~Star~Crash~ All & Everything

[Montuno]

Straight outta Monte Adentro, Burrapera gretts you all : "Que pasa, negratas!?!"

View Image

It’s the hat that makes it

Salud, compay!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=39bq4JSOV98

.

 

[star crash]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=39bq4JSOV98

.

 

[Sertaiz]

that music video made me happy thanks montuno. thats not your homies, is it?

 

[big315smooth]

Wild Horses https://youtu.be/UFLJFl7ws_0

good tune buddy old and in the ways version from boarding house session is on point

 

[unclefishstick]

View Image

nice ass sister!

 

[star crash]

that music video made me happy thanks montuno. thats not your homies, is it?

good tune buddy old and in the ways version from boarding house session is on point

I love that version from the original LP which was recorded at the boarding house by Owsley Stanley the acid king

nice ass sister!

Such a great movie ...I got to get it and watch it again it’s been decades

 

[Crazy Chester]

Owsley Stanley the acid king

I literally "bumped into" him once in the taper's section at Buffalo on 7/16/90. I took a step backwards right into him - I had no idea anyone was passing by. He was walking quickly, striding toward the stage. I felt the impact and turned to apologize when I saw a little guy complete a 360 degree spin along the bee line he was taking as he resumed his stride on the one foot wide pathway between the piles of DAT recorders and microphones.

My taper buddy Dan Kirschner said: "do you know who that was?" I said no and Dan replied "Bear"!

They say he was an accomplished ballet dancer; I can confirm - that was obvious by the perfect balance of his stride after I had unknowingly tried to knock him off his path.

 

[unclefishstick]

lol,hey star,i've gotten to take real owsley acid a few times!

 

[Crazy Chester]

lol,hey star,i've gotten to take real owsley acid a few times!

Besides the fact that a single dose of 1960's Owsley acid was said to contain up to four times as much LSD as what was on a tab of acid in the early 1990s, did you note any difference in quality between 1960s Owsley acid and something like a Gooney Bird tab circa 1990?

I'm wondering if you thought it was qualitatively different than what was produced by Owsley in '60s because I have a theory based on Owsley's last interview before he died that practically all the acid produced from 1965 through 1995 was made by Owsley or someone in his crew at his direction (maybe Rock Scully).

The reason I say that is Owsley said in what I think was his last iinterview that he despised drug dealers getting the highest price they can, so he stated that he would monitor the price being charged at shows and would flood the market with LSD if the price got above "five for two" - $5 for two hits, which happened to be the price I was charged in my GD following career from 1988-1994.

I was told that was the price in the '60s as well.

Then, after Jerry's death - which neatly coincided with Owsley's move to Australia - I noticed when I caught some of the post-GD shows by "The Dead", "Phil Lesh & Friends", Phish, etc., that "five for two" was just a memory and had gone the way of the Dodo bird - and the Gooney Bird!

Unclefishstick, since you appear to have been around back then, could you tell me if I'm right about Owsley being the main supplier of LSD to America from 1965 to 1995?

 

[star crash]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard

 

[unclefishstick]

i don't know about any of that really,i knew annabelle and sunshine,that was how i got to try it...


but yes,it was different than any other acid i had ever taken...more powerful,yet also more subtle...


at a different time i had scored a couple of sheets allegedly made by one of his apprentices,but have no way to confirm that

 

[star crash]

Long read ...

Long read ...

~

William Leonard Pickard (born October 21, 1945 in DeKalb County, Georgia) is one of two people convicted in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) manufacturing case in history. In 2000, while moving their LSD laboratory across Kansas, Pickard and Clyde Apperson were pulled over while driving a Ryder rental truck and a follow car. The laboratory had been stored near a renovated Atlas-E missile silo near Wamego, Kansas. Gordon Todd Skinner, one of the men intimately involved in the case but not charged due to his cooperation, owned the property where the laboratory equipment was stored.

On July 27, 2020, Pickard was granted compassionate release from federal prison 17 years into his sentence.[1]


Contents
1 Background
2 LSD manufacturing
2.1 Scale of production
3 Imprisonment

Prior to his arrest, Pickard was deputy director of University of California, Los Angeles's Drug Policy Research Program. He came from a well-to-do family; his father was a lawyer and his mother was a fungal disease expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In high school, he was an honors student, played basketball, and was named "most intellectual". He earned a scholarship to Princeton University, but dropped out after one term, instead preferring to hang out at Greenwich Village jazz clubs. In 1971, he got a job as a research manager at the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Bacteriology and Immunology, a job he held until 1974. From then on, his academic resume begins a 20-year gap.[2][3]

It is reported by LSD historian Mark McCloud that Pickard worked with a group of LSD traffickers, known as the Clear Light System, in the 1960s. Pickard is said to have contributed to LSD chemist Nicholas Sand's legal fund following Sand's arrest in 1972. Pickard also reportedly had a background manufacturing the drug MDA.[4]:357

In December 1988, a neighbor reported a strange chemical odor coming from an architectural shop at a Mountain View, California industrial park. Federal agents arrived to find 200,000 doses of LSD and Pickard inside. Pickard was charged with manufacturing LSD and served five years in prison.

By 1994, Pickard had enrolled at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Here, he focused on drug abuse in the former Soviet Union, where he theorized that the booming black market and many unemployed chemists could lead to a flood of the drug market.[2][3]

LSD manufacturing[edit]

Example of blotter art used as a medium for LSD
It is not publicly known where Pickard initially produced LSD. His first arrest for manufacturing LSD came on December 28, 1988 in Mountain View, California. The laboratory was contained inside a trailer that had been moved into a warehouse. It contained state-of-the-art equipment, including a roto-evaporator, heating mantles and a pill press. He was producing kilogram quantities of LSD and putting them onto windowpane (gel), microdot (tablet), and blotter forms (blotter paper). He spent time in prison for this and became a Buddhist while inside.[5][3]


Former missile silo in Kansas[6] 39°13?22?N 96°19?32?W
Pickard had laboratories in a number of different locations. Pickard never liked to stay at one location more than two years so as not to draw attention to himself. In early 1996, the lab was located in Oregon; it was subsequently moved to Aspen, Colorado in late 1996. From September 1997 to September 1999 the laboratory was located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He liked the Santa Fe location for a number of reasons; his overhead costs were lower and the precursor source was closer. He also liked the fact that there was virtually no humidity, which can affect the production of LSD. All of the laboratories are alleged to have produced a kilogram of LSD approximately every five weeks. Gordon Todd Skinner became involved with Pickard and his partner Clyde Apperson in February 1998.[5] It is rumored that Pickard and Skinner were introduced to each other in a somewhat formal gathering of various LSD dealers and chemists. The meeting is said to have taken place in the former home of Jerry and Carolyn Garcia (Mountain Girl), where Skinner was allegedly then living.[4]:357

One of his main customers was a man named "Petaluma Al" from Petaluma, California. Pickard would always arrange for the produced LSD to be transported to the Denver, Colorado or Boulder, Colorado area to be mailed or picked up so that Petaluma Al would never know where the laboratory was located. Most of Petaluma Al's customers were overseas in Europe, which meant that in addition to millions of dollars in United States currency, Pickard also handled millions in Dutch guilders and Canadian bank notes. He preferred to deal in ƒ1,000 notes or Canadian $1,000 notes (discontinued since 2000 in Canada) because it meant less bulk cash to have on hand. He required his distributors to convert all lower currencies into $50 or $100 notes at the least so as not to cause problems.[5]

Although Skinner and Pickard were arrested moving the laboratory from the Atlas-E silo location, they never actually produced LSD at this site. The laboratory had been moved there without Pickard's or Apperson's knowledge by the government's informant, Gordon Todd Skinner. When Pickard arrived back in town and learned that Skinner had moved the lab there, they immediately began preparations to move it. Unknown to them, Skinner had begun cooperating with the DEA and had already allowed them to go inside the property to look around. Based on what they saw during this visit, they applied for a search warrant, which was subsequently signed by a federal judge. Apperson drove the Ryder rental truck with the laboratory in it and Pickard followed in a Buick LeSabre; they had walkie-talkies to maintain communication. The DEA had a Kansas Highway Patrol car pull them over to not arouse suspicion; however, they immediately recognized something was wrong and Pickard, being a marathon runner, took off into the woods on foot and was not captured until the next day.


Glassware seized
Authorities found less than six ounces of ergotamine tartrate during the arrest. However, they claim they normally produced up to a kilogram of LSD every five weeks. This would produce approximately ten million 100-microgram doses. Although the DEA claims this would be worth $40 million on the street, Pickard did not sell anywhere near the "street" or retail level. Government informant Skinner testified that Petaluma Al and the largest wholesale customers of Pickard paid 29 cents per 100 µg dose, which would put the cost at around $2.97 million for a kilogram of LSD.[5]

Apperson was Pickard's partner and was reportedly a skilled chemist, but his role was mainly in the setup and take-down of the laboratory. He was allegedly paid $100,000 for assembling and $50,000 for packing away the lab. Apperson reportedly manufactured synthetic mescaline. When authorities searched his Sunnyvale, California home, they found five drums of precursor chemicals needed to manufacture synthetic mescaline.[5]

Both Pickard and Apperson were eventually found guilty at trial of conspiring to manufacture, distribute, and dispense ten grams or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD); Pickard received two life sentences, while Apperson received 30 years' imprisonment.

Scale of production[edit]
According to court testimony, Pickard's lab produced up to a kilogram of LSD approximately every five weeks for short periods. Despite criticism for their methodology, the DEA contends that there was a 99.5% drop in the availability of LSD in the US in the two years following the arrest.[7] Pickard himself has long denied these claims. In his 2007 paper "International LSD Prevalence – Factors Affecting Proliferation and Control", Pickard suggests that since the 1960s, LSD production has always been de-centralized. As to a turn-of-the-century decline in availability due to his own arrest, Pickard highlights the fact that LSD availability had been on the decline since 1996, a fact which he correlates in part with the exponential growth of availability and demand for MDMA and other hallucinogenic drugs.[8] The actual quantity of LSD seized by the DEA remains unclear, with figures ranging from 198.9 grams to 41.3 kilograms (410 million 100 µg hits of LSD).[9]

The turn-of-the-century "acid drought" was likely due to a number of factors, perhaps including but not limited to the arrest of Pickard. According to Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, additional factors included the 1996 arrest of longtime LSD chemist Nicholas Sand and the death of a man involved in the illicit sale of LSD precursor materials. Grateful Dead concerts provided a primary distribution network for LSD, and this network dissolved when the Grateful Dead stopped touring in 1995.[4]:356–357,365–367[10]

Imprisonment[edit]
While serving two life sentences at the U.S. Penitentiary at Tucson, Arizona, Pickard conducted research on civil liberties, justice and drug-related topics. He wrote of his concerns about the opioid epidemic in the United States, and responded to media and academic requests on the subject.[11] The website "Free William Leonard Pickard" posted regular updates about his activities until September 2017.[12] In 2015 he published a novel The Rose of Paracelsus.

On July 27, 2020, Pickard was released from prison on compassionate grounds with the court citing his advanced age and medical conditions in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as his positive contribution to society while incarcerated through his writings on the opioid epidemic.[11]

 

[Crazy Chester]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard

Thanks for the link, star crash! Looks like Pickard had a huge international operation, but that he was just getting started in the late 1980s when he got busted. It also looks like he stepped into a void in LSD production in 1996, which was after being released from his prison stint in 1992 to live in an ashram, and after enrolling at Harvard and doing his phd work there.

Curiously, it was also immediately after Owsley had sequestered himself in Australia.

According to the wiki: "Pickard highlights the fact that LSD availability had been on the decline since 1996, a fact which he correlates in part with the exponential growth of availability and demand for MDMA and other hallucinogenic drugs."

He was a standup guy for not stating the real reason for LSD supply falling off a cliff around that time - and even providing a cover story for it - Owsley's retirement in 1995 from being the dominant producer of LSD in the world.

 

[star crash]

Thanks for the link, star crash! Looks like Pickard had a huge international operation, but that he was just getting started in the late 1980s when he got busted. It also looks like he stepped into a void in LSD production in 1996, which was after being released from his prison stint in 1992 to live in an ashram, and after enrolling at Harvard and doing his phd work there.

Curiously, it was also immediately after Owsley had sequestered himself in Australia.

According to the wiki: "Pickard highlights the fact that LSD availability had been on the decline since 1996, a fact which he correlates in part with the exponential growth of availability and demand for MDMA and other hallucinogenic drugs."

He was a standup guy for not stating the real reason for LSD supply falling off a cliff around that time - and even providing a cover story for it - Owsley's retirement in 1995 from being the dominant producer of LSD in the world.

Quite sure that bear was a long out of the business but we will never know for sure

 

[star crash]

I literally "bumped into" him once in the taper's section at Buffalo on 7/16/90. I took a step backwards right into him - I had no idea anyone was passing by. He was walking quickly, striding toward the stage. I felt the impact and turned to apologize when I saw a little guy complete a 360 degree spin along the bee line he was taking as he resumed his stride on the one foot wide pathway between the piles of DAT recorders and microphones.

My taper buddy Dan Kirschner said: "do you know who that was?" I said no and Dan replied "Bear"!

They say he was an accomplished ballet dancer; I can confirm - that was obvious by the perfect balance of his stride after I had unknowingly tried to knock him off his path.

I am well aware of unknown spectacle of Bearhanging out a Grateful Dead shows primarily selling his jewelry that he had made I bumped into myself several times once I know for a fact was outside the Maedowlands Arena in October 1989 , pretty crazy standing next to a legend who is acting just like another Fan out at a show... btw I was a life long taper before I became star crash ... like some became friends with certain members of the organization

 

[hellfire]

The sad realization you'll probably never get invited to underground LSD lab silo parties

 

[Crazy Chester]

I am well aware of unknown spectacle of Bearhanging out a Grateful Dead shows primarily selling his jewelry that he had made I bumped into myself several times once I know for a fact was outside the Maedowlands Arena in October 1989 , pretty crazy standing next to a legend who is acting just like another Fan out at a show... btw I was a life long taper before I became star crash ... like some became friends with certain members of the organization

Believe it or not - when I de-age your pic in my mind - I remember seeing you at more than one show I went to back then!

 

[Crazy Chester]

Maedowlands Arena in October 1989

I hope you got to see the wicked set list they pulled off on 10/16/89. Unfortunately, I only got a ticket for the 10/12 show at the meadowlands that year.

 

[star crash]

The sad realization you'll probably never get invited to underground LSD lab silo parties

LOfL

Believe it or not - when I de-age your pic in my mind - I remember seeing you at more than one show I went to back then!

I hope you got to see the wicked set list they pulled off on 10/16/89. Unfortunately, I only got a ticket for the 10/12 show at the meadowlands that year.

Strolled into the Dark Star on 10/16

 

[Montuno]

that music video made me happy thanks montuno. thats not your homies, is it?

Hello.
...No. They and the video are from the southern suburbs of Madrid.
I'm from further south, from a much more rural area.
Salud.