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San Francisco counterculture legend behind bell-bottoms craze dies at 84 (Peggy Caserta)
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/peggy-caserta-obituary-sf-bell-bottom-jeans-19976707.php
At the turn of the mid-1960s, people knew they had landed at ground zero of an evolving San Francisco if they fell down the right rabbit hole and somehow tumbled inside Mnasidika.
The curiously named Haight Street boutique sat on the ground floor of a three-story building with an attic about 40 feet from the corner of Ashbury. The gentle strums from amateur musicians fiddling with their guitars on the sidewalk floated beneath the striped awning entryway. Visitors were instantly met with rows and rows of leather jackets, custom-dyed sweatshirts fit for the fog, and neatly folded pairs of jeans that couldn’t be found anywhere else — only then, everyone called them Levi’s. But the garments weren’t all they were there for.
Handpainted swirls of black, white and purple cloaked the walls, inducing patrons into a psychedelic trance if the tabs of LSD manufactured by Owsley Stanley — and sold at the cash register — didn’t do the job for them. Wes Wilson posters tacked up on light posts around the city advertised the shop as one of the only spots to buy tickets for early shows at the Fillmore and the Avalon, drawing lines that spilled into the street.
Then there was the long-haired woman with a Southern lilt behind the counter who was the brainchild of it all, opening up the shop when she was just 24 years old. Her name was Peggy Caserta, and though she didn’t know it yet, her store would change the fabric of San Francisco forever.
The curiously named Haight Street boutique sat on the ground floor of a three-story building with an attic about 40 feet from the corner of Ashbury. The gentle strums from amateur musicians fiddling with their guitars on the sidewalk floated beneath the striped awning entryway. Visitors were instantly met with rows and rows of leather jackets, custom-dyed sweatshirts fit for the fog, and neatly folded pairs of jeans that couldn’t be found anywhere else — only then, everyone called them Levi’s. But the garments weren’t all they were there for.
Handpainted swirls of black, white and purple cloaked the walls, inducing patrons into a psychedelic trance if the tabs of LSD manufactured by Owsley Stanley — and sold at the cash register — didn’t do the job for them. Wes Wilson posters tacked up on light posts around the city advertised the shop as one of the only spots to buy tickets for early shows at the Fillmore and the Avalon, drawing lines that spilled into the street.
Then there was the long-haired woman with a Southern lilt behind the counter who was the brainchild of it all, opening up the shop when she was just 24 years old. Her name was Peggy Caserta, and though she didn’t know it yet, her store would change the fabric of San Francisco forever.
Lots more at sfgate
Hell of a story.
8 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Apologies if I got it wrong. I posted up a storm today and it's getting late.
I'll delete if that's the case. 
