Barry Smith a founder of the radical hippie movement and the collective of Canyon California outside San Francisco is interviewed about the history of the counterculture community by "The Spaceman" of Takilma FM on Friday March 14, 2014 at 9 pm Pacific.
Takilma, Oregon -- This is a rare interview of Barry Smith the counterculture icon via Google Hangouts and Independent Radio live from the Takilma Oregon commune country. He has a lifetime of stories to tell. Insights and factual history about the inception of the hippie movement in the Bay Area. He tells of the experiences of his "brothers and sisters" while founding "Canyon Community" and what has transpired since.
It was in 1964 that Barry put an ad in The Berkeley Burb advertising his intention of getting people together and starting a community of some sort. The story of Canyon is just a story of one small community and how it carved out a place in a spot that was as wilderness amid urban sprawl a short distance from San Francisco.
Kept a near secret by its inhabitants in the hills beyond Berkeley the inhabitants just do not consider themselves members of the predominate culture preferring to live separate from society. Most from the surrounding city have never heard of it. For one thing there were either no signs or as some stories have been told, secretive residents would turn them the wrong way to lead the curious away.
Barry Smith and others have spoke about what it's like to live there. Smith reflected that: "Probably when people start coming out here on the BART trains, looking for a place to live, little valleys like this one aren't gonna be here anymore ... They're not really making any provision for any open land at all. And by the time it's too late, people are gonna realize that the very reasons for why they moved out to suburbia in the first place are gone."
Canyon has always had a colorful history. Once a vast redwood forest loggers came to harvest the giant trees. At that time Canyon was a wilderness camp of saloons and houses of prostitution. The trees were used to build the city of San Francisco.
Beginning at the end of the 1960`s Canyon became a place to get away from the city for the youth of the back to the land movement. Canyon attracted those who preferred to drop the ways of conventional society.The residents working together to maintain their own roads and water systems. They built their own alternative school and Post Office and most notably Barry Smith and his comrades created the Municipal Utility District becoming known as "The Water Brothers" in order to bring fresh running water to the people of the area.
Hear the story of Canyon City and the counterculture from Barry himself. If you are here at a later date the Hangout is recorded so you are welcome to view it anytime.
This interview was broadcast live from the small alternative community of Takilma Oregon by Takilma FM`s Leo Goodman "The Spaceman" at Hope Mountain Radio. Ckick on the link and visit the Facebook page.
To read more check out the book below: Canyon, The story of the Last Rustic Community in Metropolitan America
Originally published in 1972, Canyon recounts the struggle for survival, against powerful and determined opposition, of a counter-cultural community tucked in a redwood canyon less than a mile from the city of Oakland, California. A community of individuals united by the idea of living complementary to nature rather than subduing it, the men and women of Canyon developed strategies of community organization, resistance, management of resources and political moxie-some foolish, some prescient---that allowed the community to survive, barely, then. And provide what The New York Times termed "A blueprint for meeting nature half-way." Now, is a time of limits---on oil, water,, land, clean air, money---Canyon offers a working model against which larger culture can measure its own