The freak scene was originally a component of the bohemian subculture which began in California in the mid-1960s, associated with (or part of) the hippie movement. The term is also used to refer to the post-hippie and pre-punk period of the early to mid-1970s. It can be viewed as encompassing a range of disparate groups including hippies, pacifists, politicized radicals, as well as psychedelic and progressive rock fans. Those connected with the subculture often attended rock festivals, free festivals, happenings, and alternative society gatherings of various kinds. Origins In the United States of the 1960s, especially during the heyday of the hippie counterculture on the west coast, many teens and young adults that were disillusioned with the austere confines of the postwar, suburbanite American way of life, and some of the resultant countercultural and New Left movements defined themselves as "freaks". During the early 1960s, painter, sculptor and former marathon dancing champion Vito Paulekas and his wife Szou established a clothing boutique on the corner of Laurel Avenue and Beverly Boulevard in Hollywood, close to Laurel Canyon. Paulekas and his later associate Carl Franzoni (known as "Captain Fuck") were known for their sexual appetites and unconventional behavior. They and an expanding troupe of associates called themselves "freaks" or "freakers", and became well known in the area by about 1963 for their eccentric free form dancing in Sunset Strip nightclubs, being described as "an acid-drenched extended family of brain-damaged cohabitants". Barry Miles wrote: "The first hippies in Hollywood, perhaps the first hippies anywhere, were Vito, his wife Zsou , Captain Fuck and their group of about thirty-five dancers. Calling themselves Freaks, they lived a semi-communal life and engaged in sex orgies and free-form dancing whenever they could." Frank Zappa said of Vito's freaks: "As soon as they arrived they would make things happen, because they were dancing in a way nobody had seen before, screaming and yelling out on the floor and doing all kinds of weird things. They were dressed in a way that nobody could believe, and they gave life to everything that was going on." Musicians and others who became associated with the scene at the time included Zappa, his later wife Gail Sloatman, Kim Fowley, Arthur Lee, David Crosby, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), and The GTOs. Zappa and The Mothers of Invention became central to the freak scene in Los Angeles, and the term freak appeared