon morphed into small pamphlets with poetry, psychedelic art, and essays. The Digger Papers originated such phrases as "Do your own thing" and "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

They often included statements that mocked the prevailing attitude of the counterculture promoted by less-radical figures like the Haight-Independent Proprietors (HIP), Timothy Leary, and Richard Alpert. The first paper mocked the acid community, saying "Time to forget because flowers are beautiful and the sun's not yellow, it's chicken!" They rarely included authors' names, though some had pseudonyms like "George Metevsky," a reference to the "Mad Bomber" George Metesky. (After some HIP members tried to find out who the Diggers were, Grogan and Landout responded with a telegram: "REGARDING INQUIRIES CONCERNED WITH THE IDENTITY AND WHEREABOUTS OF THE DIGGERS; HAPPY TO REPORT THE DIGGERS ARE NOT THAT.")[6]

The 1% Free poster, showing two Chinese Tong assassins under the Chinese character for "revolution," was thought to be demanding a 1% tithe from merchants, but that was not the case. The poster was a challenge, implicitly suggesting that "free" people were the minority, and inciting others to step up.

Writers Chester Anderson and Claude and Helene Hayward[7] helped found the publishing arm of the Diggers, known as the Communications Company (ComCo). Using "two 'beautiful' Gestetner mimeograph machines that had been nefariously obtained through the offices of Ramparts magazine,"[7] the Communications Company distributed daily (and sometimes hourly) broadsides on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury district during the early part of 1967 and the Summer of Love. ComCo was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate, a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines.

Through the Communications Company, Anderson circulated a number of his own bitter broadside polemics in the Haight, including, in April 1967, "Uncle Tim'$ Children," with its infamous, often-quoted line, "Rape is as common as bullshit on Haight Street."[8]

Richard Brautigan's poem "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" was first published, in March 1967, by the Communication Company on an 8.5-by-11-inch (216 by 279 mm) mimeographed broadside with both the title and imprint handwritten.[9] The first run included a picture of a megaphone, and a second printing had an image of people working on a large computer, rotated to run vertically beside the poem, with simple line drawings of animals all over the page.[10] In April of the same year, the Communication Company published it again as the title poem in the collection by the same name. It included 36 typewritten yellow pages measuring 8.75-by-7-inch (222 by 178 mm), in a print run of 1,500, all of which were given away for free. Brautigan then gave permission to The Diggers to include the poem in the final edition of The Digger Papers, published in August 1968.[9]

Also in March 1967, ComCo distributed Willard S. Bain's Informed Sources: Day East Received, a satirical allegory of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the form of fictional news wire bulletins, in an edition of about 500 mimeographed copies.[11]

The Communications Company also published Harry Driggs' pioneering underground comic The Life and Loves of Cleopatra (June 1967), an obscene 28-page narrative inspired by the Elizabeth Taylor film Cleopatra, and which featured artwork that today would be seen as child pornography.[12] The Diggers gave away the comic in their free store at the corner of Cole and Carl in Haight-Ashbury.[13]

Joan Didion described the role Chester Anderson and ComCo played in Haight-Ashbury in her 1967 essay for The Saturday Evening Post, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem."[14]

They threw free parties with music provided by the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and other bands. They also staged street theater events, such as driving a truck of semi-naked belly dancers through the Financial District, inviting brokers to climb on board and forget their work.

On December 17, 1966, the Diggers held a happening called "The Death of Money" in which they dressed in animal masks and carried a large coffin full of fake money down Haight Street, singing "Get out my life, why don’t you babe?" to the tune of Chopin's "Funeral March" (or "Death March").[15]

This was a precursor to the happening "The Death of Hippie," staged in October 1967, in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Masked participants carried a coffin with the words "Hippie—Son of Media" on the side. This event was meant to mark the end of the hippie era of Haight-Ashbury. The event was staged so as to make any media outlet that simply described the happening to unintentionally transmit the Diggers' message that Hippies were a media invention. This was called "creating the condition you describe".[16] The Diggers skillfully used this technique for media relations.

The Diggers also popularized whole wheat bread: their Digger Bread was baked in coffee cans at the Free Bakery in the basement of Episcopal All Saints Church on 1350 Waller Street.[4] In cooperation with All Saints Church and later via the Haight Ashbury Switchboard at 1830 Fell Street, they arranged free "crashpad" housing for homeless youth drawn to the Haight-Ashbury area.