My father, Lee Harris, who has died aged 87, ran what’s believed to have been London’s first “headshop”, promoting cannabis-related accoutrements. He established the enterprise within the early Seventies in London, and known as it Alchemy. Attracting clients from all around the world, it was a well-liked establishment for greater than 4 many years, till he closed it down on his retirement in 2016 on the age of 80.
Lee arrange Alchemy after changing into a hippy within the mid to late 60s. Aside from promoting items regarding, or impressed by, using hashish – together with smoking gear, incense, posters, books and T-shirts – Alchemy offered the bottom for a lot of his different initiatives, such because the publication of his Brainstorm Comix sequence by way of Alchemy Press, which showcased the early work of the graphic artist Bryan Talbot, and from 1977 till 1982 the counterculture and cannabis-focused journal HomeGrown, which he edited and revealed.
It additionally led him to fulfill Brigitte Knobloch, an assistant lecturer at a German college who dropped in to the store whereas on a vacation in London, and whom he married in 1975.
Lee was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Sam, a travelling salesman, and Miriam (nee Shamosewitz), a store employee. After leaving Highland North boys highschool he labored in a clothes manufacturing unit, the place regardless of being a teen he was put accountable for 12 Indian ladies purely on account of his pores and skin color. Fiercely against apartheid, he determined to go away the nation, and arrived within the UK in 1956, hoping for a transfer into appearing.
After coaching on the Webber Douglas College of Singing and Dramatic Artwork in London he labored as a washer salesman whereas making an attempt to determine himself on stage. His first paid appearing function was in Sailor Beware on the City Corridor theatre in Hunstanton, Norfolk, in 1958; the next yr he was a younger sailor on the Playhouse theatre in Derby and in 1961 he was Patch Riley, an Irish bagpipe participant within the Eugene O’Neill play A Contact of the Poet, which toured in South Africa.
Again within the UK he wrote and directed a one-act play, Buzz Buzz, concerning the London mod scene of which he had grow to be an element: it was carried out on the Unity theatre in Camden City and the Oval Home in Kennington. Later he wrote Love Play, a lyrical fantasy set within the dives of Soho, which was carried out on the Arts Lab in Drury Lane in 1969.
Transferring into hippiedom, Lee started to write down for Worldwide Instances and have become concerned in lobbying for the legalisation of hashish, main ultimately to his determination to arrange Alchemy.
A few years later, in 2016, he stood for London mayor on a “hashish is safer than alcohol” ticket, receiving greater than 88,000 votes. He continued his campaigning proper as much as his dying.
Brigitte died in 2008. He’s survived by their three kids, me, Deben and Edana, and two grandchildren, Adam and Anabelle.
