From the mid-1960s, when he left television to open the first head shop in Los Angeles and the third in the nation (1965, Newsweek citation) and then wrote for Rolling Stone as Los Angeles correspondent (1967–1969), he wrote features and columns for alternative newspapers, including the popular "Making It" column for the "Los Angeles Free Press". He contributed articles to "TeenSet" magazine and its successor "AUM". He MC'ed the first love-ins in Los Angeles, edited a collection of material from the underground press, "The Hippie Papers" (1968) and wrote a history of rock and roll, "The Rock Story" (1970).