Jimi Hendrix
and the Summer of Love
Virginia Castlen Vertiz
Virginia Castlen Vertiz (1967)
T
here was magic in having turned eighteen just prior to the Summer of Love, especially since we lived less than three miles from Georgetown and nearby Dupont Circle.
New friends included hippies traveling back and forth from Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, local band members playing in favorite clubs, and famous musicians visiting Washington. Everyone conversed and mingled before and after concerts. Clothing styles were not far behind those of the Mod subculture that had begun in London and spread throughout the United Kingdom in the midsixties. Life in the fifties and early sixties had been black and white. Valedictorian in kindergarten, my grades slid throughout public school and early college. After the devastating departure of my greatest advocate, my father, just after my fifteenth birthday, my mother purchased a color television. The appearance of The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show jettisoned me from Beatnik leanings to a kaleidoscope of other possibilities. 31
