Permanent Damage

“I’m the Mae West of 1968.” Mercy Fontenot was a Zelig who grew up in the San Francisco Haight Ashbury scene, where she crossed paths with Charles Manson, went to the first Acid Test, and was friends with Jimi Hendrix (she was later in his movie Rainbow Bridge). She predicted the Altamont disaster when reading the Rolling Stones’ tarot cards at a party and left San Francisco for the climes of Los Angeles in 1967 when the Haight ‘lost its magic.’ Miss Mercy’s work in the GTOs, the Frank Zapp...