Arthur is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ’66 through ’67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.
Most of the documents that we are presenting here are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “ComCo.” Anderson and Hayward were both Diggers, and ComCo was pledged to publish anything that the Diggers gave them to print. Diggers documents were almost never signed by individual Diggers. Sometimes they are the product of a single individual; sometimes they are a collaboration; sometimes they are summaries of discussions between one of more Diggers.
This particular scan is from a copy of the broadsheet that Chester had mailed to a friend, explaining what he was up to in San Francisco, having recently moved there from New York. That’s Chester’s handwriting near the top and the right: “This I didn’t write but it explains a lot.”
This sheet was distributed in late January, 1967 along the Haight on telephone polls, walls, and in windows, like all ComCo broadsides. Click on the image below to see it at full-size…
