HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BILLIE HOLIDAY!

Happy 111th birthday, Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), one of the best jazz singers ever.

WOW! IT'S HOT!

For the first offering of exploitation movie posters of the year, here's a hodgepodge of nutty films, with a few I've added my own comments to. Some are crazy ridiculous and the rest are ridiculously crazy, especially the Japanese imports. Enjoy!

Barbara Steele!

Call of the Pistil (?!).

Debbie's Done Everything.

Russ Meyer's wife!

Hell in a Bottle (!).

America's first publicized transgender case!

John "Wonderland Murders" Holmes!

Visa or MasterCard?

Nuns That Bite (!).

Wake up, America!

Not many if they all look like that!

Pam Grier!

THE THIRD EYE: A NOSTALGIC REPOST

Admittedly, I often wax nostalgic here, but isn't that what this blog is mostly about--remembering all the cool stuff  and things that happened when we were monster kids? I recently came across one of the items pictured below in my desk drawer and remembered I'd blogged about it. After taking a look, I decided to re-blog it since it was first posted about 10 years ago. As a result, the text has been edited and revised and new material added. I hope you can groove to it, man.

When underground comics (or, “comix” as they were referred to so that they would be differentiated from mainstream, “establishment” superhero and “funny animal” books) were first being published by companies like Rip Off Press and Last Gasp, they were truly underground. You couldn't find them on your local drug store comic book spinner rack, nor would you see them on the outdoor newsstands of the day. With few exceptions, the only place that one could find comix were at those quaint, colorful little shoebox-sized businesses called head shops.

 

Now, a head shop was the place where hippies shopped for everything from pipes (the kind for smoking dope, not plumbing) to jewelry, paisley-print clothes and any other kind of counterculture pop paraphernalia – including underground comix.

 

So, where did I get mine? There were a few head shops around California's San Fernando Valley (yes, the same place that birthed Frank Zappa's "Valley Girl") in those halcyon days of love and bell bottoms, but the one I preferred was a tiny little converted house on Ventura Blvd. in Encino called “The Third Eye”.

The Third Eye, Encino, CA ca 1968.

Co-owner Rick Redus behind the counter.

When my sister wasn’t letting me tag along with her when she stopped to buy papers (and I don’t mean the ones with newsprint on them), I would make the five-mile-or-so trek on my bike (I was a couple of years away from driving). After dutifully chaining up I would go inside and wonder at the fantasy freak-land provided by the very nice Alabaman proprietors, Kit Sandidge, Rick Redus and their respective "old ladies". Of course, the smell that always greeted me was that of the obligatory patchouli or sandalwood and sometimes I even detected the faint odor of another, more potent “herb”. But I was just there for the comix, dig?

The Third Eye business card.

The Third Eye matchbook. Mine still has the matches in it.

The Third Eye opened in 1966 and fast became the hippie merchandise mecca of the area during the time when the terms “far out” and “groovy” were quite active in the American lexicon. Besides the fare being offered inside, they also staged outdoor concerts. I remember one weekend afternoon, my sister and I showed up at the “Eye” and there was a band playing a cover version of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused”. They even had a hand-painted, multi-colored bus out front that Ken Keasey and his Merry Pranksters might have left behind for an even funkier model. Far out and groovy, man.

The Third Eye "magic bus" on the front lawn of the shop.

Back to the comix; I bought a run of Robert Crumb’s ZAP COMIX starting with the now-expensive “#0”, as well as what I thought was one of the funniest of the lot, Gilbert Shelton’s FABULOUS FURRY FREAK BROTHERS (the "Fat Freddy's Cat" strip being a favorite). When 1970 rolled around, I bought the first issue of SKULL COMICS there, as well as many more that I could afford.

 

Later, I would buy cinnamon incense and other cosmic tchotchkes, thumb through the latest LOS ANGELES FREE PRESS, BERKELEY BARB or other west coast underground rags and gaze with wonder (with my newly acquired and more expanded awareness of the universe) inside the closet-sized black light poster room.  I still kept buying the comix and to this day, I retain my coveted collection of hippie funny books.

 

So, what happened to the The Third Eye, you ask? Well, as all things go, Kit and Rick eventually moved out of the Encino location and set up shop elsewhere in the valley. The building was torn down (and the squares and straights probably salted the earth) and built the Town and Country Shopping Center. You might go so far as to say, they “paved Paradise and put up a parking lot”.

Here's an article from another writer who fondly recalled the shop and remembered some of the same things:

"The Third Eye was far and away the coolest, hippest and most far-out shop that Encino ever had on Ventura Boulevard. The so-called 'psychedelic shop' also sold a variety of creative crafts, art, beads, leather clothing and accessories, and movie and pop art posters of the '60s. 

The Third Eye was the first 'head shop' in Encino. There was the Peace of Mind in Encino and The Hippodrome in Sherman Oaks that popped up shortly afterward, but none we nearly as successful or as popular with people from outside the immediate neighborhood as The Third Eye.

I was a young boy when The Third Eye opened in 1966. My parents chaperoned me into the store to buy posters and look at all the creative handiwork that was on display. We hardly fit in with the tie-dyed hippie customers.

The Third Eye was famous for several things, including the Day-Glo-painted school bus that was parked in front of the store, a converted house. The bus had a real 'commune' look to it and certainly some of the local Encino neighbors were not thrilled at the prospect of The Third Eye staging live music concerts in the house's front yard.

Another thing The Third Eye was famous for was its black-light room, which was lit only by purple black lights that illuminated the many Day-Glo posters on the walls. I remember Beatles posters from their Yellow Submarine movie and one of a famous psychedelic, spiral, circular design that seemed to come to life in that room.

I also bought iconic posters of Raquel Welch in the fur bikini from her famous film One Million Years B.C. and Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on their '60s choppers from Easy Rider. The famous poster of John and Yoko Lennon posing nude and a very 'underground,' adult-oriented spoof of a classic Disney character misbehaving was for sale at The Third Eye, but I never got to see those until many years later!

The owners of The Third Eye were Kit Sandidge, his wife, Brenda, and close friends Rick and Marinell Redus. They ran The Third Eye like a country inn. All four were from Alabama.

'We had a lot of Southern hospitality at The Third Eye,' Brenda Sandidge told me.

The shop closed in 1971 and later became the Town and Country Shopping Center.

The owners of The Third Eye opened an art gallery next to the shop called the Walrus, which featured a lot of local artists' work. Kit Sandidge stayed in the leather and custom bead business for many more years after The Third Eye closed and had a couple of other successful stores in the San Fernando Valley.

'The Third Eye is the place people remember most that Kit and I owned together,' Sandidge said. 'That's the one store that seems to hold the most precious memories for people. When people find out I was involved with it, they are always asking questions about the store.

'It was like we really tapped into what was happening in the '60s and I am proud to have been a part of that. It was such a time of peace and harmony. I miss those days.'"

[SOURCE: Encino-Tarzana Patch]

As far as I can tell, Kit and Brenda are still operating a jewelry shop in San Clemente, CA. The name? The Third Eye, of course!

CAN YOU DIG IT? YEAH! I CAN DIG IT!

A dead-ringer for an Archie teen humor comic only starring black characters, FAST WILLIE JACKSON hit comic spinner racks with its first issue cover-dated October 1976. The title was created by author and owner of Fitzgerald Periodicals, Inc. Bertram Fitzgerald and artist Gus Lemoine.

Fitzgerald began his comic book career publishing GOLDEN LEGACY, a series of 16 comics from 1966 until 1972 featuring historically-significant African-American individuals and events such as Harriet Tubman, The Birth of Haiti, Alexander Dumas, black cowboys (see LOBO comic post HERE) and more.

GOLDEN LEGACY books are still being sold at this website. The homepage introduces and explains their cultural importance:

Golden Legacy is a classic collection of 16 inspirational volumes. Each volume contains 32 colorful pages and is a fully illustrated, biographical account of many significant achievements of Black men and women.

It is a widely endorsed new approach to the study of history that utilizes the appeal of the comic book format. Golden Legacy is fast, has impact and also communicates visually which increases reader comprehension and enjoyment. This high interest level series motivates fast and slow readers to read voluntarily!

In addition to its educational value, Golden Legacy performs a valuable emotional and social function. It helps create an atmosphere of harmony and mutual respect between groups. It creates pride and self-esteem while replacing myths with an appreciation for the contributions of others.

As mentioned, slap an Archie colophon on the cover and, with the exception of the content, no one would have been the wiser. Not surprisingly, there is much speculation that Gus Lemoine is a pseudonym for Archie artist Henry Scarpelli, who had already lent his Dan DeCarlo-esque work to SWING WITH SCOOTER for DC in 1966 and DATE WITH DEBBIE (1969-1975), also for DC. Lasting only for seven issues, it's likely FAST WILLIE JACKSON suffered the same fate as its one-shot precursor, ALL-NEGRO COMICS with lackluster sales and poor distribution.

In the February 2, 2025 issue of Gemstone Publishing's THE SCOOP newsletter, the uncredited author offers a capsule summary of the series:

Fast Willie Jackson, published in 1976, was a Fitzgerald Periodicals title. The title character was an easy-going everyman in the Chuck Clayton vein (but without the basketball profiency) who had the hots for the neighborhood brickhouse, Dee Dee Wilson, and whose cronies included a JJ of Good Times fame look-alike named Jo-Jo, a militant named Jabar, Frankie Johnson, a jive-talkin' cool papa who falls just short of being identified as a pimp, and a weight-lifting strongman called Hannibal.

The events of the comic are set in Mo City USA, a predominantly black metropolis where "the bad, strong, fast, together brothers and sisters" are constantly throwing around terms like, "Can you dig it?" and "rock solid" and "sweet baby."

Only one recurring white character appears in the comic, a policeman called Officer Flagg, who Willie and the bunch refer to as "The Man." There's also a Latino bodega/soda shop owner, Jose Martinez, and an Asian man who owns a martial arts studio in Mo City.

This comic's kind of like a print version of the film, Five on the Black Hand Side.

In short, Fast Willie Jackson was the closest publication there is to a Blaxploitation comic. And we mean that in a good way.

It's a shame it only survived for seven issues, petering out once and for all in 1977. An eBay search let us know that the first issue of the book, unslabbed, has an average starting price of just $38.