Ever see the movie "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World?" My favorite character is the lifeguard from California. You first see him dancing with his beatnik girlfriend in his beach pad. That movie was made in 1962, right before the hippies arrived on the scene. But you can recognize their precursers in those beach party beatniks. I think a lot of hippie culture actually started around Newport Beach with the original surfer scene. A lot of the surfers were really beatniks who had basically dropped out of society to smoke pot and ride waves. They had a lot of religious experiences doing that and formed some of the first communes by sharing cheap houses near the beach and turning them into surfer crash pads. John Griggs moved to Laguna Beach shortly after he dropped acid for the first time. He created "The Brotherhood of Eternal Love," which became the biggest LSD, marijuana and hash smuggling operation in North America for a few years.
 
The Feds knew about the Brotherhood, but it took them years to penetrate the organization because they were so tight. They weren't just a smuggling organization, they were a religious movement. Much of what you see today at Rainbow Family Gatherings looks a lot like what was going on around Griggs at Laguna. Since Griggs remains relatively unknown, it's only right that we try to raise his profile and celebrate his accomplishments at the Cannabis Cup. Unfortunately, he died in 1969, when the Brotherhood was still at its height. The organization never really fully recovered from losing its founder and leader. There's a great book on the Brotherhood recently published titled "Orange Sunshine" by Nick Schou.