The ‘Sunset Strip Riots’ Had Far-Reaching Impact

I greatly enjoyed the interview with Stephen Stills (“For All It’s Worth,” Calendar, May 6). In these days of synthesized “dance music,” his talent and the monster music of Buffalo Springfield and CS&N; still pack a huge punch.

That “little club near Crescent Heights and Sunset” Stills refers to was, of course, Pandora’s Box, ground zero for the “Sunset Strip Riots.” Unless you were there, it’s hard to understand the magnitude of events in Hollywood at the time. The police in very large numbers did, indeed, use clubs and tear gas, but what’s usually lost in describing the scene is the reason for the dissension and the far-reaching impact.

The “riots” were the result of thousands and thousands of teens converging on the Strip to protest the curfew law. They came from everywhere: the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley, South Bay, downtown. And that was the significance; the kids who congregated there each night realized for the first time, “Geez! Look how many of us there are!! We do have power--through sheer numbers.”

The cops’ reaction showed that the authorities were also more than a little concerned by the realization. This episode marked the bridge between the surf culture and the counterculture in Southern California and the rest, as they say, is history.

JIM TROMBELLA

Santa Barbara