Srila Prabhupada’s Western World Headquarters
Srila Prabhupada spent much time in his “Western world headquarters,” overseeing his worldwide mission.
By Karuna Dharini Devi Dasi (From Back to Godhead)
The place Srila Prabhupada called his “Western world headquarters” remains a vital oasis of Krishna consciousness.
Part One: Some History
Starting off in Midcity LA, 1968
ISKCON’s new center in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, was getting a good turnout. It was “the summer of love,” 1967, when idealistic youth gathering in the Haight to seek peace, justice, and alternative lifestyles often became overwhelmed by the area’s crime, pimps, and drug dealers. Srila Prabhupada’s disciples offered hot prasadam meals at the ISKCON storefront every day, and their center became a drop-in for wayward souls of the freewheeling lifestyle that had become an epidemic. That summer, the San Francisco devotees staged the western world’s first Festival of the Chariots, or Rathayatra, attended by thousands.
The devotees’ activities in San Francisco brought media attention to Srila Prabhupada’s movement, and one day Mukunda Dasa received a phone call from ABC TV in Hollywood. The caller invited Prabhupada and Mukunda for an interview on the Les Crane Show, scheduled for January 17, 1968. Prabhupada was already thinking about starting a center in Los Angeles, and this influential interview would bring him there.
Several of Prabhupada’s disciples had already arrived in LA and rented a storefront building at 2364 Pico Boulevard, in midcity, an area bordered by Beverlywood, the towering Wilshire Boulevard Miracle Mile, and Koreatown. The new center was furnished with an altar – two wooden orange crates covered with a madras. Atop the altar stood a mystical-looking print of smiling Krishna holding a cow. Dayananda Dasa, his wife Nandarani Devi Dasi, and Aniruddha Dasa anxiously awaited the day Srila Prabhupada would visit their new center. When Prabhupada arrived in Los Angeles the day before the interview, they had an apartment waiting for him on Saturn Street, one block from the center on Pico.
The next day was a success. Les Crane proved an amiable interviewer, and after that show, seen by millions, the devotees made many new contacts. Srila Prabhupada was happy to tour the new little center. Sitting under a tree in front of the apartment house on Saturn Street, taking the morning sun along with his massage, he gave his three disciples personal, friendly instructions. One was to regularly perform public chanting, harinama-sankirtana. To make this easier, they soon moved to a location on busy Hollywood Blvd., one block from Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
Prabhupada’s presence drew devotees from San Francisco, and the young kirtana leaders led enthusiastic chanting for long hours at this new location, often until 1:00 a.m. The group also sold Back to Godhead magazines and incense. One night Srila Prabhupada, chauffeured in a car, parked in front of the kirtana party, and the delighted devotees bowed down on the busy Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk, paying loving obeisances to their spiritual master.
The devotees regularly held a Sunday Love Feast for guests, as Prabhupada had done in New York. Yet just when the center was gaining popularity, the devotees were evicted due to the intense aromas from their kitchen and the sounds of kirtana. Out on the sidewalk with pots, pans, and bedding, and the deities of Jagannatha, Baladeva, and Subhadra in their arms, they accepted a passerby’s offer of the use of her garage. Soon Dayananda and Nandarani put up the married couples and single women in their home, a house in a poor neighborhood in Watts was rented for the brahmacharis, and Srila Prabhupada took the Jagannatha deities to his apartment.
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