Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood & Walking Tour: A flashback to the Sixties
Haight-Ashbury, which San Franciscans call The Haight, is one of the city’s most famous neighborhoods—mostly because of a single summer, the “Summer of Love” in 1967. The nation watched in awe or in horror, depending on who you were, as “hippies” turned the neighborhood’s houses into communes that summer.
But the Summer of Love didn’t disappear in the fall. Even today, the hippy ethos lives on in the memories of many neighborhood residents and in the dozens of Haight Street tie-dye and “tobacco supply” (wink, wink) shops.
Any day of the year, you can stroll Haight Street from Stanyan to Masonic and see old hippies, young hippies, wannabe hippies (kids from the ‘burbs visiting Gen-X clothing shops), tourists and street people. But to immerse yourself in hippy lore, take the 12-block Haight Ashbury Flower Power Walking Tour.
The tour guides are longtime Haight-Ashbury residents: Izu is a Summer of Love graduate who knew Jerry Garcia and Stannous Flouride was a Sixties radical activist. They share stories about the times and more stories of what happened inside the Victorians you’ll walk past: a converted 1895 firehouse where the firemen wore hats bearing the Grateful Dead logo, the Hare Krishna house, the house where Charles Manson lured young girls into his murderous cult, a house where Janis Joplin lived, and the Grateful Dead house.
These are private homes now, so you can’t go inside, but the tour ends inside a Victorian B&B where the old dining room is dubbed the Psychedelic History Museum. It’s filled with historic photos of Jimi, Janis, Jerry, Mick, and other icons of the era. At $20 for a two-and-a-half-hour tour, it’s a bargain.
The Haight ends at Stanyan Street on the west, where it abuts Golden Gate Park, although its other boundaries are a matter of debate. Most would agree that the Panhandle (the linear park between Oak and Fell Streets), Divisadero Street and 17th Street are its other boundaries.
Within the Haight are several micro-neighborhoods: the “gourmet ghetto” shops and restaurants of Cole Valley; the multi-million-dollar homes in the quiet Upper Haight; and the urban-feeling streets of the Lower Haight. What they share are some of the prettiest Victorians in the city and progressive attitudes that echo that distant summer of ‘67.
HelloSanFrancisco Tip: The Haight-Ashbury Street Festival, which draws thousands of people to the neighborhood for music and crafts, happens for the 34th year in June 2011.
Posted by Bob Cooper
