Campaign button for Louis Abolafia's 1968 run for president as the "naked hippie love candidate".
NY: Privately published, 1968.
Item #SKB-17500
The button shows Abolafia naked holding a hat over his private parts with his campaign slogan "What have I got to hide." Abolafia was an artist, activist, and fixture in the Greenwich Village scene of ths sixties where he organized Love-ins and Happenings and published the erotic counterculture newspaper Abolafia's Luv. From 1967 to 1970 he appeared on Johnny Carson, had several art exhibitions, and befriended such notables as Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, and Margaret Trudeau. In 1979 he inspired the creation of the Exotic Erotic Ball in San Francisco that was held annually for more than 30 years. An important counterculture figure of the period, Abolafia died of a drug overdose in 1995 at the age of 54. Fine (measures 2.5" across). A nice zeitgeist item from the NYC counterculture.
Price: $25.00