アレックスストリーターさんのインスタグラム写真 - (アレックスストリーターInstagram)「“I was a young man attending the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1966. It was the waning years of an elitist education for a ruling class of arrogant little shits, just before LSD brightened up the leafy campuses… When the football team beat up the first small group of Peace Protesters, I questioned how this was a place to learn anything of value and left. I hitchhiked across the country, landing in the perfumed palm groves of San Francisco, at the time still a forgotten backwater gold rush town. Settling into the rather dodgy Tenderloin district, I found work as a housekeeper and got my first tattoo: a $7 dollar rose inked by the famous Lyle Tuttle, later to be recognized as the father of modern tattooing. I briefly returned to the East Coast to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, where I spent a semester before politely “being asked to leave” during a cultural purge attempted by the administration. Anyone visibly counter-culture was expelled, so I hopped on my motorcycle and made my way back to my first love San Francisco. I began selling art on sidewalk blanket on Haight Street. There I sold my first pieces of “jewelry”, bits of redwood collected from the forest floor strung on a leather chord. On them I painted various motifs, including the first iteration of my “Flying Heart”, inspired by the wings given to pilots. 5 years later, the Flying Heart would become my very first carving upon my return to New York City. In 1968, I was picked up on the side of the road by a black hearse driven by “The Diggers”, a group of activists who brought me to live in their commune on Frederick Street. The Diggers had originated the idea of “Street Theatre”, staging free concerts and guerilla-stye events such as the “Death of Money”, in which they paraded down Haight Street with a coffin full of fake bills. Ironically, the leaders made their living as paid "government researchers” - taking acid and sending their recorded sessions to the CIA. Notorious characters such as Kenneth Anger and the first Hell’s Angels made regular appearances. After the Summer of Love, I could feel things beginning to turn dark. The music stopped playing, and I stopped dancing.”」5月18日 0時28分