By Jerry Pritikin

I witnessed a police raid at Belmont Rocks consisting of nine police cars and three 3-wheelers to arrest a blond sun-tanned young man dressed in a bikini and armed with a basket of home-made sandwiches for not having a city license to sell on public property. They hauled him off to jail. I was visiting from San Francisco and had forgotten how uncivil Chicago cops could be. I snapped these pictures.

Posted on June 9, 2008

Jerry Pritikin’s ’70s Show

By Jerry Pritikin

While many people know me as the Bleacher Preacher, very few are aware of my years that I was a “Chicagoan living in Exile” in S.F from the early 1960s until the late 1980s. In 1953, I quit high school because being or knowing someone “queer” in Chicago was taboo! I spent several years selling appliances at Marshall Field’s. When I applied for that job I was told that I had three strikes against me to start: I had quit school, I had no experience, and I was Jewish! They hired me on a straight commission in 1955, and after the third week I was making $200 to $400 a week selling fans during a heat-wave because most apartments and homes had no air conditioners.

Opening Tonight

Pritikin’s Time Capsule: A Glimpse of San Francisco in the ’70s

I arrived in San Francisco at the tail end of the beatnik era. I bought a cheap Kodak instamatic camera to send tourist-like images of the bridges, cable cars and wharfs back to friends and family. Soon, though, photographs of leftover beatniks, soon-to-be hippies, flower children and peace-mongers became my favorite photographic pastimes. I was able to see the Grateful Dead play in an upstairs, downtown gay bar with no cover charge and 25-cent beers in a bottle. To start the 1970s, I moved between the Haight-Ashbury and a lazy neighborhood called The Castro and rented a 2-bedroom house with a front and back yard on Alpine Terrace for $250 a month. I learned from a recent Google search that a 2-bedroom apartment on the same street now goes for $3,800 a month.

Posted on June 6, 2008

Chicagoetry: Black Dog In Little Hell

Royko To Pritikin: Drop Dead!

Jerry Pritikin’s ’70s Show

Chicagoetry: I Know I Am About To Be Looking Good