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When cops ran amok in Washington Square Park in April 1961, one of those they arrested was H. L. "Doc" Humes, novelist, inventor, and raconteur. He'd already been jailed recently for his outspoken support of the hepcat comedian Lord Buckley. He would go on to be an LSD pioneer withTimothy Leary, among many other things.

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In the spring of 1961, responding to complaints from well-heeled homeowners around Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New York's Department of Parks and Recreation forbade young people from playing music around the park's turned-off fountain on Sunday afternoons. A few hundred young people gathered at the fountain for a peaceful protest. Cops rioted and mauled them. One local newspaper called it, however, a "beatnik riot."

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In the 1930s, the Lower East Side's Yip Harburg wrote the lyrics for two songs that bookended the Great Depression, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" and "Over the Rainbow."

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