In the late summer of 1964, a monumental happening was about to take place in downtown Santa Cruz.

On the surface, nothing suggested a huge change was about to occur. UCSC was still under construction. Over in Capitola, traffic choked up on the highway when Disco Mart opened. The hottest topic was the anchovies that clogged the harbor as victims of a red tide. After several smelly days, local officials hit the remains with a flame thrower.

On Pacific Avenue, the 84 tenants of the St. George Hotel were mostly retired elderly that spent the bulk of their time in the lobby. When two entrepreneurs rented the old Saddle Rock Restaurant space in the same building, they quietly settled in, filling shelves with a small inventory of about 3,500 books. Ronald K. ‘‘Hassler’’ Bevirt and Peter Arnon Demma opened the Hip Pocket Bookstore in August, 35 years ago.

Santa Cruz would never be the same.

Few downtown merchants knew Bevirt was one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, a photographer on the psychedelic International Harvester bus that would, on occasion, be parked outside. Other Pranksters, like Neal Cassady, the notorious Dean Moriarty of Jack Kerouac’s ‘‘On the Road,’’ occasionally worked at the store, and Kenneth Babbs had a home in the area. Lee Quarnstrom, today a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, had connected with the Pranksters in La Honda and then drifted here. He took a job at the Hip Pocket for $20 a week and all he could read.

Meanwhile, Ron Boise, 33, a former neighbor in La Honda who had done a little artistic modification on ‘‘Further,’’ the Prankster bus, was now showing his sculpture as part of the developing cultural scene in Aptos. The artist, known for massive metal sculptures, particularly of nudes, staged his first local show at the beat generation coffee bar and gallery called The Stickey Wicket.

The Wicket sponsored art exhibits, classical music, and outdoor theater shows that were so popular that locals were inspired to start the Cabrillo Music Festival. When this annual event debuted a short while later at the new Cabrillo College theater, art shows followed.

In late August, just two weeks after Hip Pocket’s opening, Boise set up several very tall nudes on the steps and grounds outside the Cabrillo Library as part of the music festival show. Nobody thought a thing of it. Santa Cruzans were a little more dubious in mid-September, though, when Boise installed his figures over the door of the Hip Pocket.

Only a few eyebrows shot up when the statues were set in place. The biggest protest was from a hotel resident whose window view was now blocked by a nude copper rump.

Before long, the Hip Pocket was getting a reputation as a ‘‘dirty book store,’’ because of the sculptures and the sale of nudist magazines. Then Bivert and Demma were hauled into court for exhibiting photos by internationally known photographer Walter Chappell. Featuring close-ups of nude males, the pictures were confiscated as obscene and an outrage to public decency.

Judge Harry Brauer tried the case in November 1965 and ruled in favor of the bookstore. Successfully testifying for the defense was Santa Cruz clinical psychologist Leon Taberly, who said he considered the photographs to be on a ‘‘higher plane.’’

The psychologist was about to become notorious himself as proprietor of The Barn in Scotts Valley, known as ‘‘Fillmore on the Mountain,’’ in 1966. In addition to the Pranksters, the Barn entertained with spectacular light shows and the likes of Country Joe, Quicksilver, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and the Grateful Dead.

Back in Santa Cruz, Bivert and Demma were proving to be great hosts but poor business managers. One of the store’s last hurrahs came about one evening in late March, when fire and police officials conducted a raid because a new sculpture had tripped the fire alarm. This time Boise had a flashing, vibrating, maze of wires and extension cords, an acetylene torch, and something the newspaper called ‘‘two-foot leather bladder shaped like a skyward-bound punching bag.’’

It was one of Boise’s last works. After feeling ill for several weeks, he died of heart failure on May 26, 1966. Two months later, Hip Pocket was bankrupt.

Although it lasted only two years, the legend of the Hip Pocket continues. For years, locals driving on the Bayshore Freeway near San Francisco cranked their necks to catch a view of Boise’s nudes, purchased by Fritz Maytag and perched in a new location on the roof of the Anchor Steam Brewery.

Quarnstrom reports that the old Hip Pocket Book Store sign, also by Boise, has been restored and is now displayed at Stokes Signs in the Sash Mill. The bookstore inventory of titles became the starter for Book Shop Santa Cruz, located today very near the spot where it all began.