Our first drop for Spring 20 is our homage to Ken Kesey, the merry pranksters and the novel by Tom Wolfe that tells the story of that pivotal point in the history of counter culture. The print on this drop is a re-imaging of a poster for an Acid Test that took place on 6th December 1965 in San José, all garments in this drop are individually dyed and are therefore unique.

You can check them out here.

If your not familiar with the story then get yourself a copy of the book from you local bookshop or watch some of the various You Tube footage of the period or if you're too lazy to do that here's the bare bones of the story...

You can make a case that every subsequent youth culture movement is influenced by or a reaction to this heady 60's Californian scene.

Kesey took part in CIA drug trials with LCD while working on his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Kesey and a group of close friends started holding parties called 'Acid Tests' at his home in La Honda California. A band of close followers formed calling themselves the Merry Pranksters. These Acid Test’s involved mass usage of LSD and brought music (the Grateful Dead ), strobe lights and fluorescent paint together for the first time. Basically the ground Zero for everything psychedelic. The parties were described in some of Ginsberg's poems and served as the basis for Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

The Merry Pranksters took a cross-country trip in a school bus nicknamed Furthur to experience America on Acid. In New York Kesey met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who then turned them on to Timothy Leary all leading figures from the Beat Generation and the evolving hippy scene. On return to California the Pranksters held Acid Tests around the San Francisco Bay Area from 1965 to 1966 at which LSD was mixed with Kool-aid and shared free. The hippie counter culture scene spread to the mainstream and shook the establishment. As a result LSD was made illegal in California on October 6, 1966.

Turn on, Tune in, Drop out...