Haight-Ashbury: On the Road to the Summer of Love

The Summer of 1967 marks the origin of the hippie subculture as tens of thousands of young people converged in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and captured the attention of the world. It was a cultural revolution, sparking the beginning of the movement that followed the Beat Generation, the literary movement celebrating non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.

The 1950's Beat Generation bohemians had congregated around San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. The Haight-Ashbury's elaborately detailed, 19th century, multi-story, wooden houses became a haven for hippies during the 1960s, due to the availability of cheap rooms and vacant properties for rent or sale in the district; property values had dropped in part because of a proposed freeway.

The Haight-Ashbury district was sought out by hippies to constitute a community based upon counterculture ideals, drugs, and music. This neighborhood offered a concentrated gathering spot for hippies to create a social experiment that would soon spread throughout the nation.

The first ever head shop, Ron and Jay Thelin's Psychedelic Shop, opened on Haight Street on January 3, 1966, offering hippies a spot to purchase marijuana and LSD, which was essential to hippie life in Haight-Ashbury. The neighborhood's fame reached its peak as it became the haven for a number of psychedelic rock performers and groups of the time. Acts such as Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin all lived close to the intersection. They not only immortalized the scene in song, but also knew many within the community.

***The era's greatest luminaries, from Jerry Garcia to Allen Ginsberg to Jimi Hendrix, all lived nearby. It makes me yearn for a place that was once the epicenter of peace and love and youth in revolt, a place I never had the chance to experience myself and can only dream of. ***

PEACE AND LOVE