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PAUL KRASSNER

Larry ‘Ratso’ Sloman: EVO and Abbie Hoffman’s Occupy Wall Street

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In Larry “Ratso” Sloman’s 1998 book, “Steal This Dream: Abbie Hoffman and the Counter-Culture Revolution in America,” he recounts what happened the day Abbie Hoffman dragged him and Peter Leggieri out of the East Village Other office to witness the Yippie icon’s attack on Wall Street. Mr. Sloman was a lowly EVO intern at the time who credits the paper with giving him his start as a writer. The excerpt is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

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Anatomy of the Great Banana-Smoking Hoax of 1967

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Donovan record jacket "Mellow Yellow" copy Donovan record jacket.

Sixties survivors often snicker when reminded of the Great Banana-Peel Smoking Hoax. They remember the hours spent laboriously scraping the inside of banana peels, boiling the unappetizing residue obtained, then drying the remains in their ovens before finally rolling a joint in search of the promised high from the fictional psychoactive substance dubbed Bananadine.

Nearly a half-century later, conflicting accounts still circulate as to how the craze got started and which underground paper was first to report it. One version, often repeated by Paul Krassner, the iconic publisher of The Realist, puts the launch in the offices of The East Village Other on Avenue A. In other accounts, it starts on the West Coast. So which was it? Read more…