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Flower power. Peace signs. Groovy. Instantly one word comes to mind: Hippies. From 1965 to 1967, young people the world over joined together to bring peace, love, and harmony to whoever would accept it or, at the very least, watch it on TV.
While tie-dye and hair a mile long may be out of fashion, one of the landmarks of this historic movement continues to draw travelers from around the world: our very own Haight-Ashbury, the undisputed Mecca of hippie culture and center of the 1967 Summer of Love.
Today, however, tourists expecting an abundance of flower children or psychedelic music wafting through the air will be sorely disappointed. While the Haight has retained much of its original spirit, it has also evolved into one of San Francisco’s coolest hangout destinations, one that locals and tourists flock to in equal numbers. So what makes Haight Street so hip? With the 40th anniversary of Woodstock just behind us, a look into the Haight then and now reveals how this iconic neighborhood keeps its groove.
In the late 1800s, the Haight-Ashbury served as a homestead for wealthy visitors and local aristocrats seeking to enjoy the newly created Golden Gate Park, and was luckily one of the few neighborhoods to avoid the fires following the 1906 earthquake. After the Depression and World War II, most of the Haight’s wealthier residents moved out to the suburbs, and by the 1950s many of the area’s majestic Victorian houses were empty or divided into apartments, their paint jobs bland.
Then, in the late 60s, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War both raging, hippies, inspired by the Beat generation of the 50s, converged in the Haight-Ashbury. Taking advantage of the cheap rent and empty properties, they cultivated an entire bohemia dedicated to hippie life. On the corner of Haight and Cole was the Straight Theater, which hosted the era’s iconic bands, including Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish, and the Grateful Dead. Down the street were the Print Mint and Phoenix respectively, the world’s first hippie print shop and head shop, hippie clothing stores like Mnasitika and Wild Colors, even a hippie restaurant. The San Francisco Oracle, an underground newspaper based in the Haight, announced the notorious Human Be-In on the cover of its fifth issue, a massive counterculture rally that shocked the media and gave a taste of what was to come in the Summer of Love. Dr. David E. Smith opened the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, under the belief that “health care is a right, not a privilege.” Love, music, art and drugs were everywhere, and practically all of it was free. The Haight had become the hub of a movement the likes of which had never been seen before.
Jim Siegel was only an adolescent when the Summer of Love rocked San Francisco and the world, but as a boy living in the area, he soaked it all in. “I was a twelve-year old hippie wannabe,” he says. By the time he was 16, Siegel was living in a commune called the Haight-Ashbury Switchboard, which published a newspaper, the annual Survival Guide, on how to live for free while giving back to the community, and had a hotline you could call if you were having a bad trip. “In those days, you didn’t buy from used clothing stores,” he said. “You walked in and took the clothes you wanted and left something else.” The hippie hamlet was in its prime.
The golden age, however, didn’t last long. By 1976, when Siegel was 19, the once-glorious Haight-Ashbury had devolved into a boarded-up slum. When Bob Stubbs, the owner of the Phoenix, announced that year that the famed drug paraphernalia store was closing, Siegel insisted that it couldn’t. So Stubbs gave him the entire surplus from the store and with it, while still living on welfare, Siegel opened his own head shop, Distractions. The shop still stands next to the Haight-Ashbury Music Center today, having survived through a fire, a location change, and the past 33 years.
Today, Distractions, Mendel’s craft shop, Roberts Hardware store, the Aub Zam Zam cocktail bar, Looking Glass stained glass store and the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic are the only businesses left from the end of the hippie era, and the Switchboard is just a memory. “We were the last of the real hippies,” Siegel said.
Haight Street, though greatly changed, is still going strong. Businesses like Amoeba Records, Piedmont Boutique and the Red Vic movie house are unique and bursting with almost electric character, and, along with the old mainstays, continue to bring locals back. Stan Flouride, a salesperson at Roberts Hardware and tour guide for the Haight-Ashbury Flower Power Walking Tour, and one of The Haight’s modern local legends, loves the street and the generation that made it famous. “I love the progressive attitude, and the mixture. It's a very diverse group of people,” he said. Amoeba employee Kelly Osato agreed. “It still draws all kinds of people,” she said.
Many Haight Street business owners also felt that diversity continues to be an important part of the Haight, and, despite a Ben and Jerry’s and an American Apparel mixed in with the independent boutiques, think the neighborhood hasn’t become too mainstream. A Gap store closed on the street a few years ago, and a proposal to put a Whole Foods on the corner of Haight and Stanyan caused an uproar through the neighborhood. Osato put the matter much more simply. “It’s one of the hardest places in the city to find a bathroom,” she said. “The only place is McDonald’s. It’s definitely not gentrified.”
What would today’s Haight Street businesses bring back from the hippie era? “Cheaper rent,” said Siegel. “When I opened Distractions, I paid $250 a month for rent. Today, I pay $7000 a month.” Since the 60’s, rent in the Haight has increased by a factor of 28.
Co-owner of Neda’s Flowers and Gifts Rochelle Baker was also concerned about the impact of rent inflation. “I think the increase in rent makes it prohibitive for people to start up. A lot of businesses have left because of the rent increase.”
So while no Be-Ins or communes may form there anytime soon, the Haight still retains a unique vitality. Whether visitors are sun children or tourists, whether the locals are protesting war or big-box retail, the Haight-Ashbury has an aura of creativity and camaraderie that transcends its history. As Flouride puts it, “People know the Haight for the 60’s, but there’s much more to it. We all get along together, and that seems to persist no matter what.”
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