I was in S.F.about 20 years ago and made the pilgrimage. I just felt like a good rant. Please let us know what is on your list of rantable issues.
Is that 70s something there was no High End then? Only more or less expensive equipment and magazines to read about it. Oh I forgot actual places where you wentto a few times to audition the piece of interest and bought it, if you felt so moved. As a rule you stayed with what you had or gave it to a relative if you changed your mind.
If you mean the style (free association). James Joyce more or less invented it but his was not random although it appears to be, and it came into the public eye with the self proclaimed intellectualism of beatnik poets of the 50s, the drug of choice was coffee then and now. So I have been told although I didn't exist except for a couple of months in 1959. I have read about it and some of the published material Ginsberg's Howl, Burroughs' Naked Lunch , etc.