In the 1960s, Peggy Caserta played a significant role in the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury culture. She authored two memoirs, one of which she later regretted, and participated in the bell bottom jeans trend. Drug abuse, jail time, brief stints in the spotlight, and, ultimately, finding comfort in the Oregon forests characterized Caserta’s life. At the age of 84, she passed away on November 21.
She spent the final eight months of her life in a cabin she had constructed on a property she had owned for thirty-five years, on the Tillamook River.
Caserta grew up in Covington, Louisiana, after being born in New Orleans. She was the only child of Novell, who ran the family, and Sam, who worked as a mail carrier. Jackie Mendelson, her companion, claimed that she had the perfect family. Her dad and mom were amazing. She enjoyed being the center of their attention. In a boat that he built himself and named after Caserta, her father frequently took her fishing on the bayou.
Caserta knew Lee Harvey Oswald, with whom she attended elementary school. The popular Caserta was in high school. She excelled in arithmetic and received straight As. She was chosen as the homecoming queen and served as the team’s lead cheerleader. Mendelson remarked that she resembled Jessica Rabbit. She was quite beautiful. Her body was capable of knocking you out. The boys were enamored with her. She was also kind to everyone. She wasn’t arrogant.
Family archive of Peggy Caserta (far left)
Caserta was a lifeguard and swim teacher at a nearby country club when she was a teenager. She earned an associate’s degree from Perkinston Junior College. She quickly found employment with Delta Air Lines, but she soon became airsick and disliked working in customer service. After being fired from her desk job, she moved to Greenwich Village in New York City before settling in San Francisco. She cherished San Francisco. Mendelson claimed it was only starting to gain popularity.
In 1965, Caserta left her position at Delta to launch a boutique clothes store in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. After reading Sappho’s poetry, she came up with the name Mnasidika for the business. She bought her androgynous clothes, including blazers, shirts, and pants, from vendors in New York and Los Angeles as well as from her mother, who made fashionable peasant blouses.
One day, a customer arrived wearing pants with a triangle of paisley cloth sewn between the lower leg seams. Caserta discovered that jeans and boots could be worn underneath flared bottoms with ease. The flared jeans, which she had her mother make, were a huge hit. Caserta made an agreement with Levi Strauss because she was struggling to meet the demand for bell bottoms. She persuaded them to create a flared pants prototype, and they granted her a six-month exclusivity on the design. According to Mendelson, she became a millionaire. She had excellent intuition. She could sense what was about to happen and make money off of it.
Archive of the Peggy Caserta family
Mnasidika developed became a gathering place for upcoming local musicians. Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, and members of the Grateful Dead and Blue Cheer bands frequented the boutique where Caserta sold concert tickets for performances at the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom. People flocked there in large numbers. According to Mendelson, it was magnetic.
Janis Joplin, who lived across the street from Caserta, once stopped by the store looking for Caserta’s well-known bell bottoms. After a while, the two became best friends. They would have three ways with males, shoot drugs, and spend time together. According to Mendelson, that’s exactly the way rock and roll, sex, and drugs occurred at the time.
Caserta was devastated when Joplin passed away in 1970. Everyone held her responsible for Janis Joplin’s drug usage and demise. Mendelson stated that there was not the slightest bit of truth to that.
Caserta shuttered Mnasidika and launched a store on Polk Street called To Kingdom Come after Haight Street became overrun with drug users. She began to care more about obtaining drugs than maintaining the business. A robbery occurred to Caserta one day around Christmas. They took all of her expensive clothing, including her jackets and leather coats. She never fully bounced back from that. In 1972, she sold the store.
Soon after, Caserta collaborated with a ghostwriter to publish Going Down With Janis, a biography that described her friendship with Joplin. Because she gave up the right to any editorial control over it, the ghostwriter had ultimate authority and steered it in a direction she detested. She was angry at him. She was greatly saddened by it. According to Mendelson, she always made an effort to dissuade people from reading it.
In order to carry marijuana from Mexico up and down the California coast, Caserta got involved in drug trading. Two of her associates were detained and imprisoned in a Mexican jail. Caserta remained in the prison and dug a tunnel to help her associates escape since they permitted conjugal visits.
In the end, Caserta was taken into custody in California for heroin possession. She was incarcerated for two years as a woman. According to Mendelson, she held a prestigious position at the prison, serving as a bridge between the institutional staff and the inmates. She was respected by her coworkers. According to Mendelson, she was essentially a queen bee, exactly like she had been in high school.
Following her release from prison, Caserta made a fresh start in Santa Barbara and later in Long Beach, California, where she managed an office for a plastic manufacturing company.
Archive of the Peggy Caserta family
Caserta relocated to Picayune, Mississippi, to take care of her mother, who had dementia. She spent twelve years in Picayune. She co-wrote the novel I Ran Into Some Trouble with her friend Maggie Falcon. She referred to it as her book of redemption. It has to do with how she handled difficulties. She was an incredible storyteller, Mendelson said.
In her last years, Caserta served as a consultant for magazine writers and filmmakers telling the story of Janis Joplin and the San Francisco milieu in which Caserta played such an important role. There was hardly anyone alive anymore that had the kind of information that she did so people sought her out, Mendelson said.
Some 35 years ago, a friend in Oregon alerted Caserta about a property being sold on the Tillamook River. The land had a dilapidated fishing shack on it that eventually crumbled to rubble. After learning the property was on the river, Caserta bought it sight unseen. Caserta had a house built on the property and moved there eight months before her death. She knew that she had peace and tranquility and that s what she wanted at the end of her life, Mendelson said.
Note: Every piece of content is rigorously reviewed by our team of experienced writers and editors to ensure its accuracy. Our writers use credible sources and adhere to strict fact-checking protocols to verify all claims and data before publication. If an error is identified, we promptly correct it and strive for transparency in all updates, feel free to reach out to us via email. We appreciate your trust and support!
