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Haight Ashbury Switchboard
Haight Ashbury Switchboard Through the Seventies by Paris
Three eight seven seven-thousand. Dial this and you get the nexus of alternative information. Or you would have if you were in San Francisco twenty-three years ago.
"I don't know if I'm calling the right number. I live in Berkeley and I'm trying to find somebody that can help out my brother. A week ago he was invited to dinner by some people he met in People's park who were with a church called 'The Unification Church', and well anyway, I think they were Moonies and they got him. I haven't heard from him since that night and we're like real close."
"Yea, that's the Sun Myung Moon church all right. Hold it a second,"
Paris says pulling out a two foot long, flat index file drawer called the category files. He looks at the card under 'religion' and says, "O.K., I have a number you can call here in San Francisco of a group that searches for Moonie victims and deprograms them. The organization is called Eclipse. The sooner you can get your brother out the better." No sooner does Paris hang up than another call comes in from someone searching for the name of a counter-culture education collective (Communiversity).
What does counter-culture mean? You won't find it listed in the yellow pages because it's not for sale and it's not legal. Why not? There's a price on everything? 'Cause that's the System man; that establishment trip puts an arbitrary value on goods and ideas. We are of the System but we reject it. How can an alternative information network survive in the USA without buying into the system, at least for running expense? Listen and I'll tell you. I am Paris, just Paris, come from the dead. I have come to tell you all; I will tell you all.
Though lofty sounding in name, alternative information is merely truthful, factual, or useful information. The System is ordered so that information equals power and therefor the powerful suppress the truth. Corporate America deals in persuasion not truth but since we at the HASB didn't owe any allegiance to Corporate America we were truly free to tell that the Emperor wore no clothes. It always makes a difference who sponsors an organization and members and the community were our only sponsors.
Originally the Haight Ashbury Switchboard wasn't formed to seek the truth but rather to allot services, goods, and information to hippies who were dropping out and tuning in during the '67 Summer of Love. The HASB was to crash-pads and free concerts in the park what the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic was to VD and bad acid (that is, a resource for help). It wasn't until after the Love Children processed this social experiment out of existence that we evolved our higher level of rhetoric and action. The Switchboard's format as it existed from 1970 to 1986 was interpreted as socialistic, communistic, and anarchistic. I suppose it took elements from each though I always viewed our format as highly democratic. Truth was its actual product and altruism it's by-product.
The members incorporated in 1970 and set up a board of directors and officers who ratified our policies. We were to be non-affiliated with any political cause or organization and independent of any region though our name implied a neighborhood connection. We managed for sixteen years to run an office and drop-in center in the Haight Ashbury even as we made referrals to resources throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area. It was fair to say that for the first ten years after our incorporation nearly 90% of our members lived in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood and since it was their community, the volunteer staff declined to change the organization's name.
Our goal was an all volunteer staff operating a 24 hour a day storefront office on the commercial strip of Haight Street. We achieved this goal for a number of years at 1797 Haight Street, a corner storefront in a declining yet beautiful Victorian building.
The physical setup at the HASB consisted of a makeshift drop-in center with benches in the very front of the store. The store front was decorated like home with planters where coleus and ivy grew along the boarders of the windows among macrame valances and macrame lampshades. Our shop windows were filled with free clothes, or 'freeboxes' as they were known then, where people from all over would drop off out-dated used clothes in good condition. If a traveler were out of clean pants or needed a warm coat he could take what he needed from the freebox. Our sign for donations and our phone number also hung in the window. The drop-in center was divided from the general public by a waist-high partition behind which were the desks where the staff manned the phones or made face-to-face contact with the clients. Rather than painting it as some sort of psychedelic palace, we painted the interior in drab grays and blues, probably because that was the surplus paint we had. It added a certain utilitarian atmosphere to the place. The obligatory 'head' posters were tacked up but most of the wall space was covered with relevant information and signs. At ceiling level hung an old wood framed black Greyhound arrival/departure board covered in red letters listing categories of the most frequently requested numbers for easy reference to staff and clients. A wall sized partition that closed off the staff mailbox room/ conference room sat behind the staff area. Finally behind this was Marty's small cubicle office known then as the Human Resource Development department (HRD) where clients would find information about jobs bypassing the requirement to go downtown to Bush Street for this state agency.
The Switchboard was a funky place with every feature incongruously added yet it appeared quaint as in a club house reflecting the character of its members. I recall its design and atmosphere as a proud statement of freedom, justice, and independence from the System .
At 10PM the drop-in would close and volunteers would go in the conference room to spend the night running our phone referral service. Volunteers counseled many a lonely or desperate soul at these hours or directed them to 'rap-lines' or even to Suicide Prevention. We also made some money to pay our phone bill by acting as the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics after-hours answering service.
I worked as a volunteer staff member for twelve years yet I probably wouldn't fit the profile of the average staff member. For one thing, the longest continuous member besides me worked for seven years. The average member spent two or three years as a volunteer working two 5 hour shifts per week. After several months of training a volunteer could work as little or as much as he wished. A general rule was that if he spent too much time in his first months at the HASB, he would burn out and quit soon. The vice-president often acted as personnel manager and advised members who were unwisely scheduled to work with a greater variety of staff on various shifts.
For years I'd work only one shift per week but in the beginning I'd put in ten to fifteen hours a week like most members. Since the members weren't getting paid many had to work jobs and could spare only the one or two shifts. In fact a criteria for membership was that you had to have your 'Survival Trip' (financial) together. This simply meant that every staff had to have an income, legitimate or otherwise, so that he wouldn't suck up the resources, like jobs, that came through the Switchboard earmarked for clients. Many staff members collected S.S.I. or welfare while others were self-employed. Along with his own financial resources, we required a volunteer to have a fairly steady living arrangement so that he wouldn't but a burden on the Switchboard by trying to work all the graveyard shifts for a place to crash.
So the average profile for a staff member was someone who had split from the mainstream and would support the counter-culture community. The average age was around 25 and the majority of the members were white. Most were middle class or lower middle class. Occasionally an affluent member who had made his money off of the contraband of the hippies wished to repay those who were supporting the community and charitably offered his time or money. Donations were after all tax deductible. We got a few college students who worked their internship as a volunteer and even the Order of Saint Francis sent us a few monks to update our files and compile our statistics. Moreover the average member was a young white person from the neighborhood who wanted to feel connected to the City and help others find information and 'truth'.
The HASB was supported entirely by donations, the bulk of which were solicited by panhandlers who received a permit authorized by the City from us, and who were paid half of the take from their panhandling.
Our claim to fame was a fold-out two page newsprint publication titled The Survival Manual. Early members around 1969-70 had published it as a center fold-out of an underground press magazine and it was originally titled The San Francisco Survival Kit. Our legacy to the homeless may be that this Survival Manual is still put out by various charity organizations today.
The purpose of the manual was to have a reference sheet to the basic necessities of life and to list some of the alternative organizations. It was divided into sections : Housing; an introduction to flats and shared living as well as crashpads and missions ; Free Showers; a resource for the crowd who lived out of vans and busses; City Blues; hotline listings for counseling or centers for rape/ crisis; Medi Cal (California's version of Medicaid); information about eligibility for Medical, references for specific medical needs; Free Eats; chart of times and organizations who provided meals; Legal; free legal advice for draft-evaders, tenants' rights, and of course those busted for drug; and other less dire categories such as Cheap Thrills that listed movie theaters like The Times in Chinatown, a theater that played a double bill for a dollar (At All Times originally part of the theater's name) and The Surf, SF's sole foreign film showcase. Other cheapo listings included the Mime Troupe's free theater, rock and roll in the park provided by The People's Ballroom, and a short list of street fairs (Union St. and Grant St. were about all).
We distributed these Survival Manuals free to all walk-in clients at our office, by mail, and our panhandlers passed them out on street corners in various neighborhoods. One year San Francisco's welfare Dept even brought several thousand! It served us as good solid public relations.
To give an accurate account of the sort of calls and questions we've handled I include these calls left on our answering machine sometime around 1984.
"Detlef called, eh, and I do need my money. Thank you."
"Hi, I can't tell whether you do any other business besides that, you used to be a big deal at the Haight Ashbury Switchboard. Um, I called this other number for the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic but they seem to be only doing medical stuff. My name is Ed and I'm trying to get in touch with some people at the Rainbow Gathering that were up there doing medical stuff 'cause I got the referral and I don't think I've got the referral anymore. So if you know of anybody that was working in the M.A.S.H. tent in San Francisco please leave a message on my answering machine. Anybody who was associated with it-any doctors or nurses or anybody who was associated with it that might know who worked in the M.A.S.H. tent. Thanks a lot. Bye."
"My name is Jenny and I wish to reach someone about the Haight Street Fair. I have Stephen Stills who wants to perform at your festival tomorrow, and I need some logistic information."
"My name is Gwendolyn Groves and I'm calling concerning a job. Does anybody know where I can get one?"
"This is Gwendolyn again. I'm calling concerning a ride down to Salvation Army. They're at 16th and Valencia. I need a ride. Thank you."
"Cynthia offers a ride to Boston."
"Hey is there anyone there? Is this only a machine? Robot to robot, this is outer-space calling. Guess I'll have to make contact in person. Watch for the spaceship that will be landing right on the corner. Bye-beep."
"We thought you might need bands for people who are giving benefits. This is Patty from the Space Kats."
"Scott from the National March office calling. We are wondering if anyone from your organization plans on having a contingency-in- deed for the march from the Castro to the Moscone Center?"
"This is Gary. I'm leaving today for the Rainbow Gathering so if anyone needs a last minute ride I'm leaving about one or as close as I can get."
"We aren't supposed to take discount cards in the panhandling project. Damien is our street solicitations coordinator and he isn't here right now nor is the Memo book out front so I can't look this one up but I have a vague memory of problems with this."
"Everything was cool and everything, the guy told us to come back between six and nine, and Paris gave us $1.20 a piece so we could go both ways. We got back here at 8:30 and nobody was here. But other than that we were pretty cool. If you get Paris on the line he will cover us as far as being trustworthy and everything."
"Yes but Damien is in charge of that project. Damien is the one who would make a decision. You're Austin? I'd hate to send you out now without knowing what's up."
The Haight Ashbury Switchboard served its community long after the Seventies but it actually dwindled in service and influence by 1980 when it again was forced to move, this time further down Haight Street past the commercial strip. Our office had to share a second floor flat with a residence in back. It was at this time that most of the original staff quit having felt the winds of change. We rarely had graveyard shifts filled and our members went from a hundred to a handful. The values in the community had shifted as the real-estate values skyrocketed. We found ourselves struggling to pay the enormous rents and our members had to work longer hour at paying jobs to pay their own rents, thus having less time to donate. Resources we had to offer such as three nights free housing (our famous crashing program), jobs, and ride line, disappeared. Poverty became a rule with our clients and increasingly we served street people (soon to call themselves homeless) instead of the transient youth searching for a niche or a ride out of town. Collectivist idealism would surrender to materialist greed and Reagan would be president. But while it lasted the HASB was the closest answer I've seen to a Utopian democracy serving the highest truth: Information is power and people thrive when it is freely shared.
Thanks to the folks who made the H.A.S.B. possible at 1797 Haight, 1921 Hayes St. near Ashbury, and 1539 Haight St.
Apple, Linda Birckenbaum, David Black, Dave Brigode, Bruce Lilly, Tim Redmond, Bunnie Markkanen, Vickie, Christina, Maury Villa, Rick Clayton, Joss White, Danny, Clark Wiekert, Michael David, Carol Yadon, Leigh Davidson, Michael Zimmerman, Devon, Diane, Steve DaMonte, Peter Field, Don French, Ben Miller, Jane Geren, Kathy Gilheny, Giselle, Mary Griffin, Liz Gross, Michael Hanrahan, Richard Hookslam, Tom Horn, Jasin Sinelli, Joni Hockert, Brother Justus, Brother Robert, Katie Colino, Larry, Leslie, Michael Lochner, Debbie Low, Ann Luttrell, Milton Marks Jr., Carol Marks, Robert (Marty) Martin, Mary, Matt Parkhouse, Michael Mayakis, Rick McNern, Connie Potts, Larry Purdim, Patty Purple, Rusty, Sandy, Sarah Fox Gordon, Jimmy Siegal, Leo Sherwood (HASB Lawyer), David Sierra, Brian Smith, Annette Franks, Barbara Super, Susan, Ted, Karen Walker, Damien Murphy, Marcella La Fever, Lannie Piper, Terry Trachtenburg, and any others who have slipped our minds over the years.For more Information about HASB eMail Paris at:
Richard_Kaderli@RedwoodFN.org ( Paris )
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