Yippie! — 1968 Grand Central Station [Handbill]

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Yippie! -- 1968 Grand Central Station [Handbill]

$350.00
Yippie! -- 1968 Grand Central Station [Handbill]
Yippie! -- 1968 Grand Central Station [Handbill]

Home / Shop

Yippie! -- 1968 Grand Central Station [Handbill]

$350.00
Model Number: HB00178
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Manufacturer: Bynx LLC
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  • Description

New York: Original flyer announcing a “Yippie! Yippie! Yippie! Yip-In in Grand Central Station” at midnight, March 22 (1968). 8 1/2" x 11". VERY GOOD; Folded in eighths, with wear from handling. RARE.

The handbill promotes the event as “a Spring Mating Service Celebrating the Equinox, a Back-Scratching Party, a Roller-Skating Rink, a Theatre... with You, Performer and Audience. Get Acquainted with Other Yippies Now, For Other Yiptivities, and Chicago Y.I.P. Festival this Summer.” Far from being a celebration, the event resulted in more than 50 arrests in what Alan Levine described to the Village Voice as “the most extraordinary display of unprovoked police brutality I’ve seen outside of Mississippi”. In “Moving Through Here”, Village Voice staff writer Don McNeill describes how “the crowd stirred... for almost an hour, while the terminal continued to fill”, but then “shortly before one o’clock, kids began to climb to the roof of the information booth in the center of the terminal, where they began to lead the chants, and one militant climbed to the pinnacle of the information booth, striking a ‘Workers Arise!’ pose, his fist raised in the air, and unfurled a banner which read, vertically, ‘UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHERFUCKER!’. Two cherry bombs exploded... Now the balconies were packed, and the cops were quivering in formation in the 42nd street entrance” (pp.225/226). The police charged, beating both demonstrators and members of the press with their nightsticks, one of them a bruised and bloodied McNeill himself. The following morning Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner flew to Chicago to plan their activities during the Democratic National Convention, leaving behind the scenes of police violence that McNeill concluded “somehow... seemed to be a prophecy of Chicago” (p.230).