Santa Fe city politics in 1970 took an interesting turn, much of it driven by the strong personal popularity of the city's Mayor George Gonzales. In 1970, Gonzales, gifted with a wide smile, a gorgeous radio voice and about a million relatives, was favored for a second term as Mayor.
The chief issue in the mayor's race turned out to be Mayor George Gonzales' brother in law, Johnny Vigil. Vigil, a longtime Santa Fe political wheeler and dealer, operated the infamous Pussy Cat Lounge, Santa Fe's only topless club on the main entry street to the Bellamah subdivision. And questions were raised as to how such a business could come to operate in a residential area.
The Mayor's race wasn't really close and Mayor Gonzales coasted to an easy victory, which he took as a mandate. Within weeks of his re-election, Gonzales fired and replaced the City Manager, the City Treasurer, the City Attorney, the head of the Model Cities program and the Police Chief. Throughout the rest of the year, even more heads rolled – all replaced by the Mayor's cronies.
When the Mayor wasn't hiring and firing, he was hounding hippies. To be sure, hippies were becoming a serious social problem. Our neighbors to the north, the village of Taos, appealed to state officials to help them cope with an invasion of hippies. The hippies were abusing the food stamp and welfare programs in the county and were rumored to be planning a rock music festival. Labeled “delinquent transients” by Taos officials, the hippies indulged in “strange activities, illegal narcotics kicks, violation of human decency, immoral sex behavior and flaunting of the rules of health and sanitation.”
Just as an interesting fact, the 1970 US census counted 3,314 hippies in NM, about 540 living in Santa Fe. Contemporary news articles do not explain how that category was defined.
If you wanted to find a hippie in Santa Fe, there were two good places to look. One was the Mt. Ararat Coffee House on Water Street, run by David Davies and Lisa Gilkyson. Music by the Family Lotus Band, lots of incense and occasional classes in Sufi. The other hippie hot spot was the Free Church Community Center on Old Santa Fe Trail, run by a catholic priest, named George Hurd. The Center offered food and shelter to transients, as many hippies were and so the Center attracted exactly the kind of people the Mayor did not want in the City. Using a variety city agencies, the Mayor targeted the Center for extinction.
In June, for example, the Mayor sent the fire inspector to the Center. Forewarned, the Center's lawyer staged a public refusal of entry so the Mayor went to court to force an inspection. Eventually, enough violations were discovered at the Center to inspire the landlord to end the Center's lease, despite petitions by local social welfare agencies to keep the Center open.
The Mayor counted the closing of the Center as a major success of his administration. The Mayor's zeal in this 1970 drive likely explains why there are no hippies in Santa Fe today.
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