Dana Spiardi

A Moonage Daydream – How Apollo 11 Inspired Bowie and Zowie’s Lunar Love

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Forty-five years ago this month I was eating Pillsbury Space Food Sticks, building my own mini lunar module from a kit, and drinking Tang — the beverage of astronauts! Like the rest of the world, I was caught up in Apollo 11 moon-landing mania, as Neil Armstrong took that first giant step on July 20, … Read more

Roll Up, Roll Up — for the Greyhound Bus Hippyland Tour!

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So, you’re trippin’ with your blue-jean baby down a marijuana-scented street, wearing your tie-dyed shirt, love beads and huaraches, when you hear an announcement blaring from a packed tour bus: “Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you look to your left you’ll see a hairy hippie passed out in front of the Phật Phúc Noodle Bar. … Read more

David Peel: The Dope-Smokin’ Pope of the New York City Hippies

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Hello, ma’am. I’m working to clean up the neighborhood from parasites. Do you mind if I take a quick look around your house? I’m afraid you may have hippies. If you’re familiar with the darkly funny animated series “South Park,” you know there’s nothing that tubby 9-year-old Eric Cartman hates more than hippies. In the 2005 … Read more

And Your Liverbirds Can Sing: The Electric Girls Known as The Female Beatles

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“Girls with guitars? That’ll never work,” John Lennon was rumored to have once said. Little did he know that four fab femmes had been wielding electric guitars in his very own hometown of Liverpool, several years before he and his fellow Beatles took over the world. They named themselves The Liverbirds, for the fictitious Liver … Read more