Writer co-founded alternative paper

The Other, which had a circulation of about 65,000 at its peak, also fostered a new breed of cartoonists, including Vaughn Bode and Spain Rodriguez, influential figures in the underground comics movement of the 1960s that provided popular culture with characters who resisted authority, practiced free love and smoked pot. The paper advocated better living through chemistry in features that included a column by LSD guru Leary called "Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out," the slogan that the one-time Harvard professor coined for the psychedelic generation.

The Other was "pro-drug, probably more than most of the papers," said Art Kunkin, founder of the Los Angeles Free Press, the granddaddy of underground papers. "There was a definite hippie image to the paper. It was very psychedelic looking. . . . You couldn't read it sometimes because there would be color pictures overlaid on the type. But it was very innovative."

Bowart practiced what the paper preached. At a 1966 hearing in Washington, D.C., on whether LSD should be made illegal, he testified that he had used LSD more than 30 times and urged one of the senators to go on an LSD trip and "report back" on the experience. According to a New York Times article, none of the senators appeared eager to follow Bowart's advice. LSD was declared a controlled substance a few months later.

Bowart subsequently helped launch a rumor that the mood-altering properties of LSD could be found in nonchemical substances, specifically bananas.

According to Krassner, the story grew out of a discussion he heard Bowart having with Katzman and another editor, Dean Latimer. They were intrigued by the idea that a substance common to LSD and bananas could trigger pleasurable sensations in the brain. The story found its way into underground and mainstream papers, instigating what Krassner has called the great banana skin hoax.

"In San Francisco, there was a banana smoke-in, and one entrepreneur started a successful banana-powder mail-order business, charging $5 an ounce," Krassner wrote in his 1993 autobiography, "Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut." It was widely believed that the 1967 hit "Mellow Yellow" was songwriter Donovan's homage to bananas as a natural hallucinogen.