The Angels of Light were one of the groups that survived the Fall of the Haight in the late 1960s and became part of the thriving Free Commune movement in San Francisco in the 1970s. The Angels had broken away from The Cockettes in 1969 to perform Free Theater for other communes and the counterculture community in the Bay Area. “Free” was an inviolate principle, which had been passed down from the original Diggers in the Haight starting in 1966. The Diggers had held an event called the “Free City Convention” on May 1, 1968, at the Carousel Ballroom. It was at this event that Ralph met Jet and Irving and Hibiscus from the Sutter Street Commune. The rest is history.

Here is a photo from a protest the Angels organized in 1973 at the paid showing of “Pickup’s Tricks” a film that Gregory Pickup produced in part from footage he had taken at an Angels performance. Paid shows (like this film) were boycotted in the Free community.