When he was young in the 60s, Jerry Miskolczi used to listen to the artists whose album covers he still collects avidly. It wasn’t until the 80s that he started collecting as a hobby.
It was at the Lake Shore Inn in Toronto, a place that no longer exists. Saturday, in the Gallery of Memories section of the Summer of Love attraction in Yorkville, he displayed a full rack of records that might seem obscure to foreign eyes. But bands like Jack London and the Sparrows eventually became Steppenwolf and Buffalo Springfield, and The Staccatos became the Five Man Electrical Band.
“I have slowed down in my collecting,” Miskolczi said with a smile. “I’m not obsessive.”
In the stall next to him, Nicholas Jennings offers his book, “Before the Gold Rush,” on the history of Yorkville in the 1960s.
“It’s every bit the equivalent of the history of Greenich Village or Haight-Ashbury in those days,” he said. “It’s a history that needs to be celebrated.” Indeed: Where there are now sushi restaurants and a Williams-Sonoma, in the 60s there were houses full of hippies and musicians, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. A nearby parking lot is the one Mitchell famously refers to in her song “Big Yellow Taxi.”
That Saturday, Yorkville was half thoroughfare, half amphitheater. People got their faces painted as Sylvia Tyson sang about The Night The Chinese Restaurant Burned Down. For one day, it all came back to us.
