Hibiscus (entertainer)
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Hibiscus (real name, George Harris, Jr. ) (1949-1982) was leader of the psychedelic gay liberation theatre group known as the Cockettes in early 1970's San Francisco. His commune in a condemned Victorian on Sutter near Steiner in San Francisco was a member of a group of communes called KaliFlower that was dedicated to distributing free food and to creating free art and theater. The Cockettes, consisting of gay hippies (Gippies), women, and even babies, decked themselves out in drag and glitter for a series of legendary midnight musicals at the Palace Theater on Columbus and Union in North Beach in San Francisco California.
Hibiscus believed that all of the Cockettes shows should be free and, after a long dispute over this, left them and formed the Angels of Light in San Francisco, which gave many free theatrical performances in the early 1970s in San Francisco and New York. Later, in his home state of New York he also appeared in a daytime soap opera under his real name. Hibiscus died of AIDS in 1982.
