(2 of 2)
Kaleidoscopes & Mini Marvels. In Cleveland, there is another Headquarters shop, this one located in the town's beat and offbeat section on Euclid Avenue, just east of the Western Reserve campus. Owner Stan Heilburn considers his store "a propaganda agency for LSD users, to counter the effects of a bad press." The propaganda works—at least in Ohio: 200 to 300 people press in on weekday nights; weekends, up to a thousand customers clamor for medium-priced trivia, including Yugoslavian pipes ($3.00), and off-beat books and records. "We sell a lot of things that are generally available," concedes Heilburn. But the psychedelic label adds a commercial gloss. "It puts things in a new light. This is what makes these places go."
In Manhattan, the light goes on at the Head Shop, a hole-in-the-wall Lower East Side shop opened last year by Jeff Click, 25, and Ben Schawinsky, 27, who wanted "to do something legal and be in touch with the beautiful people." Their initial $500 investment turned into a $3,000 a week bonanza, so last October they opened a Greenwich Village branch. Both shops keep psychedelic hours (2 p.m. to 10 p.m.), sell up to 5,000 packs of cigarette paper a month, count as regular customers Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and by now, say the owners, "we've reached the Madison Avenue crowd." Among their best-selling items: Japanese colored balls, kaleidoscopes, avocado hand cream, Mini Marvels (stamp-size comic books) and diffraction disks—small metallic decorations to be worn on the middle of the forehead.
Vicarious & Tantalizing. The key to the cross-country psychedelic-accessory explosion probably lies not in how many items can be used by the trip taker but in how few. The dedicated drug user may have some use for the paraphernalia. But many shoppers who intend trying nothing stronger than a Bloody Mary find that the clashing, primary-colored psychedelic fabrics, the bold, wobbly colors of posters advertising Light Shows and the glittering kaleidoscopes and prism glasses offer them a vicarious if tantalizing hint of what the authentic acidhead sees when he is away on a trip.
Others, like Jackie Kennedy, who bought a set of psychedelic-colored plastic boxes, do so just because the shape and shade of the things appeal to them. And still others—maybe the majority—buy conversation pieces that they can add to their collection of comic books and Humphrey Bogart posters, reducing the whole march toward mind expansion to a close-order drill on the old campground.