The Yippies Are Here! Plans for a Grand Central Party, Which Will Go Horribly Wrong

Scenes
by Howard Smith

LAST YEAR the name of the game was the "Be-In," this year it looks like "Yip-In." At midnight on Friday, March 22, the yippies...will have a Yip-In in Grand Central Station. At least a thousand flowered, belled, beaded, and body-painted people are expected. Smart yippies will bring blankets and pillows to sit on. If you want to wear a costume but don't own one, you can get one free at the Free School, 20 East 14th Street.

There are 25 entrances into Grand Central, so if you find one blocked or closed, the yippies advise to keep trying.

Yipping continues the following week at the Electric Circus, where for a price, head yippies promise Dave Van Ronk, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Taj Mahal, Judy Collins, the United States of America, and mystery guests. There will also be the Pink Berets, a yippie chorale trained by Ed Sanders singing the yippie anthem, "Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball." This Three-Ring Yippie will run March 26, 27, and 28.

All this activity is to raise money and attract publicity for the yippies' August demonstration in Chicago at what they affectionately call the Democratic Death Convention.

...

BECAUSE IT MAKES no attempt at convincing the heterosexual to accept the homosexual, Hymnal, a new monthly magazine, goes right to the real problems and issues of the gay life. Published by the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, the first issue deals with such things as Gay Power and the bad results of Mafia control of gay bars. It gives a checklist of ways to spot such a bar, and actually names names. The whole is sharp and readable, and not without humor. Under gaystrology, "However, both Toscanini and Picasso had Mars in Cancer and though extremely irritable they were not homosexual." Subscriptions are $4 a year from Hymnal, c/o Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, 291 Mercer Street, New York City 10003.

[Each weekday morning, we post an excerpt from another issue of the Voice, going in order from our oldest archives. Visit our Clip Job archive page to see excerpts back to 1956.]