Allen Ginsberg Arrives on the Storefront Scene

Allen Ginsberg lived nearby on East Tenth Street.  One day he received a peculiar invitation in the mail:

Practice the transcendental sound vibration:
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.
This chanting will cleanse the dust from the mirror of the mind.

 International Society for Krishna Consciousness
Meetings at 7 A.M. daily
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7:00 P.M.
You are cordially invited to come and bring your friends.

Swamiji had asked the boys to distribute it around the neighbourhood.

One evening soon after he received the invitation, Allen Ginsberg and his roommate Peter Orlovsky arrived at the storefront in a Volkswagen minibus.  Allen had been captivated by the Hare Krishna mantra several years before when he had first encountered it at the Kumbh Mela festival in Allahabad, India, and he had been chanting it often ever since.  The devotees were impressed to see the world-famous author of Howl, and leading figure of the beat generation, enter their humble storefront.  His advocacy of free sex, marijuana and LSD, his claims of drug-induced visions of spirituality in everyday sights, his political ideas, his exploration of insanity, revolt and nakedness, and his attempts to create a harmony of likeminded souls—were all influential on the minds of American young people, especially those living on the Lower East Side.  Although by middle-class standards he was scandalous and dishevelled, he was, in his own right, a figure of worldly repute more so than anyone who had ever come to the storefront before.