Evolution of tie-dye and Summer of Love

Summer of Love veteran Bob Mateo says he was disappointed, upon visiting the exhibition at the de Young Museum, to find tie-dye scarce. “I noticed that the exhibition had not one photograph nor video showing anyone wearing anything tie-dyed.”

Curator Jill D’Alessandro responds that there is one tie-dye tank top (worn under a purple suede outfit) in the show, and two wall hangings. “Long and short,” she writes, “people started playing with tie-dye mid-’60s. Diggers taught it in their store in 1967.” At first, it was used mostly for home furnishings.

“It was really at Woodstock in 1969 where it gained mass appeal and was as popular in mainstream fashion as it was in the counterculture,” she adds.

Early tie-dye was crude, said the curator, who “would have liked to include some crushed velvet tie-dye in the show, but never found a piece that I felt was museum quality.”

For summertime fun, Vegansaurus is inviting revelers to travel to Ireland, where “The vegan food scene is exploding . ... We’ll be doing all sorts of fun, chill and amazing things like traipsing through castles, low-key hanging with donkeys at a donkey sanctuary, and foraging and cooking a meal with yummy plant geniuses.” (I do think that’s a typo and they meant “genuses” — but maybe it takes a vegan to appreciate the genius in a genus.)

At Point Isabel, the waterfront dog park of El Cerrito, Nina Shoehalter watched while a woman admired a shaggy dog being walked by an elderly gentleman. Looking proud, he beamed, she said, and told his dog, “Show us your trick, Pixie. Shed!”

And Adda Dada was in line at the post office on 20th Avenue in San Francisco, when he overheard a woman he described as “panicked”: “I need to mail this as fast as possible! It’s the dog’s birthday!”

Event designer/artist Robert Fountain threw a luxurious party at Filoli the other day to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his business. The party was catered by Taste, and everything was perfect, I am told. Fountain’s a man of great taste, essential, of course, to his success.

In order to pay party tribute to his beloved French bulldogs, Doris and Duke, he had his cake baker, Beth Ann Goldberg of Studio Cakes in Menlo Park, create life-size cake replicas of the dogs. “Audible gasps were heard,” says an eyewitness, “when Robert cut into Doris, revealing her red velvet insides.”

A report from Native Son Carl Nolte about the Sunday, May 7, party at Red’s Java House to honor Tom McGarvey, the original Red in the joint’s name, on his 90th birthday. McGarvey, whose hair is white nowadays, “is one of the last users of the old Potrero Hill accent,” which Nolte says is “part of S.F. subculture. It’s Potrera Hill, ya know, and doan forget it, kid.”

Pride of the Sunset boxer Irish Pat Lawler attended, as did many other old-timers, says Nolte. “Makes you realize that the old city is fading away faster than the smile on a Cheshire cat’s puss.”