Here’s another post from guest blogger, Brooklyn Beat, about the summer of love in Brooklyn.

I have other memories of Windsor Terrace in the early 60s, when the
10th Avenue Boys still ruled that area, I guess those were the days
before peace and love dared to show its face, when it was more West
Side Story than Woodstock..

I recall when I was 8 or 9, my  sister
Mackey (four years older than I at the time) came home crying from some
verbal assault from the jooches who hung out on 10th Avenue…

I was
still fearless then and ran down to the corner to unleash my own verbal
assault of swear and curse words on them..I think the 10th avenue boys
were a little surprised at my the verbal sally issuing from the mouth
of this 9 year old, red headed scholarly altar boy with plastic – coke bottle glasses, and for a few years after that referred
to me as "Red Savage"; which, while it wasn’t an initiation into the
gang, was my own personal badge of honor that I could wear proudly on
my way to the library..

One other thing I recall from Windsor Terrace and the hippie era proper
was the brief appearance of what in the olden days of the 60s was known
as a "Head Shop".. selling hippie paraphernalia, Hendrix posters,
rolling papers, etc…Sort of like Funky Monkey that opened briefly in
Park Slope on 7th avenue but has now itself entered the ages.

Anyway,
while today the shop would be considered a purveyor of hip cultural
items, and welcomed as an entrepreneurial addition to the slow
growth of 9th avenue/PPW,  back then it was considered the equivalent
of a crack house, no matter how relatively innocuous the crap that it
sold (well, I guess rolling papers were a red flag). But more than
this, the entrepreneurs had the total rocks and temerity to open it on
the corner of PPW and Prospect Avenue, maybe one or two shops from the
corner, and DIRECTLY OPPOSITE THE MISSION, i.e., Holy Name Church..

Tune in tomorrow for more Summer of Love in Brooklyn by Brooklyn Beat.

BIO: BB resides deep in the heart of Brooklyn in Fiske Terrace with
his wife and four kids (ages 12-19) and a voracious Corgi. When not up
to his elbows as a manager/analyst/writer in organizational realms, BB
reflects on life’s mysteries, and other issues as befits a
superannuated existencialista, and attempts to give expression to them
in his writing, blogging, illustration, and painting.