Excerpted from an article by Dropper Ishmael in Inner Space, No. 4

Drop City, Colorado: In Drop City we have attempted to create a total living environment outside the structure of society, where the artist can remain in touch with himself, the universe and other creative human beings.

Each Dropper is free. Does what he wants, when he wants and how he wants. No rules, no duties, no obligations.

Anarchy. But as anarchistic as the growth of an organism. Has its own internal needs and desires; fulfills them in a natural simple way, without compulsion.

The need to work: out of guilt, emptiness.

Need abandoned: desire (hopefully) arises. No longer work, but pleasure. As gratifying as eating or loving. Work — play.

Doing nothing is work.

We are based on the pleasure principle. Our main concern is being alive.

None of us is employed or has a steady income. How do we make it? Food? Materials?

At mercy of the gods.

But most of the time we don't worry about it. Drop City was begun without money, built on practically nothing.

Things have come to us.

Somehow we haven't gone hungry. Or done without materials. Yet.

America, affluent waste society. Enough waste to feed and house ten thousand artists, enough junk to turn into a thousand thousand works of art. To the townspeople (Trinidad, Colorado, 5 miles away) we are scrounges, bums, garbage pickers. They are right. Perhaps the most beautiful creation in all of Drop City is our junk pile, the garbage of the garbage pickers.

We are sensualists.

There are thousands of undiscovered, unnamed senses. We attempt to nurture every one.

Drop City is six acres of abandoned goat pasture.

Population fourteen.

We live in geodesic domes, structures built along molecular principles, basic energetic building blocks of the universe, the strongest, most efficient use of enclosed space. Following certain dynamic structural laws, the dome helps provide its own heat in winter, its own air conditioning in summer. Psychologically it creates an atmosphere of inner harmony and freedom. An expansive structure: no corners to hide in, no vertical-horizontal rigidities. Simplest to build. Cheapest. A 25-foot diameter dome costs less than $200, sometimes much less.

Drop City is the first attempt to use domes for housing a community.

Five geodesic domes have been built, mostly from "waste materials." The largest, still under construction, has a 40-foot diameter. When completed it will serve as studio space and as a total involvement light music sound environment. The interior —over 2,000 square feet — will be a painting.

Droppers come in all sizes, shapes and colors: painters, writers, architects, panhandlers, filmmakers, magicians, gluttons, musicians, wizards, unclassifiables.

But we all have this in common — whatever art we each produce is not separated from our lives. Each of us is the pigment in his own life-painting.

We are the recipients of R. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Award for 1966.

A psychedelic community? Chemically, no. We consider drugs unnecessary. But etymologically, perhaps.

We are one spark of a great chain reaction.