Beatniks On Brooms

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31340, 10 April 1967, Page 13

Beatniks On Brooms

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, April 9. Squads of beatniks and “hippies” swooped on a grimy street in lower Manhattan yesterday to stage their first “sweep-in.” It attracted considerably fewer than the 10,000 who took part in a day-long, do-as-you-please “be-in” in Central Park on Easter Sunday. But several hundred, armed with brooms, hoses, mops, and

even feather dusters, descended on East Third street They began sweeping and dusting everything in sight from the Bowery—the traditional haunt of New York’s alcoholics—to the East river. The beatniks, alerted by the Greenwich Village grapevine and a call-to-brooms published in several “far-out” journals, had meant to spruce up East Seventh street, but a Sanitation Department street-cleaning truck beat them to the sweep. Switching to East Third street, they even gave passing cars a light once-over.

A company which sells household cleansers joined the act by passing out free tins and bottles of their product and soon the gutters ran white with soap suds. The exertions were just too much for some, however, especially for one youth wearing a red fez, lavender glasses, red trousers and a blue jacket, with a banana hanging on a chain around his neck. He tossed his broom on to a rubbish heap and proclaimed: “This is work, man. This is no good.”