In My Opinion, Art Kunkin Is No Less Than A Folk Hero

Walter H. King:
The old Freep of the 1960s and 70s had both a social-cultural and a political program.
I think the political program mostly “lost out” but the social-cultural program was a huge success and is to a large extent part of the progressive legacy of the sixties and early seventies.
For those old enough to remember what our culture was like in the fifties and what it is today, we owe a large debt to publisher Art Kunkin and his Free Press.

Walter H. King is a retired attorney.

Praise From A Former Reporter

Harvey Kubernick:
"The 'Los Angeles Free Press' was our geographical compass to far pockets of the community we never got exposed to in any local public school. To some it was viewed as an 'underground' outlet of real news and pop culture information. To others it was digested like a Bible or Torah. The paper always had a regional pulse that informed a passionate collective staff heartbeat that delivered editorials that could be heard and felt all over the United States and the world.
The weekly also had an open-minded music policy. The music editors were not narrow-minded... One of my very first writing jobs was an interview with Brian Auger in 1972. I list the 'FREEP' in my biography with a sense of pride. The ads always directed us to new sounds and wonderful concert experiences; the fabulous Pinnacle Concerts, seminal and influential interviews, defunct movie theater houses, groovy Troubadour shows from the '60s and 70s, or ancient record shops that we initially found in the pages that informed and still impact our melodic travels."
Harvey Kubernik has been a music journalist and writer/interviewer since 1972, in Crawdaddy, the LA Times, MOJO, HITS and the original LA Free Press. He is the author of “This Is Rebel Music, The Harvey Kubernik InnerViews" , the upcoming "Hollywood Shack Job: Rock Music In Film and On Your Screen" and "Memory As Calendar." Anthologies include, "The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats" and "Drinking With Bukowski" and the recording set "The Jack Kerouac Collection."

Gary Gordon:
To Call The L.A. Free Press A Beacon in Our Dark Ages Would Be To Undervalue It...
“During the Johnson and Nixon regimes the Freep provided an important doorway into the land of political and cultural revolution. Since the seizure of the government by the current regime, the return of such a doorway is necessary and welcome.
Gary Gordon is a novelist and former Mayor of Gainesville Florida.

I used to sell papers @ Crescent Hgts.& Sunset

crispycritter19 said...
I used to sell papers @ Crescent Hgts.& Sunset, and also in front of Wallich's Music City, in '67-8. I remember once at Crescent Hgts a limo pulled up, the window rolled down, & a woman leaned out and handed me $5."Buy yourself some shoes" she said-it was Zsa-zsa. The leader of our group of vendors was a guy named Mitch. He had a green 56 Chevy panel truck with NO BRAKES! When we'd go to Westwood, we had to open the back doors and drag our feet. He kept lots of pairs of old sneakers in the back for that purpose!
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share some 'old' memories!
June 21, :57 AM

hey the la freep sure led me to becoming the mad yippie pie thrower!!

pieman said...
hey the la freep sure led me to becoming the mad yippie pie thrower!! i was involved w/green power in focalizing the love-ins at griffith park as my way of saying "fuck you" to the warmongers!!!
i was just 16 when i first read the freep in 1966...the freep confirmed my suspicions on how fucked the systen is!!!
therefore i am glad the freep surfaced!!!

aron pieman kay
http://www.pieman.org
April 13, :31 PM

“The Los Angeles Free Press was the free press in the 60s”

Donald Freed:
Donald Freed is a prize winning playwright. His credits include “Secret Honor, The Last Testament of Richard Nixon”

An Editorial Awareness Based On Reality

Hammond Guthrie:
“Art Kunkin founded the L.A. Free Press quite literally "underground" from the basement of The Fifth Estate coffeehouse in Hollywood...Reading the weekly Free Press offered the greater LA underground access to community services, a
place to hook up and THE NEWS! Presented with an editorial awareness based on reality -What Impact Did The Freep Have On You In The 60s and 70s? Send Us Your Testimonial And We Will Print It! Post Your Comments To Our Website www.losangelesfreepress.com neatly wrapped between Charles Bukowski's "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," Dr. Hip's medical/sexual advice, and the thoughts of writers such as Hugh Romney (Wavy Gravy) and Gene Youngblood. et al.
Acid (lsd) was still legal and Lenny Bruce was still being arrested. General's Hershey Bar and Wastemoreland stood proudly with thousands in MacArthur Park raging against the war machine and Century City was soon to explode. Young though I was, I was there during the small window of time -- shadows passing in the (up all) night heading down Fairfax to the Free Press Bookstore. A place to feel perfectly safe within a brewing social maelstrom.
...Now, as it was in the 60's, it is again essential that dissent and truth not be constrained by editorial hypocrisy. Yes!, ‘Time Has Come Today,’ and Art Kunkin is again stepping up to the plate. Support your local Free Press.

Hammond Guthrie is an artist and the author of “AsEverWas: Memoirs Of A Beat Survivor.”

The Freep Was The Sixties As Much As Fritz Perls And Timothy Leary

Anita Sands Hernandez:
“...I knew something was in the works when I saw that BOHEMIAN FASHIONS are the new rage in NYC and Paris. It was like the THREE KINGS announcing something was slouching toward BETHLEM to be born. Call me CASSANDRA, but I WAS RIGHT! THE FREEP IS BORN….again. THE SIXTIES ARE BACK!”

Anita Sands Hernandez, L.A. born, spent the 60s in San Miguel De Allende subscribing to the Free Press and getting it by mail.

The Free Press was the Key to the Zeitgeist

Ruben Martinez:
“While I never read the Freep during its run, the generation of writers I belong to owes everything to Art Kunkin's pioneering efforts.
I became a staff writer at the LA Weekly about a decade after the last issue of the Freep, and the veterans that I learned from would speak of it with the kind of reverence reserved for legends. They said the Freep was more than a newspaper -- that it was the key to the zeitgeist, a connection to the vanguard, words that in and of themselves were Revolution. As bombastic as it sounds, I understood that to be the mission of the alternative press. I still do.

Ruben Martinez,Author of “The New Americans: Seven Families Journey to Another Country.”

The Paper That Taught Me Everything I Wasn’t Supposed To Know About

Ted Quinn:
The Paper That Taught Me Everything I Wasn’t Supposed To Know About Art, Music, Politics, Sex & Consciousness
“As a rebel ex-child star, around the age of 12 or 13 (who can really remember the 70's?) with my friend Leland, son of the beautiful hipster mom, Barbara, I would hitch-hike down to Laurel Canyon to the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights by day, between trips to the door of Rodney's English Disco, where we tried, but usually failed to get in. We would pop a quarter into the vending machine and steal a stack of the Freep, sell them on the corner and then spend our loot at the Canyon Country Store. Thirty years later at the Beatnik Café in Joshua Tree, I confessed this story to the Freep's Founder, Art Kunkin, upon first meeting him. He gave me a big smile and a hug saying "I wholeheartedly approve." It is a dream come true to know this man, much less be able to work with him on THE paper which taught me everything that I wasn't supposed to know about art, music, politics, sex and consciousness.
Ted (Teddy) Quinn, musician, cultural activist, writer, artist, broadcaster on Radio Free Joshua Tree

Bringing Higher Consciousness To The Events Of The Day....

Stan Russell
“Art Kunkin is one of the most remarkable people I know, not simply because he is so bright but because of the remarkable diversity of his interests. Back in the mid 60's, when our country seemed to be going mad, he was at the forefront telling the truth about events when everyone seemed to have their heads in the sand. In the ensuing years I've found Art exploring the deeper issues of life, ranging from becoming president of the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles to apprenticing to an authentic, classical alchemist for seven years. Whenever I came upon something new in the field of human consciousness, it would turn out that Art had already been there, studied it, met all the famous people connected to it, and had already moved on. Neuro-Linguistic Programming, David R. Hawkins, clinical hypnosis, current advances in neuroscience, Tibetan Buddhism, you name it, he's been there and done it. When he announced the birth of the new Los Angeles Free Press I knew that he would bring a new perspective of higher consciousness to events of the day The Los Angeles Free Press, Established 1964, Reincarnated by Popular Demand www.losangelesfreepress.com
Remembering The Los Angeles Free Press came upon something new in the field of human consciousness, it would turn out that Art had already been there, studied it, met all the famous people connected to it, and had already moved on. Neuro-Linguistic Programming, David R. Hawkins, clinical hypnosis, current advances in neuroscience, Tibetan Buddhism, you name it, he's been there and done it.
When he announced the birth of the new Los Angeles Free Press I knew that he would bring a new perspective of higher consciousness to events of the day unlike anything that we've seen in the press. By continually reinventing himself and remaining informed about leading-edge developments in the evolution of human consciousness, he spurs each of us to grow and reach for our own unfulfilled potential. And that's exactly what humankind needs at this moment if we are to survive as a species.”

The L.A. Free Press Made An Impact...

Brenda Barnes:
On My Career As A Civil Rights Attorney....
“When the LAFP was being published in L.A. in the 60's and early 70's, I was not a political person. I had graduated from Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement years but amazingly, looking back on it, I came out as apolitical as I went in. I stayed apolitical after moving to LA. I do not remember ever reading a single article in the Free Press. However, the LAFP was really important to me in those years in two ways I was totally unaware of at the time.
The first was it was giving a voice to and keeping the community of activists awake, aware and alive. When I later learned politics had caused the injustice of separate and unequal minority schools where I had been teaching, those activists were ready and able to help me work for change. We did that in the courts, as I had become a lawyer by the time of the 1978 school desegregation case. They raised money. I was their voice to Judge Egly and the mainstream reporters who sat in the courtroom for six months.
The second area of importance of the LAFP to me came out of that trial. This changed my perception of the press forever. Seeing how different the stories in the LA Times and on TV sound bite news stories every night were from what was actually happening every day radicalized me. I knew then either the press was stupid or it had been bought off, or both.
By the late 90's I had not trusted a newspaper or TV news program for over 20 years. Then I met Art Kunkin. He showed me the Free Press archives. His was a press reporting the truth in the 60's and 70's about Vietnam, Nixon and the racism, fascism and futility of the 'War on Drugs." I just had not known about that press.
Therefore, when he recently said he was starting up the Free Press again, I was happy to help. We have needed the Free Press since the 70's when government agents illegally using the FBI and IRS succeeded in silencing it. We really need it now when again the press in the US is either stupid or bought off, or both. We need an effective voice for truth.
At the same time, we all need to be careful. These are dangerous times. The political machine is more vicious than ever, trying to silence effective truthful voices. Good luck and take care, Art. Brenda Barnes- An Attorney who fought for integration

crispycritter19 said...

I think I remember YOU. didn't you wear a tophat? You were a colorful character. I also remember two guys in military uniforms Gen. WASTE-MORE-LAND, & Gen. Curtis DISMAY who frequently rode the buses on Hollywood Bl. And an old woman "Trashy Tillie" with a shopping cart who it was rumored was very wealthy.

The Mayor Of Sunset Strip Remembers The Free Press...

Rodney Bingenheimer:
"I remember the kids selling it on the Sunset Strip. The L.A. Free Press was around way before the L.A. Weekly and New Times or anything. It was the source. It was the Bible of the Sunset Strip. It was political and non-political. I'm really glad to hear you
guys are doing it again. Good luck!"
Rodney Bingenheimer, tastemaker, KROQ dj, "Rodney on the ROQ," and "Mayor of the Sunset Strip."

Janis Joplin And I Read Every Issue....

Sam Andrew:
"The L.A. Free Press, the Detroit Fifth Estate and The Village Voice were my textbooks while Big Brother and the Holding Company were recording Cheap Thrills in Hollywood and Manhattan. It always seemed a bit miraculous to me that the L.A. Free
Janis Joplin and Sam Andrew (Photo Copyright 2005 Elliot Landy - www.landyvisions.com) Press existed. Janis Joplin and I read every issue, discussed much of what we had read, and we knew, even then, how much we were formed by these early alternative publications. Congratulations to all who had a part in making such a fine newspaper."
Sam Andrew, Guitar Player magazine's "Father of the Psychedelic Guitar," Big Brother & the Holding Company Keeping the Community of Activists Awake, Aware and Alive.

The Free Press Trusted Runaways...

jb
'For a teenage runaway like myself, life on the streets of L.A. in the late sixties was a brutal experience. Those were the days of Manson, Jim Jones, Tony Alamo and folks who might persuade a hungry kid to carry a package of unknown contents
across town. Runaways have few options, kids Get A Wonderful Free Book .The Power Of Concentration. by signing up for our free Newsletter at our web site: www.losangelesfreepress.com disappear. Or reappear in stairwells -- huddled, bruised, a sparkle gone from their eyes. We trusted few, except ourselves and the L.A. Free Press. The folks at the Free Press gave us kids a square deal. They trusted us with a stack of papers and the simple promise to share the proceeds. We dug being trusted and being businessmen/hustlers hawking those pages on Hollywood Boulevard. The L.A. Free Press saved a few of us. All those years past, I still never tire of saying ‘Thank you, Art. Thank You, Free Press.”

A Champion Of Civil Rights...

Tom Wilkes:
A Champion Of Civil Rights.. “The Free Press was the vanguard of the hippie movement in the 60's. Art Kunkin was the print voice, motivating factor and champion of civil rights, anti-war and the "Peace and Love" generation.... I created scores of music business ads that were pub-lished in the Freep..... You can't separate the street

The Freep Played An Incredible Role.....

Irv Sarnoff:
“During the 60's and 70's the Freep played an incredible role in supporting and reporting on the many activities of the Peace Action Council and the Alliance For Survival, organizations that I helped found as well as chaired during that period.
With the help of publications like the Freep we were able to mobilize tens of thousands to end the
U.S. war in Vietnam and to stop the proliferation of nuclear power in California. The Freep helped us do many successful events on the streets as well as the Hollywood Bowl and the Rose Bowl. If the past role of the Freep is an indication, I look forward to your contribution. Irv Sarnoff is a political activist who presently plays
a leading role in Friends Of The United Nations.

The Paper That Kick-Started

John Wilcock:
The Paper That Kick-Started The Sixties...
“When it comes to underground papers, Art Kunkin was the original.”
John Wilcock has written many travel books and helped start the New York Village Voice with Norman Mailer and other writers.He presently edits The Ojai Orange.

The Freep Was......

Mike Davis:

The Freep Was An Unwavering Voice For Cultural and Political Liberation...
“During a long decade of constant turmoil and bold experimentation, Art Kunkin and his contributors truly set Los Angeles’s night on fire. The Freep was the lodestar for my generation: An unwavering voice for cultural and political liberation.”
Mike Davis is the historian who wrote the famous book, “City Of Quartz, Excavating The Future In Los Angeles” and “The Ecology of Fear.”

The Free Press Saved Me

Greg Palast:

The Free Press Saved Me From Mental Meltdown...
“The Free Press saved me from mental meltdown when I was in my early teens in the San Fernando Valley. I can’t tell you, Art, how much your encouragement means to me.”
Greg Palast is an investigative journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation and the London Guardian. He authored the book, “The Best Democracy That Money Can Buy.”

A Letter From The Editor To You

About How You Can Help Grow The New Society
by Art Kunkin, Editor Since 1964

This alternative newspaper is dedicated to the idea that a new cooperative society of freedom-loving individuals is being born within an old society dominated by competition and fear. This new society is a real birth, as real (and as invisible) as any child growing inside the body of a woman.
To further this metaphor, if are sensitive, we can even feel the little feet of the new society trying to get out of the constraints of the older body in which it is growing. And if we are not sensitive to the everyday process of that birth, we will only experience the pain of the status quo that ordinary newspapers and television report.
As I see it, it is the specific function of the alternative press to go beyond the pain involved in the birth of a new society to report upon and emphasize the cellular process - the new ideas - making that birth possible.
Is this new society only a dream, an impossible utopia or structure that might take a discouraging period of time, perhaps longer than our individual lifetimes to accomplish? These are weighty considerations to take up in the limited space of this page, but I'll write, rather personally, about what gives me hope in future issues.
For now, one vision statement of this newspaper, "Information To Improve The World", says nothing less than that our aim is to be a mid-wife to the new society.
Another of our vision statements "Every Reader Is A Reporter," is a call to each you to take a part in making history, in changing consciousness.
For me, the new society is not imaginary. It is not an impossible utopia. It exists. Those who can see this reality growing are hopeful for the future, hopeful that the new birth will be beautiful and not defective, joyful even if there is pain and blood.
So where is this new society growing? Inside your head, in your nervous system, and in that invisible part of you that is popularly called your soul. Each time you feel compassion for storm victims in Louisiana, for children starving in Africa, for unemployed workers -- that is the new society expressing itself.
Each time you express disgust for political corruption in Washington, D.C. or Moscow, or India, that is the new society speaking inside of you.
Each time you express opposition to the horrors of war, to damage being done to the environment, to the second-class citizenship of women and children and blacks and browns, you are expressing a desire for the new society.
Each time you object to the growing gap between rich and poor, each time you say that it is wrong for ordinary citizen voters to be powerless while corporations use their obscene profits to control the politicians in Washington, each time you express love for yourself and love for another human being, that is the new society "kicking" inside of you.
The reality that clouds our ability to clearly feel and see the new society, the new consciousness, is that it exists within the aging symptoms of the old society. The old society is very visible as it is already mature (and even stinking in places!). However, there are also visible aspects of the new society in the painfully won legislation and struggles that have given the vote to women and blacks, in social security and welfare laws that feed the aged and the hungry and unemployed, in low-cost housing included in new construction projects, in the General Assembly of the United Nations giving a new voice to small nations.
The struggle between the new and the old is also taking place inside of us, inside of our heads, your head, my head, inside the head of the stranger in the restaurant. Side by side with the wonderful thoughts about freedom, compassion and love that have evolved inside of our individual nervous systems, and may compel you to be a participant in struggles for a better world, are feelings of fear and isolation and lack of confidence and shyness and anger, etc.
As a matter of fact, there is actually an organ - the old amygdala - inside of our brains, inside of your brain and inside my brain, that is so sensitive to negative experiences and thoughts and emotions that it issues the adrenaline and other chemicals that promote the violent behavior that protects us in the face of danger. Just as there are politicians in Washington and elsewhere that promote the war-like behavior of the old society.
Unfortunately, the amygdala does its thing even when there is only imagined behavior.
And, fortunately, there are other organs that emit other chemicals letting us be conscious humans who feel good. (In our Free Press section titled Tools for Success and Life Expansion, we give you information on how to increase the flow of these, too.)
The new society does not exist exclusively in the minds of workers, as Marx seems to have declared in his pioneering attempt to see the new society. Perhaps a hundred years ago it could be said that the desire for freedom was best expressed by the struggles of the labor movement, but we have moved beyond that time. Now we see that the desire for a new society is not only being expressed by the labor movement but by women, blacks, students, soldiers, as a matter of fact, to some degree, by just about everyone -- including a proportion of the people who voted for Bush and who are now in the process of realizing that they made a mistake.
This consciousness of compassion, of freedom is so much a part of ourselves that we can not imagine a time when this consciousness did not exist. It is only when we look at the historical record, at the real pains of the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 and what happened previously, that we can understand that the human nervous system was not always the home of conscious notions of freedom and compassion.
There certainly was no consciousness of freedom in those ancient societies where pharaohs and kings and priests and tribal leaders ruled for hundreds and thousands of years without substantial opposition. It's hard to imagine this, but in those centuries in which a more primitive human consciousness existed, people could not and did not develop comprehensive notions of freedom. They could be motivated by a desire to escape pain -- and the historical records shows that this is what happened when those primitive minds would occasionally be mobilized by the promises made by a leader with a more advanced notion of governance. But that is all. The widespread notion of the possibility of freedom that exists today, that exists in your own head, was not a powerful historical force thousands and even hundreds of years ago.
What gives me hope is that ideas of freedom and love and compassion developed as a logical response to the relationship problems of humans who were also in the process of technologically achieving sufficient food and amenities to live a better life. In other words, before the new society fully expresses itself in good government and good laws, it exists in the minds and nervous systems of human beings. Thought precedes manifestation.
George Washington and Tom Paine and Jefferson individually in 1776 had thoughts of freedom under a republican form of government and, therefore, it came about. However, King George could have won if the French had not helped the revolutionists. Then the achievement of a more democratic government in the American colonies would have been postponed for many years. However, as long it was evolutionary inevitable that ideas of freedom would develop in other individuals, American independence of some kind was also inevitable. Therefore, a new society of free individuals is inevitable in the not-so-distant future -- unless the old leaders blow us up (and that's why they must go!).
Do you accept my thesis that the new society is to be found first inside of our heads? That ideas of social justice and freedom and health and responsibility for the environment grow inside of our nervous systems as logical answers to the problems involved in the three big areas of 1) self-preservation, 2) relations with other people and, 3) relations to the planet on which we live? Do you recognize the impulse toward an improved society in your own being?
This newspaper has, once again, taken on the task of reporting the invisible and actual growth of a new society. It IS, once again, awakening the freedom impulse in all those who see it.
Please do what you can to keep this newspaper alive and widely distributed - purchase a subscription for you, for your friends and, especially, for those who should (but probably won't) purchase a subscription. Please see the special offers below.
I thank you for all that you have already done for the new society and, in advance, for all that you will do.
(signed) Art Kunkin, Editor and Founding Publisher of the Los Angeles Free Press since 1964.
artkunkin@gmail.com