Tourists, Memory-Seekers Travel Back To The ‘60s San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District Balances An ‘80s Outlook With Its Hippie Style

Sun., March 10, 1996

Gary A. Warner Orange County Register

Haight-Ashbury, the launching pad of the Summer of Love, has become a baby-boomer ‘60s Disneyland for day-trippers bent on a bit of tie-dyed nostalgia.

The flower children return with short-cropped gray hair and pot bellies under their Grateful Dead T-shirts to stroll the old San Francisco hippie haunt.

They find a neighborhood transformed, a ‘60s flavor with a ‘90s edge.

Hippies - gone. Drug pushers - gone. The Haight today is a sometimes uneasy mix of oldtimers and yuppies, tourists and transients.

Teen-age girls in granny dresses and purple-tinted sunglasses line up at body-piercing or tattoo parlors. Bare-chested boys wearing steelstudded black leather jackets strum acoustic guitars on the sidewalk and panhandle for tonight’s meal and beer money.

“She was really fine - she had green hair,” said one shaved-headed teen-age boy to another outside The Gap.

The neighborhood is an ethnic jumble. Italian cafes. African restaurants. Caribbean bars. Thai boutiques.

It’s a big comeback from the days after the Summer of Love in 1967. Speed freaks and junkies transformed the Flower Power mood into something dangerous and dark. By the early 1970s, the neighborhood was the turf of pimps and pushers. The turnaround began in the late 1970s when “urban pioneers” attracted by rock-bottom housing prices returned and bought up the beautiful Victorians and opened shops along Haight.

Today the Haight has lawyers, doctors and stockbrokers living in $400,000 homes who pass each day by teen-age runaways, druggie burnouts and hordes of tourists.

LSD and marijuana have given way to more sedate drugs - double espressos and microbrews sold in the district’s many cafes and upscale bars.

Catering to counterculture memories is big business in the Haight. The corner of Haight and Ashbury, the epicenter of the Hippie Revolution, boasts a Gap Store and a Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream parlor.

But you can still walk by the homes where Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia and even mass murderer Charles Manson lived during the ‘60s heyday. And the flavor of anarchy survives in the leftwing bookstores, body-piercing parlors and “head shops” that dot the avenue.

The Haight wasn’t born with the Summer of Love.

Developed in the last decades of the 19th century, it has more than 1,000 Victorian homes - among the largest collections in the United States. By World War II, affluent citizens had moved away and the “painted ladies” had been divided into cheap apartment houses. The low rents were a magnet first for the Beat Generation of the 1950s, then the hippies of the 1960s.

The celebrated “Summer of Love” was in 1967, though many locals claim the scene was better in 1966 before waves of outsiders brought the media and police, creating a “psychedelic ghetto.”

Join local historian Rachel Heller on a “Flower Power Haight-Ashbury Tour,” a two-hour trip into the history of the district.

“It’s about half ‘60s, because that’s what people are interested in,” Heller said. “The other half is the rest of the history, including when it was a Victorian resort destination.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: HAIGHT-FULL STUFF Signs, signs, everywhere signs At Bound Together (1368 Haight St.), an “anarchist bookstore”: “Save Mumia Abu-Jamal.” On realty office: “For sale: 2 brdm Victorian for $289,000 on Ashbury.” Wall poster for rally by Homeless Refuge Committee: “Protest the Police State - awake, sleeper, awake!” Most storefronts: “Willie Brown for Mayor.” Heard in the Haight, 1960s Groovy. Far-out. Trip. Ecology. Hippie. Yippie. Bummer. LBJ. Nixon. McGovern. McCarthy. Toke. Free clinic. Bell-bottom. “My old lady.” “Hey man.” “Make love, not war.” Heard in the Haight, 1990s Telecommute. Quality time. Arabica beans. Hops-heavy. B&B. Steve Young. Willie Brown. HMO. Pleats. “It’s a condominium conversion.” “A decaf cappuccino, no chocolate sprinkles.” “Think globally, act locally.” Heard on Haight, ‘60s and ‘90s “Spare change?” “Can I have a cigarette?” “How do I get to Haight and Ashbury?” Elvis may be king, but Jerry is God The Grateful Dead lead singer has gone to the great gig in the sky, but you still can visit the former Dead House at 710 Ashbury St. where Jerry, Bobby, Phil, Billy, Mickey and even Pigpen once lived. “Captain Trips” also bought a lot of his music gear at the Haight-Ashbury Music Center (1540 Haight St.), which has become something of a Deadhead shrine. Try Cherry Garcia, the ice cream named after the dead Dead leader, at Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Summer of Love Nostalgia Soundtrack Grateful Dead, “St. Stephen” Jefferson Airplane, “White Rabbit” It’s A Beautiful Day, “White Bird” Mamas & Papas, “California Dreamin”’ Big Brother and the Holding Company, featuring Janis Joplin, “Another Piece of My Heart.” Quicksilver Messenger Service, “Who Do You Love?” Country Joe and the Fish, “Fish Cheer” Mind Games Head shops remain legal because they claim they’re selling items to be used in smoking tobacco. If you want a look at the high-tech water bongs and other paraphernalia, visit Pipe Dreams (1376 Haight St.) with its Deadhead patches and ‘60s bumper stickers such as “Every cop loves a big bust.” The brightly painted Golden Triangle Smoke Shop (1340 Haight St.) also offers incense sticks and busts of Hindu gods such as Shiva and Vishnu. The Drug Scene It used to be LSD and marijuana. Now caffeine is the drug of choice for most of the Haight’s denizens. You can “catch a buzz” at Coffee Zone (1409 Haight St.) or The People’s Cafe (1419 Haight St.).

This sidebar appeared with the story: HAIGHT-FULL STUFF Signs, signs, everywhere signs At Bound Together (1368 Haight St.), an “anarchist bookstore”: “Save Mumia Abu-Jamal.” On realty office: “For sale: 2 brdm Victorian for $289,000 on Ashbury.” Wall poster for rally by Homeless Refuge Committee: “Protest the Police State - awake, sleeper, awake!” Most storefronts: “Willie Brown for Mayor.” Heard in the Haight, 1960s Groovy. Far-out. Trip. Ecology. Hippie. Yippie. Bummer. LBJ. Nixon. McGovern. McCarthy. Toke. Free clinic. Bell-bottom. “My old lady.” “Hey man.” “Make love, not war.” Heard in the Haight, 1990s Telecommute. Quality time. Arabica beans. Hops-heavy. B&B.; Steve Young. Willie Brown. HMO. Pleats. “It’s a condominium conversion.” “A decaf cappuccino, no chocolate sprinkles.” “Think globally, act locally.” Heard on Haight, ‘60s and ‘90s “Spare change?” “Can I have a cigarette?” “How do I get to Haight and Ashbury?” Elvis may be king, but Jerry is God The Grateful Dead lead singer has gone to the great gig in the sky, but you still can visit the former Dead House at 710 Ashbury St. where Jerry, Bobby, Phil, Billy, Mickey and even Pigpen once lived. “Captain Trips” also bought a lot of his music gear at the Haight-Ashbury Music Center (1540 Haight St.), which has become something of a Deadhead shrine. Try Cherry Garcia, the ice cream named after the dead Dead leader, at Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Summer of Love Nostalgia Soundtrack Grateful Dead, “St. Stephen” Jefferson Airplane, “White Rabbit” It’s A Beautiful Day, “White Bird” Mamas & Papas, “California Dreamin”’ Big Brother and the Holding Company, featuring Janis Joplin, “Another Piece of My Heart.” Quicksilver Messenger Service, “Who Do You Love?” Country Joe and the Fish, “Fish Cheer” Mind Games Head shops remain legal because they claim they’re selling items to be used in smoking tobacco. If you want a look at the high-tech water bongs and other paraphernalia, visit Pipe Dreams (1376 Haight St.) with its Deadhead patches and ‘60s bumper stickers such as “Every cop loves a big bust.” The brightly painted Golden Triangle Smoke Shop (1340 Haight St.) also offers incense sticks and busts of Hindu gods such as Shiva and Vishnu. The Drug Scene It used to be LSD and marijuana. Now caffeine is the drug of choice for most of the Haight’s denizens. You can “catch a buzz” at Coffee Zone (1409 Haight St.) or The People’s Cafe (1419 Haight St.).