Flickr user jkerssen dropped this gem from the Seattle Municipal Archives into the photo pool. I couldn’t resist.

Oh, the days when Seattle was younger, smaller, and overrun by those damn hippies and their free-loving gals. (The letter is transscribed below the cut.)

Please, jkerssen, give us more ephemera from the city vaults (or at least page two of the note). And the rest of you, just keep dropping your pics into our Flickr photo pool, and you might get featured in a post one day that your grandmother will print out and keep in her memory book. (No, really, my grandmother prints out my blog posts and saves them. She’s a little bit of a packrat.)

Sept. 17, 1970

Seattle Mayor

Dear Sir:-

Seattle got SO BAD WITH HIPPIES, I just had to get out of that city. I couldn’t take it. That PIKE PLACE MARKET is a RAT’S NEST of hippies and PIKE STREET is like a SKID-ROAD WITH HIPPIES. All the stores CATER to HIPPIES with HIPPIE CLOTHES in their windows. Even with HIPPIE STORE CLERKS in some stores on 3rd Avenue. They all writer their hippie friends to “COME TO SEATTLE and GET ON WELFARE. They’ll feed us in Seattle. If they don’t hire us THEY’LL FEED US good. Bring you FREE LOVING GALS, we can ALL LIVE IN THE PUBLIC MARKET. The cops don’t bother us here, THEY LOVE US….(over)