The streets around the old Peden Steel Co. warehouse ran mostly deserted after dark in 1964. Its neighbors were a casket company and a vacant roller-skating rink. But John Peden decided he could give people a reason to venture to the corner of Hargett and West, on the fringe of downtown Raleigh. Peden, an N.C. State freshman who shocked Raleigh society with his long hair and beard, saw possibilities for the building when his father moved the company out to North Boulevard. He envisioned something along the lines of the coffeehouses in Cambridge, Mass., which he had visited in prep school. He wanted a place to hang out with his Raleigh friends and new ones from NCSU's School of Design, play and listen to music and talk with others who had begun to plug into the fledgling youth movement.

For 14 tumultuous months, Peden ran the Sidetrack coffeehouse, the destination for the young and adventurous in the mid-1960s. The corner room, with its low stage and mismatched wooden chairs, meant that someone's lonesome enthusiasm for painting, or old movies, or jazz, or politics, or folk and blues, could find company and inspiration.

With music by such rising stars as John Hammond and Doc Watson, poetry readings, jazz performances, art exhibits and an intensely political atmosphere, the Sidetrack was Cup A Joe, Amazon.com, the Cat's Cradle, Lump Gallery, myspace.com and Scorsese's Bob Dylan documentary rolled into one.

The coffeehouse lasted only as long as Peden remained in Raleigh. The building that housed it is long gone, replaced by a Dillon Supply warehouse. And the Sidetrack's story is unknown to most of the last two generations, to the young people who trek to the area's bars and restaurants today. But for its denizens, now in or close to their 60s, it was a place of passage.

"It changed my life," said Art Rogers, who documented the Sidetrack's history with his camera before moving to California for a successful photography career. "There ought to be a plaque or a statue: 'Here sat the Sidetrack coffeehouse.' "

The first hippie

With a father who founded a steel company, presided over the Carolina Country Club and worshipped with other wealthy congregants at Christ Episcopal Church, John Hoover Browne Peden hit young adulthood in ways that made him stand out in the slow-paced Raleigh of the day.

He often walked a different road from his society peers. While other kids went to Daniels Junior High neatly but discreetly dressed, the ninth-grade John might show up in a Brooks Brothers suit and bowler, and carrying a cane, says longtime friend Harry Stewart.

As he shuttled among Eastern prep schools, Peden found a new direction. He went from liking the smooth, folky Kingston Trio to preferring the acts at Club 47 in Cambridge, where traditional singers such as Lightnin' Hopkins and new stars including Joan Baez had performed. These artists were much on Peden's mind when he came back to Raleigh in 1963.

"He was so clearly a part of what was getting ready to happen in the '60s," said his sister Melissa Peden, seven years older than John. "I refer to him as the first hippie."

He grew a beard and wore his hair long. People called him Jesus Peden. When he roared by on his BSA motorcycle, "it was like mothers' clutching their babies to their chests and crossing to the other side of the street," says Barbara "Bunny" Church, a Broughton grad and Peden's first wife.

The city, home to about 95,000 people and with just one section of the Beltline complete, had seen few public signs of the youth movements developing in San Francisco, New York and Boston. Raleigh was more like the '50s, more "Andy Griffith Show" than "Easy Rider."

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