I Ran Into Some Trouble

Peggy Caserta, founder of the Haight-Ashbury hippie boutique Mnasidika, and girlfriend of Janis Joplin, was a Louisiana homecoming queen turned airsick stewardess who eventually landed in 1960s San Francisco and set up shop. Her store was a hang-out for The Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company; it was where Wes Wilson's posters hung and Bill Graham sold concert tickets and Owsley's LSD was enjoyed. Caserta's world of psychedelic peace, love, LSD, and rock kaleidoscoped into bereavement, heroin addiction, prison, and desperation. She was hated, betrayed, and self-exiled, and after many years has recovered, returning home to the bayou to care for her mother with dementia. Now Caserta is giving an inside-look into a revolution -- both countercultural and personal.