The first issue was produced by Dorpat with $200 in borrowed capital, out of a rented storefront on Roosevelt Way NE in Seattle's University District. After being turned down by the first printers they approached, they found a printer in Ken Monson, communications director of the International Association of Machinists local, who had recently acquired a printing press. 1500 copies were printed of the first issue.[2] Walt Crowley, soon to play a major role in the paper, was not in the initial group, but claimed to have been the first person to buy a copy.[3] By the fourth biweekly issue sales had reached 11,000 copies. After the first two issues a split-fount rainbow effect was sometimes used to print psychedelically colorful front covers; issues averaged 24 pages, with illustrations and graphics clipped from old magazines and having little to do with the adjoining copy crammed into the interior pages.[2]
In September 1967 Helix was evicted from the office on Roosevelt Way. On October 15 they opened their new office about 1 kilometre (0.62mi) south at 3128 Harvard Avenue E. on the other side of University Bridge, where they were to remain for the rest of the paper's existence.
On at least one occasion, a young man was arrested for hawking the Helix on a University streetcorner, and another arrested immediately after for giving away the papers that were left behind when the first man was hauled off into a police car.[4]
Contents of the paper were a New Left/hippie mélange of underground politics, psychedelic graphics, drug culture, bulletins from the Liberation News Service, and rock music reviews, with much coverage of rock festivals in the Pacific Northwest including the Sky River Rock Festivals and concerts at Eagles Auditorium. Frequent contributors included Tom Robbins, while Walt Crowley was responsible for much of the paper's freewheeling design. The Blue Moon Tavern and the Last Exit on Brooklyn coffee house functioned as the paper's unofficial hangouts. In 1970 Robert Glessing reported that although the paper did not pay salaries it was providing food and housing for 11 full-time staffers.[5]
After the demise of the Helix several former staffers, including Crowley and Roxie Grant, went to work at a new community center called the U District Center, at the corner of NE 56th and University Way.[6] Several attempts were made by different groups in Seattle to launch a new paper to take the place of the Helix, including the New Times Journal, Puget Sound Partisan, Sabot, Seattle Flag, Seattle Sound, and the Sun, but none succeeded in recapturing the spirit or the success of the Helix.[7]
Crowley and Dorpat later went on to be two of the three founders of HistoryLink, along with Crowley's wife Marie McCaffrey.[1][8]
The terms underground press or clandestine press refer to periodicals and publications that are produced without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant group. In specific recent Asian, American and Western European context, the term "underground press" has most frequently been employed to refer to the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in India and Bangladesh in Asia, in the United States and Canada in North America, and the United Kingdom and other western nations. It can also refer to the newspapers produced independently in repressive regimes. In German occupied Europe, for example, a thriving underground press operated, usually in association with the Resistance. Other notable examples include the samizdat and bibuła, which operated in the Soviet Union and Poland respectively, during the Cold War.
Ravenna is a neighborhood in northeastern Seattle, Washington named after Ravenna, Italy. Though Ravenna is considered a residential neighborhood, it also is home to several businesses, many of which are located in the University Village, a shopping mall.
The East Village Other was an American underground newspaper in New York City, issued biweekly during the 1960s. It was described by The New York Times as "a New York newspaper so countercultural that it made The Village Voice look like a church circular".
The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS), was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines that operated from 1966 into the late 1970s. As it evolved, the Underground Press Syndicate created an Underground Press Service, and later its own magazine.
The Oracle of the City of San Francisco, also known as the San Francisco Oracle, was an underground newspaper published in 12 issues from September 20, 1966, to February 1968 in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of that city. Allen Cohen (1940–2004), the editor during the paper's most vibrant period, and Michael Bowen, the art director, were among the founders of the publication. The Oracle was an early member of the Underground Press Syndicate.
University Way Northeast, colloquially The Ave, is a major street and commercial district in the University District of Seattle, Washington, located near the University of Washington (UW) campus. Once "a department store eight blocks long," The Ave has gradually turned into what now resembles an eight-block-long global food court. The story of The Ave reflects the dynamics of many urban neighborhoods and the social and economic problems of countless American cities, though it is also a crossroads of diverse subcultures. It is patronized by many of the nearly 96,900 students, faculty, and staff of the UW and by a population of homeless or transient individuals, most of whom are youth.
Kaleidoscope was an underground newspaper that was published in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Founded by John Kois, the radio disk jockey Bob Reitman and John Sahli, it was published from October 6, 1967, to November 11, 1971, printing 105 biweekly issues. The paper's first issue was printed with a borrowed $250 in an edition of 3,500 copies, which sold out in two days.
Walter Charles Crowley was an American historian and activist from Washington state. He first entered the public sphere in Seattle through his involvement with the social and political movements of the 1960s, especially the underground press. He later became more widely known as a local television personality and for his pioneering work as a local historian, including co-creating the website HistoryLink.org, which he considered to be his crowning achievement.
The Chicago Seed was an underground newspaper published biweekly in Chicago, Illinois from May 1967 to 1974; there were 121 issues published in all. It was notable for its colorful psychedelic graphics and its eclectic, non-doctrinaire radical politics. Important events covered by Seed writers and artists were the trial of the Chicago Eight, Woodstock, and the murder of Fred Hampton. At its peak, the Seed circulated between 30,000 and 40,000 copies, with national distribution.
The Kudzu was a counterculture underground newspaper published in Jackson, Mississippi starting in September 1968. Promising "Subterranean News from the Heart of Ole Dixie" and offering a blend of hip culture and radical politics, it was founded by members of the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), a student activist group affiliated with SDS. Founding editors were Cassell Carpenter, David Doggett, and Everett Long, students at Millsaps College in Jackson. Despite harassment by police and city officials it survived until May 1972.
Philadelphia Free Press was a 1960s era underground newspaper published biweekly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1968 to 1972. Originally launched at Temple University in May 1968 as the monthly Temple Free Press, it separated from Temple and became the Philadelphia Free Press in September 1968.
Spokane Natural was an underground newspaper published biweekly in Spokane, Washington from May 5, 1967, to November 13, 1970, by the Mandala Printshop, and edited by Russ Nobbs. It belonged to the Underground Press Syndicate and the Liberation News Service. The first issue was produced out of a converted barbershop storefront cum bookstore and hangout called the "Hippie Mission" on a cul-de-sac in Spokane, where Russ Nobbs and a visiting friend from the SF Bay area, Ormond Otvos wrote and produced the first 8-page issue on a hand-cranked Spirit duplicator. After several issues of pale blue "Ditto" print on white paper, The Natural moved to colored papers and occasionally colored ink with a Gestetner Mimeograph duplicator. Ultimately, the newspaper was printed on newsprint by sheet fed or web presses by various printers in Spokane, Seattle and Davenport, WA.
Sabot was a brief-lived underground newspaper published in Seattle, Washington by the Seattle Liberation Front from September 11, 1970 to January 13, 1971. Sixteen weekly issues were published in all. The paper was started as a replacement for the Seattle Helix which had published its last issue in June 1970. As with its predecessor, Sabot was from the beginning torn by political dissension within the radical political collective, centering on an internal struggle with feminists over issues of male chauvinism and editorial control and direction. After a few months the divided staff was no longer able to get an issue out and the newspaper quit publishing.
Dallas Notes was a biweekly underground newspaper published in Dallas, Texas from 1967 to 1970, and edited by Stoney Burns, whose father owned a printing company in Dallas. Initially founded by Doug Baker at Southern Methodist University in March 1967, under the title NOTES from the Underground, the first issues were run off after hours on a copy machine at Texas Instruments.
The Last Exit on Brooklyn was a Seattle University District coffeehouse established in 1967 by Irv Cisski. It is known for its part in the history of Seattle's counterculture, for its pioneering role in establishing Seattle's coffee culture, and as a former chess venue frequented by several master players.
The San Diego Free Press was an underground newspaper founded by philosophy students of Herbert Marcuse at the University of California, San Diego in November 1968, and published under that title biweekly until December 1969, when it became the weekly Street Journal starting with its 29th issue. The paper's contents were a mix of radical politics, alternative lifestyles, and the counterculture, reflecting in part Marcuse's Frankfurt School Marxist/Freudian ideas of cultural transformation.
Old Mole was a radical New Left oriented underground newspaper published in Cambridge, Massachusetts from September 1968 to September 1970. Old Mole was continued by a second volume titled The Mole, which published five issues from November 1970 to April 1971. Printed biweekly in a 16-page tabloid format, Old Mole was based for most of its existence in a storefront and basement office on Brookline Street in Central Square. Selling for 15 cents, 47 issues were published in all, with press runs averaging 8000 to 10,000 copies. Subscriptions were free to prisoners and soldiers.
The Weather Underground organized collectives around the United States in an attempt "to challenge the state directly in solidarity with Third World liberation movements, particularly the Black Power movement in the United States and the Vietnamese in Southeast Asia." Collectives organized the white working class against imperialism by holding militant demonstrations and engaging in small scale property damage.
Paul Dorpat is a historian, author, and photographer, specializing in the history of Seattle and Washington state. He had a weekly column in the Seattle Times and is the principal historian of HistoryLink.org, a site devoted to Washington state history.
A piano drop consists of dropping a piano, usually one already in poor shape, from a great height.
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