SlapClap

(click to enlarge) (artwork courtesy Matt Maloney — mybigmuddy)

Historical Background

---

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY in 1975 violence marred the largest ever gathering of drum circle enthusiasts at Hippie Hill, inside of Golden Gate park in San Francisco, CA. It stands as the high water mark for ninja on hippie violence in the long standing embitterment between the two factions.

Event

---

Organized by a local chapter of Moonies, the event aimed to raise public awareness of the discriminatory “shirt/service” policy practiced by hundreds of truckstop diner’s in the American South and Southwest. The day began with a 15 minute group drum beat performed by an estimated 50 participants all using Ashiko drums purchased for them by an anonymous donor rumored to have been singer Pat Boone. The event was to conclude with a celebratory percussive jam led-on by Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart who had very recently rejoined the band after a several years hiatus. But mid-way through the day, during an est-inspired bongo jamboree, the event would be indelibly marked by bloodshed.

A covert team of blind assasins known only as “The Invisible Fist” revealed themselves from amid the crowd and deliberately executed 43 members of the drum circle and a local housewife who had heard the rhythms and stumbled into the park by chance. The entire spree of violence lasted only an estimated 12 minutes with none of the perpetrators apprehended.

(more…)

Related: Ninja’s vs. Hippies through history.

(click to enlarge)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY the short lived ABC family sitcom Tie-Dye Ninja made its on-air debut. The show centered around Naruto, a teenage ninja-in-training instructed by his master house to enroll in a typical American high school in suburban Connecticut in order to test his moderatness. While there he befriends the Rosepopper family and the two sides form a unique bond.

Tie-Dye Ninja debuted amid a backdrop of frequent violent outbursts between the two warring factions and suffered poor ratings as a result. It’s final episode, “The Sword of Detention,” scored the lowest Neilsen return in the history of television. The show also has the distinction of being the only network program to go unarchived. A year later, show producers reworked their format and scored a much larger success with the half-hour comedy Family Ties.

• Artwork courtesy SlapClap contributor Matt Maloney (mybigmuddy)

SlapClap was saddened today by the news that Swiss chemist Albert Hoffmann, the man who discovered the drug compound LSD, died at the age 102 on Tuesday from sword wounds. The attack took place outside his country home during a benefit concert to raise money for a Phil Lesh statue in the Swiss capitol of Bern. Hoffman and his paramour Mountain Girl were retiring to the front porch after a truncated five and a half hour set by the band New Riders of the Purple Sage when 3 ninjas jumped from Hoffman’s Terra Cotta roof using Ukemi form and pulled out Katanas attached to their Obi’s. This marks an escalation in hippie/ninja violence after a decade of peace.

Ninjas declared war on hippies in 1968 as the result of a succession of seemingly minor incidents. In 1967 a DayGlo van of Merry Pranksters crashed into a specialized weapons and tactics outpost killing two ninjas and the only North American Samurai lord. Then the following year author Tom Wolfe released his The Electric Kool-Aid Test with no mention of the ninja deaths, instead making heroes out of the van of guilty Mary Pranksters.

To this day the van accident is the only recorded killing of ninjas by hippies in the world, but since 1968 there have been 345 hippies murdered by the oniwaban in name of blood revenge … 346.