Cultural critic Mark Dery tours Sandstone Ranch, a quintessential 1970s free love retreat in Los Angeles's Topanga Canyon. With the ghosts of countless swingers surrounding him, and former Sandstone PR director Marty Zitter as his guide, Mark takes a long, hard look at the state of America's libido (photo of Sandstone bathroom wallpaper by Darren Smith):
There was the time Sammy Davis, Jr., showed up with his wife, Altovise, accompanied by porn star Marilyn Chambers. "He grabs hold of me and takes me out to the middle of the room [Zitter, as always, was naked] and says, 'This is a warm cat!,'" recalled Zitter. "People are laughing, and he says, 'Wow, I think I'll get into this place.' So he takes off a cufflink, probably a 10-karat diamond cufflink, and drops it on the floor. And Marilyn Chambers grabs the cufflink! And then he takes off one of his diamond studs and drops that on the floor, and Marilyn grabs that. Then he lights a cigarette with his diamond-encrusted lighter [and tosses it aside] and Marilyn grabs that. And then he started doing a soft-shoe…"< Another time, a big fire swept through the hills of Topanga Canyon, in '71, and a woman swimming in the Sandstone pool slaked the lusts of a dozen or more firefighters, one by one. "She said, ˜We need more fires around here,'" laughed Zitter.
