These personal ads from the 1960s show hippies hot to trot and leftists looking for love
The readers of ‘The Berkeley Barb’ lookin’ for some peace (a piece?)
For those seeking to understand the emotional landscape of Berkeley in the late 1960s, The Berkeley Barb’s classified section is the place to start. The Barb was perhaps the country’s most radical newspaper, calling for protests of the Vietnam War, civil rights sit-ins, and takeovers of public spaces. But the classified section conjures something distinctly more intimate: daily life in a culture on the brink of a seismic revolution, with all the ambivalence and frenzy that entails. People were searching for everything from orgies to marriage, bikes to kazoos, and pen pals to swinging partners. In many ways, it is exactly what you might expect from the height of hippiedom: Druid meetups, invitations to nudist beaches, calls for “orgiastic ritualists,” and young women requesting donations to help pay their rent. But The Barb’s classifieds also capture the universality of people blindly reaching out, hoping for connection.
When it came to advertising for sex and relationships, it was mostly men on the prowl, and many appear high, quite literally, on the atmosphere of sexual liberation:
But for others, the atmosphere of heady sex, where everyone seemed to be getting some but them, only heightened their loneliness:
Even in the most radical town in America, some had something squarer in mind (though why they chose the avowedly leftist Barb — which featured pictures of orgies and toddlers smoking joints — as their venue is puzzling):
Not everything in The Barb’s classified section has to do with sex. A number of the ads are from the parents of runaway flower children, who just want their kids to call home:
And of course, oddities and strange circumstances abounded:
Berkeley, what a town!
