PROLOGUE

How were we going to get interviews with “respectables”: community leaders and prominent businessmen? I became increasingly concerned with this question as the research project moved into high gear. Most of our interviews had been conducted with young people, so-called hippies, and working-class people; we had also spoken with a smattering of businessmen, but none who could be considered prominent or public people. We were short on “responsible,” “upstanding” American citizens.

Matters were complicated by the composition of our staff: Politically it leaned considerably leftward and by respectable standards we were a scruffy-looking lot. This included the principal investigator, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, a semi-long-haired person who sported a full beard. I thought we lived up to respectable people's stereotypes – or nightmares – of typical sociological researchers, and suspected that our chances of getting interviews with the local prominenti were quite low. Even if we were able to interview them, the exchanges would be guarded, the discussions less than candid.

For a while I toyed with the idea of someone cutting his hair or shaving his beard, but that seemed like too much to ask. I was unwilling to make that sacrifice and it hardly seemed fair to ask it of someone else. Besides which, I reasoned, the transformation would be transparent; the lack of authenticity would be obvious to both participants and the interview would suffer accordingly.