Item #5514 The New Consciousness. Nina Graboi Murray Levy.

The New Consciousness

New York: The New Consciousness, [1966]. Offset printed handbill. 5 ½ x 8 ½ in. Line across center from folding; else near fine. Item #5514

Flyer advertising a “psychedelic showcase” at 33 Carmine Street in the West Village, offering light show, sounds, arts, crafts, films, community exchange, and more.

Organized in 1966 by Murray Levy, with Nina Graboi, The New Consciousness was primarily volunteer-run. Participants speak of the positive connections made between the acid freaks and mainstream society folk. Graboi set up a booth for the League for Spiritual Discovery, an organization she had founded with Timothy Leary earlier that year, and apparently spoke with many parents and “squares.”

By May 1967, however, the store had closed down after being broken into four times, the subject of a pressure campaign by the local Catholic diocese, and store employees being explicitly threatened by supposed members of organized crime. Levy went on to create the First International Psychedelic Exposition at the Forest Hills Country Club later that year.

“We needed a showcase, a place where the straight world could view the psychedelic community instead of reading about it. To them, we were a breed apart” (Graboi, One Foot in the Future, 236).

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