escapit

Ahh – the Summer of Love. I was in Seattle

Is there anything in Seattle aside from the Space Needle? The same year of the Seattle World’s Fair was the beginning of the Seattle Fringie Era. Yes what a history, let’s go back to the University District. 

Anyone familiar with Seattle’s University Way Northeast — better known affectionately among longtime locals as “The Ave” — surely knows that it’s long been one of our city’s most lively stretches of urban thoroughfare. Indeed, The Ave has been host to a cavalcade of colorful characters and anecdotes going back several decades. In the autumn of 1965, as the University of Washington welcomed a record baby-boom enrollment of some 26,000 students, The Ave, and the University District in general, became the scene of a rather amusing manufactured controversy over a certain segment of Ave regulars known alternately as “beatniks,” “fringies,” and — depending on whose opinion one was asking — other terms which were much more derisive. But no matter where you were nothing was as representative of the era as the “Hippie Love” Volkswagen Bus. The first time I got laid was in one of those buses…What can I say? I also met Jimi Hendrix, but famous people is another blog. Keep your eyes open.

Enjoy these photos!