California’s signature scent of marijuana permeates the warm air in San Francisco’s Buena Vista Park. Dogs pant and people strip off. The arrival of an early summer has caught the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood off guard. It is a distinctive, blissed-out atmosphere but still an age away from the drug-fuelled, music-drenched summer of 1967, when 100,000 people converged on the Haight.
Back then, people came to embrace a higher consciousness and obey the “Turn on, tune in, drop out” message that Timothy Leary had delivered earlier that year to 30,000 people in Golden Gate Park at the “Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In”.”
The area quickly became a test-ground for 1960s counterculture, with the political activists from Berkeley joining the bohemians of Haight-Ashbury.
Comparisons and reflections are expected this year, though, as San Francisco is busy looking backwards, marking the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, remembering and debating its legacy. The summer of 1967 was an optimistic, heady time, following on from the beat generation’s championing of sexual liberation and freedom, and the Trips festival in San Francisco the year before, when 10,000 people watched the Grateful Dead perform, many of them high on LSD having heeded the festival flyer’s words: “The audience participates because it’s more fun to do so than not.”
This was a short-lived, peak moment of trippy rock posters and social activism, cut short by an influx of violent heroin dealers into the Haight, subsequent overdoses and, eventually, tourist buses arriving to gawk at the hippies. Come autumn 1967, many of the “flower children” had decamped to rural communes and the original pioneers and visionaries were gone.
Today, Haight-Ashbury is still a living – if touristy – flashback to that seminal summer, a district of nonconformists, tie-dye stores and emporiums with names like Little Wing (after the Jimi Hendrix song) selling fringed waistcoats, anarchist handbooks and bongs. Distractions boutique declares it has been “keeping Haight-Ashbury strange since 1976”, while other stores mirror the style of the 60s. There’s Rasputin Records, with a psychedelic sign depicting the Russian mystic in the lotus position; the Blue Front Café, advertising itself with a fantastic giant muscle-bound blue genie; and Hippie Thai, with its campervan logo and macrobiotic Thai street food. A huge mural above a fast-food cafe called Burger Urge illustrates the Summer of Love with Hendrix playing the guitar and Janis Joplin howling into a microphone. Buskers play harmonicas and Hare Krishna folk in orange robes tour the streets. You either love it or hate it.
From the open doors of Love on Haight, a shop on the corner of Masonic and Haight, Jerry Garcia’s weathered voice eases out – the shop stereo only ever plays the music of former residents the Grateful Dead. Multi-coloured fractals and tie-dye designs cover not only the walls and ceiling but also the staff. Proprietor Sunshine Powers, self-proclaimed Queen of Haight Street, is a well-known local figure and her youthful mop of curly red hair makes her easy to spot amongst the psychedelic pile-up. Despite not being part of the original movement (Powers was born in 1980), she is a keen modern-day promoter of the 1960s message of peace, community and love.
“What people forget is that all that hippy stuff – sex and drugs and music – was just frosting on the cake,” says Powers, her signature green glitter facepaint sparkling. “Social justice, community and healthcare, that’s what really mattered. That was the main drive. This 50th anniversary also gives us the chance to show the original pioneers that we’re carrying on their causes. After all, they may not be around in 10 or 20 years’ time.”
It’s easy to dismiss the peace and love message as corny and passé, but Powers is convincing when she speaks of “valuing people over things”, and her beliefs are proven later when I learn of her considerable financial support of Taking it to the Streets, a charity helping vulnerable homeless youths, of whom there are many. (This is depressing given the torrent of wealth pouring into the city from nearby Silicon Valley. If the Summer of Love set out to end stark inequality in its own community, it appears to have failed, despite the efforts of people like Powers.)
Back outside, I step over paving slabs painted with large red love hearts, towards family-owned Gus’s Community Market. Its motto of “local produce, local farmers, locally here for you” lured me inside, as did the smell of sweet Californian berries mixing with the soft aroma of baked grains. Every conceivable wholefood is packed into every available space. The label on a bottle of organic kombucha, a fermented tea, claims, cringingly, that its number one ingredient is “love” and that it hails from a batch “small enough to hug”. Psychedelic posters advertising street-fairs from the past decorate the walls, acting as reminders that common ecological awareness and vegetarian lifestyles have been central to this part of California since the 60s. Organic food and Middle Eastern food, so popular worldwide today, was sold at the Monterey music festival of 1967, where Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and the Mamas & the Papas all played.
Outside, posters advertise one of the biggest shows of the year: the De Young Museum’s Summer of Love exhibition (until August 20). I head there next.
De Young is a giant copper-clad museum in the open green spaces of three-mile-long Golden Gate Park, where goldfinches and turquoise jays flit between palm and eucalyptus trees. It is a cool, calming space.
In the garden, signs for the Summer of Love exhibition draw links and contrasts between 1967 and 2017. One reads “hippie 1967, hipster 2017”, seemingly ignoring the fact that hipsters emerged as a subculture in the 1940s. Another reads “free clinic 1967, affordable care 2017”, reminding us of the non-judgmental clinic set up in the Haight in 1967, complete with a “bad trip” room.
Inside, the roar of Jefferson Airplane introduces the exhibition. In one room, Ben Van Meter’s double- and triple-exposed images from the Trips festival are described as “a documentary ... from the point of view of a goldfish in the Kool-Aid bowl”. Fashion-focused rooms show the journey from uptight girdles and garter belts to loose, free-flowing maxi dresses and flared trousers. The first bell-bottom jeans, made in San Francisco at the Levis factory then on Valencia Street, are displayed. Flared, or boot-cut jeans, we are told, were originally made to fit over cowboy boots.
Today, the Levis store on Market Street, the main downtown shopping drag , has a rack of Summer of Love clothes inspired by the company’s archive, including a two-tone suede jacket at $1,200. It’s easy for corporations to jump on the Summer of Love theme, seemingly ignoring key messages about simple living, inclusion and community. In April, the San Franciso branch of department store Neiman Marcus held a pop-up called The Love Boutique, featuring vintage pieces from the 60s alongside new Balmain, Chloe and Alexander McQueen garments that cost thousands of dollars.
One of the best items in the exhibition, however, is one of the smallest. Made of goatskin and decorated with silk chain-stitch embroidery by Haight-Ashbury couturier Linda Gravenites, it is Janis Joplin’s exquisite handbag from 1967. Suspended in a glass case, it looks like new, its red beads still shining. Joplin told Vogue magazine in 1968 that Gravenites “turns them out slowly and turns them out well and only turns them out for those she likes”.
Later, I meet Greg Castillo, a counterculture expert and associate professor of architecture at Berkeley. He says some of the legacies of 1967 are more subtle and less dramatic than sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. The recycling logo, today one of the most recognisable in the world, is a direct product of that era. It was designed in 1970, its spinning, revolving graphic based on the mandala – a symbol for the cosmos borrowed from eastern cultures. Its designer, Gary Anderson, has said that the spirit of the 1960s directly influenced his design.
Later, as a sunset turns the Californian sky bubblegum pink, I walk through Chinatown, making a literary pilgrimage to the landmark City Lights bookshop and publishing house. Open until midnight daily, America’s first all-paperback bookstore has been riding the counterculture wave since it was founded in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a veteran of the Bay area now 98 years old. It still publishes books on social and political issues, as well as the poetry it is best known for, much of which influenced the local 60s zeitgeist. Ferlinghetti famously published Allen Ginsberg’s controversial 1955 poem Howl. A poster on the wall today announces that “printer’s ink is the greatest explosive”, while another reminds us that “democracy is not a spectator sport”. City Lights, with its wall of ’zines, still holds regular radical events and has held on to its anarchic charm.
Back at my hotel, the Zeppelin, in the theatre district, a couple of blocks from the alarmingly drug-addled streets of the Tenderloin and the department stores of Union Square, there is also an air of ’67. The Doors’ Light my Fire – released in May of that year – is playing in the lobby and on the wall a giant mural of a doe-eyed girl with flowers in her hair overlooks the chill-out area. The staff are disarmingly friendly, too, and a general air of liberalism dominates.
The spirit of the Summer of Love does appear to linger in this city. Despite the vast and obvious inequalities – which some say are steadily worsening – San Francisco feels like a flexible and creative city, somewhere that is still capable of opening minds.
Way to go
The trip was provided by American Sky (01342 886721. americansky.co.uk), which offers five nights at the Hotel Zeppelin from £999pp, including flights from Gatwick with American Airlines and room-only accommodation.
For Summer of Love events, see sftravel.com/summer-love-2017
FAQs
Why did people come to San Francisco during the Summer of Love? ›
The Summer of Love began on January 14, 1967, when some 30,000 people gathered in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. They came to take part in counterculture poet Allen Ginsberg and writer Gary Synder's "Human Be-In" initiative, part of the duo's call for a collective expansion of consciousness.
Why is Haight and Ashbury so famous? ›Haight Ashbury is a thriving San Francisco neighborhood where cultures and eras meld together. Made famous by the hippie movement in the 1960's, Haight Ashbury was once the home to revolutionaries, famous singers (including the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin) and cult leaders.
What happened during the Summer of Love 1967? ›The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
What was one effect of the 1967 Summer of Love that took place in San Francisco as part of the counterculture movement? ›The realities of 'dropping out' hit home: 'free love' was used to excuse rape, thousands suffered from serious drug addiction and mental problems, or became homeless. San Francisco was overrun with dealers and teenage runaways, and the Haight-Ashbury scene deteriorated through overcrowding, homelessness and crime.
Why did hippies like San Francisco? ›The San Francisco summer is often remembered best because it was the cultural center of the hippie movement where free love, drug use and communal living became the norm. This period of time also helped spawn the ubiquitous 'flower children' that became a major American symbol in the 1960s.
Why did hippies live in San Francisco? ›A brief history of hippies in San Francisco
There was once a time when the old Victorian homes of Haight-Ashbury were some of the cheapest in the city. Hard to believe, but true. The low prices drew thousands of youth to the area in the mid '60s, and it quickly became the heart of the burgeoning hippie culture.
The Haight-Ashbury is worth walking through even if you are not a fan of the neighborhood's flower power vibes or rock music scene. The Haight is one of the few neighborhoods that were not hit too hard by the 1906 earthquake. As a result, it has the highest concentration of still-intact Victorian homes in the city.
What does the name Haight mean? ›From Old English hēahþu (“height”), a topographic surname for someone who lived at the top of a hill.
Why did the hippie movement end? ›The End of the Vietnam War
But by the 1970s, the war was gradually winding down, and finally by 1975 (when the war ended) one of the core factors for their raison d'être was gone. Protesting the war was a mutual goal that held the movement together, but when it ended members started to dissipate.
In 1967, change was in the air in San Francisco. That year, nearly 100,000 young people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, turning the city into the epicenter of a cultural phenomenon known as the Summer of Love.
Why did the Summer of Love Fail? ›
Hard drugs, including speed and heroin, increasingly flooded the Haight and increasing numbers of original Hippies of the Haight fled the city. The “Death of Hippie” event has always served as the unofficial end of the Summer of Love, yet it certainly wasn't the end of the hippie counterculture.
Who is responsible for the Summer of Love? ›Inspired by the recent laws that banned the usage of LSD, the event was organized by artist Michael Bowen and advertised in the San Francisco Oracle, drawing anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 people to Golden Gate Park The event featured a series of speakers, live music and epic amounts of LSD.
How did the Summer of Love impact the world? ›The Summer of Love was a time when free sex, drugs and lots of rock 'n' roll — the more mind-bending and psychedelic the better — fueled an idealistic Utopian vision for world peace, love and anti-materialism.
What event kicked off the Summer of Love? ›Kicking off 1967 — and setting the tone for the Summer of Love — was the Human Be-In, a music festival/pro-LSD rally in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Jan. 14. The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane performed, poet Allen Ginsberg chanted, and LSD advocates Timothy Leary and Owsley Stanley handed out their wares.
What did the Summer of Love result in? ›Two years later, Woodstock drew 400,000 young people for "three days of peace and music" that became a muddy cultural touchstone. The ideas of the Summer of Love had been set loose in mainstream American culture. They fueled the antiwar movement; they fueled the environmental movement.
What drugs did hippies use? ›Hippies created their own communities, listened to psychedelic music, embraced the sexual revolution, and many used drugs such as marijuana and LSD to explore altered states of consciousness.
Is there still a hippie community in San Francisco? ›San Francisco
The corner of Haight and Ashbury streets were ground zero for all of that. Like elsewhere in San Francisco, there has been some gentrification since 1967. However, the neighborhood has retained its hippie flair and there are still plenty of groovy things to do in Haight Ashbury.
The term “Summer of Love” originated with the formation of the Council for the Summer of Love during the spring of 1967 as a response to the convergence of young people on the Haight-Ashbury district, which began with college and high-school students streaming in during the 1967 spring break.
What are good hippie names? ›- Celeste. With its ethereal meaning (“heavenly”) and it's soft sound, Celeste conjures images of a doe-eyed, curly-haired, peace-sign-flashing, hippie-dippie freak.
- Dawn. ...
- Harmony. ...
- Indigo. ...
- Janis. ...
- Karma. ...
- Meadow. ...
- Saffron.
Two of the best examples of hippie communes that have managed to survive are The Farm in Tennessee and Twin Oaks in Virginia. The Farm, as mentioned on the last page, has been the subject of many documentaries. Founded in 1971, it is one of the most famous communes in all of America.
Is hippie 60s or 70s? ›
hippie, also spelled hippy, member, during the 1960s and 1970s, of a countercultural movement that rejected the mores of mainstream American life.
How do you pronounce Haight? ›How to Pronounce Haight - YouTube
What does Haight-Ashbury look like today? ›Today, the Haight-Ashbury District is still a lively and interesting part of San Francisco. There are a number of funky shops, restaurants, and other historical sites. Most of the shop owners here work hard to keep the flower power and hippie vibe in the neighborhood alive.
What famous park surrounded the hippies neighborhood? ›Haight-Ashbury is surrounded by 3 beautiful public parks: Golden Gate Park, The Panhandle (the least interesting one), and Buena Vista Park, which surrounds the district on the opposite side of Golden Gate Park.
What ethnicity is the name Haight? ›The distinguished and ancient surname Haight is Old English in origin, and traces its history back to the Middle Ages, when the island of Britain was inhabited by the Anglo-Saxons.
Which best defines Haight and Ashbury? ›a district of San Francisco, in the central part of the city: a center for hippies and the drug culture in the 1960s.
What does the last name Hight mean? ›The surname Hight was first found in Derbyshire, where the name appeared in the late 13th century. The Hight name, like many surnames, is probably topographical in origin, referring to someone who lived at the height, or summit of a hill.
What is a modern day hippie? ›Nowadays, they are called bohemians or naturalists.
What is the hippie era called? ›The counterculture movement was the result of a generation that rejected social norms and traditional ways of previous decades.
What happened Haight-Ashbury? ›"By the fall of 1967, Haight-Ashbury was nearly abandoned, trashed, and laden with drugs and homeless people," blogger Jon Newman wrote in his essay Death of the Hippie Subculture. "With the Haight in ruins and most of its residents gone, it was simply unable to operate as a hub for music, poetry and art."
Who were the people in San Francisco who share and offered everything for free? ›
The Diggers
During the mid- and late-1960s, the San Francisco Diggers organized free music concerts and works of political art, provided free food, medical care, transport, and temporary housing. and opened stores that gave away stock.
“Flower Power” was a popular term used in the 1960s and 1970s, a time of change throughout the United States. From protests against the war to protests demanding equal rights for every citizen, the 1960s were a tumultuous yet interesting time in American history for social change.
Was Woodstock during the Summer of Love? ›Glen Burtnik's Summer of Love Concert focuses on classic rock plus a little bit of soul from the period of time generally between the “ official” Summer of Love, 1967, continuing through the famous Woodstock Music and Art Festival in 1969 and ending around 1973, the time of the Watkins Glen Summer Jam, the largest ...
Why do you think this event was called a Human Be-In? ›The Human Be-In took its name from a chance remark by Beat artist Michael Bowen made at the Love Pageant Rally on 6/6/1966. The playful name combined a humanist outlook plus the sit-ins against segregation, starting with the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville.
What made Woodstock so successful quizlet? ›What made Woodstock so successful? It was peaceful.
What did hippies embrace? ›They embraced ethnic and cultural diversity and tolerance. They spoke out against greedy capitalism, racism and government imperialism. There was a healthy questioning and distrust of the government and corporations. Young people spoke out and went to protest marches against the Vietnam War.
What was the Human Be-In and Summer of Love? ›The Human Be-In was an event held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Polo Fields on January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol of American counterculture and introduced the word "psychedelic" to suburbia.
Which decade was about free love? ›A mark of bohemianism until the 1960s, free love had become by the 1970s-1980s a historical predecessor of the radical critique of sexuality notably carried on by feminist and gay liberation movements.
What is Summer of Love Meaning? ›The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
What is Summer of Love Redux? ›The show promises a trip down memory lane for baby boomers, and a showcase celebrating the art and aesthetics of the San Francisco counterculture of 1967—exactly 50 years later.
What and when was the Summer of Love? ›
When was the second summer of love? ›With influences from Detroit, Chicago, Germany and Ibiza, Rave was an international movement that Britain made its own. The Second Summer of Love, as the summers of '88-'89 became known, redefined nightlife for generations to come.
Who wrote Summer of Love? ›Summer of Love
What was one effect of the 1967 Summer of Love that took place in San Francisco as part of the counterculture movement? ›The realities of 'dropping out' hit home: 'free love' was used to excuse rape, thousands suffered from serious drug addiction and mental problems, or became homeless. San Francisco was overrun with dealers and teenage runaways, and the Haight-Ashbury scene deteriorated through overcrowding, homelessness and crime.
Why did the counterculture fail? ›Because the countercultures were mass movements, they could not provide community. When these failures became obvious, the countercultures disintegrated. They were replaced by the subcultural mode, which abandoned universalism, and so was able to address all these problems successfully.
What happened at Altamont Motor Speedway that prompted the end of the hippie movement? ›It was late afternoon on December 6, 1969 when a helicopter dropped the Rolling Stones into the maelstrom that was "the Altamont concert". As Mick Jagger moved through the crowd, a young man rushed at him and punched him in the face, screaming, "I hate you, I hate you." It was a sign of things to come.
What happened at the Summer of Love? ›In 1967, around 100,000 hippies descended upon the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco. There, they took drugs, performed and listened to psychedelic music, engaged in nonconformist political activism, and practiced "free love." The phenomenon was given a name: "The Summer of Love."
Why was the Summer of Love important? ›The Summer of Love was a time when free sex, drugs and lots of rock 'n' roll — the more mind-bending and psychedelic the better — fueled an idealistic Utopian vision for world peace, love and anti-materialism.
Where is the Love in San Francisco? ›The Summer of Love actually began in the winter of 1967, with the Human Be-In, a massive “gathering of the tribes” in Golden Gate Park led by counterculture icons including Timothy Leary (who delivered his famous “tune in, turn on, drop out” speech), Gary Snyder and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
When was considered the Summer of Love? ›1967: Psychedelic '60s
Psychedelic rock was the music of the Summer of Love. More than 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco in 1967. Music festival attendees were called hippies, and many sported tie-dyed fashions.
Why did the Summer of Love Fail? ›
Hard drugs, including speed and heroin, increasingly flooded the Haight and increasing numbers of original Hippies of the Haight fled the city. The “Death of Hippie” event has always served as the unofficial end of the Summer of Love, yet it certainly wasn't the end of the hippie counterculture.
Why was it called the Summer of Love? ›The term “Summer of Love” originated with the formation of the Council for the Summer of Love during the spring of 1967 as a response to the convergence of young people on the Haight-Ashbury district, which began with college and high-school students streaming in during the 1967 spring break.
Who is responsible for the Summer of Love? ›Inspired by the recent laws that banned the usage of LSD, the event was organized by artist Michael Bowen and advertised in the San Francisco Oracle, drawing anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 people to Golden Gate Park The event featured a series of speakers, live music and epic amounts of LSD.
What is a hippie called today? ›The Modern Day Hippies
Nowadays, they are called bohemians or naturalists. You can read more about living a bohemian lifestyle or what it means to be a modern day hippie in these articles. Learn more about the movement in the trends and lifestyle sections here.
"By the fall of 1967, Haight-Ashbury was nearly abandoned, trashed, and laden with drugs and homeless people," blogger Jon Newman wrote in his essay Death of the Hippie Subculture. "With the Haight in ruins and most of its residents gone, it was simply unable to operate as a hub for music, poetry and art."
Who were the people in San Francisco who share and offered everything for free? ›The Diggers
During the mid- and late-1960s, the San Francisco Diggers organized free music concerts and works of political art, provided free food, medical care, transport, and temporary housing. and opened stores that gave away stock.
Kicking off 1967 — and setting the tone for the Summer of Love — was the Human Be-In, a music festival/pro-LSD rally in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Jan. 14. The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane performed, poet Allen Ginsberg chanted, and LSD advocates Timothy Leary and Owsley Stanley handed out their wares.
Why do you think this event was called a Human Be-In? ›The Human Be-In took its name from a chance remark by Beat artist Michael Bowen made at the Love Pageant Rally on 6/6/1966. The playful name combined a humanist outlook plus the sit-ins against segregation, starting with the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville.
What is Summer of Love Redux? ›The show promises a trip down memory lane for baby boomers, and a showcase celebrating the art and aesthetics of the San Francisco counterculture of 1967—exactly 50 years later.
What was the Summer of Love called? ›The year 1967 was designated the “Summer of Love” when somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 youth flooded 25 blocks in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. Beforehand, the neighborhood was home to a small community of “hip” residents interested in art, music, theatre, and literature.
What Park was the Summer of Love at? ›
The seeds of San Francisco's “Summer of Love” were planted the previous winter. On January 14, 1967, more than 20,000 people gathered in Golden Gate Park for the “Human Be-In,” an event organized by a coalition of local artists and activists.
What did hippies embrace? ›They embraced ethnic and cultural diversity and tolerance. They spoke out against greedy capitalism, racism and government imperialism. There was a healthy questioning and distrust of the government and corporations. Young people spoke out and went to protest marches against the Vietnam War.