When the Baby Boomers were young

The story of the Iskcon movement in Seattle mirrors the movement’s chronology and changing demographics in North America. The movement started in the late 1960s – early 1970s. The current location of the Iskcon, Seattle temple was preceded by 3 other locations. In the 1970s the temple was in Capitol Hill. The Capitol Hill location was on 18th and Harrison. The Capitol Hill area especially in the 1970s was a hotbed for the experimental lifestyles in the 1960s and 1970s. In those days the Iskcon movement did attract a good deal of hippies – the prototypical hippie was a young, suburban white male or female exploring that lifestyle. Circa 1973, the congregation consisted about 15-20 white devotees who were very Krishna conscious and quite friendly. Some of them lived in the temple building itself and some of the others lived in apartments surrounding the temple. Sukhadev Pr. Was the President and the vice-president was Haribasara. During the Sunday feast, there were very few people of Indian origin who attended the programs. The presiding deities were Jagannath, Subhadra and Baladev.
The mode of operation in most Iskcon temples during the 1970s was pretty similar. The primary source of revenue was through book distribution, donations from the Sunday feast attendees and Sankirtan parties and the substantial contributions of the young men and women who joined the movement and were inspired to donated most of their financial assets, in return for being part of the movement and typically initiated within a matter of months . Sankirtan parties and Harinam parties were also very popular. Sura Prabhu recalls that the Sankirtan parties in those days would go down in the morning to the Pike’s place market and do morning Sankirtan. At lunch-time they would eat bread-balls and Khichri at Govinda’s boutique a downstore store owned by a devotee Ojasvi Mataji.
The Seattle temple in those days had a lot of success in the “small temple” category. Srila Prabhupada recognized the value of spiritual competition in sustaining the nascent movement and the books were the main source of revenue – so it was a very honorable thing for a small temple to win the award as the best temple in their category in terms of units of book distribution. The Seattle temple in those days (early 70s) won the award two years.
One of the big events during those times was the Spokane World’s Fair that happened in 1974. In 1974 Haribasara Pr. and Gopeswara Pr. opened a small preaching canter in Spokane for the Spokane World's Fair. Haribasara Pr. led a small group of Harinam devotees and Gopeswara Pr. passed out hundreds and hundreds of plates of prasadam, every day. I think it was khichri and bread balls. Sura Pr. headed up the Sankirtan team with big books and coordinated the travelling men which included, Tripurari, Svavas, Naikatma, Vaisesika, Kavicandra, Ganapati, and others, totalling about 12 devotees. They each did 25-40 hardback books every day, collecting no less than $5. each. They stayed for the whole month. In April, Sura Prabhu and Haribasara Pr. wrote letters to Srila Prabhupada, imploring him to come to the World's fair, but he had to be in Bombay at that time. He replied that “if you just distribute my books and prasadam and present the chanting, it will be as good as my personally being there. Just fulfill my mission that every man and woman in the United States, gets a book." That is something they did try to do in Seattle. There was a time when the book distribution party was doing 15-20 hardbacks a day and sending the temple about $1500 per week.