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173.
Original poster announcing ‘Synanon Street Scene’, a Synanon-sponsored street fair held on Lombard Street in San Francisco, June 29-30 (1968).
58x45.5cm.
Synanon was founded as a drug rehabilitation programme in Santa Monica in 1958 by Charles Dederich Sr., a former Alcoholics Anonymous member who coined the phrase “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”, and employed a controversial therapeutic method known as the ‘Synanon Game’, a form of brainwashing attack therapy.
Following Synanon’s evolution into an experimental commune, and around the period of this street fair in June 1968, the programme changed to a “lifetime rehabilitation” programme, with the premise that drug addicts would never be well enough to return to society. Later on it renamed itself the Church of Synanon, became a ‘religion’ that attracted thousands of non-addict members, and ultimately a cult whose leaders were convicted of criminal activities, including attempted murder.
The poster’s designer, Bernard Kliban, was a locally-based Playboy magazine cartoonist who had earlier designed a poster for a fundraiser for the Straight Theatre and Newstage held at the Avalon Ballroom in March 1967 which featured Big Brother & the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), Moby Grape, the Sparrow, Country Joe & the Fish and the Grateful Dead.
Creasing and wear to upper left corner; tear to right edge, neatly tape-repaired to verso; o/w Very Good.
