CharacterDriven

Anyone over the age of 40 has probably heard of the “Summer of Love” which began at the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets, the now famous corner known as the Haight District of San Francisco. The neighborhood became the center of the San Francisco Renaissance and with it, the rise of a drug culture and rock-and-roll lifestyle by the mid 1960s. College and high-school students began streaming into the Haight during the spring break of 1967. San Francisco’s government leaders, determined to stop the influx of young people once schools let out for the summer, brought additional attention to the scene, and an ongoing series of articles in local papers alerted the national media to the hippies’ growing numbers. By spring, Haight community leaders responded by forming the Council of the Summer of Love, giving the word-of-mouth event an official-sounding name.

The mainstream media’s coverage of hippie life in the Haight-Ashbury drew the attention of youth from all over America. Hunter S. Thompson labeled the district “Hashbury” in The New York Times Magazine, and the activities in the area were reported almost daily. During that year, the neighborhood’s fame reached its peak as it became the haven for a number of the top psychedelic rock performers and groups of the time. Acts like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin all lived a short distance from the intersection. They not only immortalized the scene in song, but also knew many within the community as friends and family. Another well-known neighborhood presence was The Diggers, a local “community anarchist” group known for its street theatre who also provided free food to residents every day.

During the “Summer of Love”, psychedelic rock music was entering the mainstream, receiving more and more commercial radio airplay. The Scott McKenzie song “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” written by John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, became a hit single in 1967. The Monterey Pop Festival in June further cemented the status of psychedelic music as a part of mainstream culture and elevated local Haight bands such as the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jefferson Airplane to national stardom. A July 7, 1967, Time magazine cover story on “The Hippies: Philosophy of a Subculture,” an August CBS News television report on “The Hippie Temptation”[1] and other major media interest in the hippie subculture exposed the Haight-Ashbury district to enormous national attention and popularized the counterculture movement across the country and around the world.

The Summer of Love attracted a wide range of people of various ages: teenagers and college students drawn by their peers and the allure of joining a cultural utopia; middle-class vacationers; and even partying military personnel from bases within driving distance. The Haight-Ashbury could not accommodate this rapid influx of people, and the neighborhood scene quickly deteriorated. Overcrowding, homelessness, hunger, drug problems, and crime afflicted the neighborhood. Many people simply left in the fall to resume their college studies. On October 6, 1967, those remaining in the Haight staged a mock funeral, “The Death of the Hippie” ceremony, to signal the end of the played-out scene.

Terry Graham, or Tall Terry as he’s know on Salt Spring Island where he has lived for the past 40 years, was there that summer and sets the scene for listeners, first with his background and the trek from Vancouver to San Francisco, how he was immersed in the Haight culture from the moment he arrived and what, from his perspective, ended the “Summer of Love” and the hippie movement itself. His insight are fascinating for those who were there, wanted to be there or who just want to live vicariously through the memories of a raconteur.