Summer of Love (1967): Haight-Ashbury and the Counterculture

The Summer of Love was the gathering of an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 young people in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1967. Drawn by music, cheap housing, psychedelic drugs and the promise of a new way of living, they made the neighbourhood the world capital of the hippie counterculture. The summer spread hippie fashions, music and ideas across America and Europe, but it also left behind overcrowding, drug abuse and disillusion.

Background: the rise of the counterculture

In the early 1960s, students and young people in the United States began to question the conformity of post-war society. The civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War and the influence of the Beat writers of the 1950s encouraged many to look for alternatives.

Haight-Ashbury, a district of old Victorian houses near Golden Gate Park, offered cheap rents after many families had moved to the suburbs. From around 1965 it attracted students from nearby San Francisco State College, artists and musicians. Bands such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company (with the singer Janis Joplin) and Quicksilver Messenger Service lived or played in the area.

The drug LSD was central to the scene. It was legal in California until 6 October 1966, and the “acid tests” organised by the writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters helped popularise it. Psychedelic posters and light shows at venues such as the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom gave the movement a recognisable style.

The Human Be-In

On 14 January 1967 a free event called the Human Be-In, or “A Gathering of the Tribes”, took place on the Polo Fields of Golden Gate Park. Roughly 20,000 to 30,000 people attended. The poets Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder spoke, local bands played, and the former Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary urged the crowd to “turn on, tune in, drop out”.

Newspapers and magazines across the country reported on the event. Their coverage turned the word “hippie” into a national label and made Haight-Ashbury a destination for young people seeking adventure or escape.

The summer of 1967

In spring 1967 local groups formed a Council for the Summer of Love to prepare for the expected influx of visitors at the end of the school year. Thousands arrived, many of them teenagers who had run away from home. They slept in parks, crowded communal houses and on the streets.

The Diggers, a radical community group, handed out free food in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park and ran “free stores”. On 7 June 1967 Dr David Smith opened the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic to treat young people who could not or would not see a regular doctor. It dealt with bad drug reactions, infections and malnutrition, and became a model for free clinics elsewhere.

Music carried the message far beyond San Francisco. Scott McKenzie’s song “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)”, written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, was released in May 1967 and became an international hit. The Monterey International Pop Festival, held on 16–18 June 1967 south of San Francisco, introduced Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding to a wider audience. The Beatles’ album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, released that spring, became the soundtrack of the season.

Music, art and ideas

The San Francisco scene produced a distinctive culture. Promoters such as Bill Graham at the Fillmore Auditorium and Chet Helms of the Family Dog collective at the Avalon Ballroom staged dances with long, improvised sets and swirling light shows. Artists including Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley designed concert posters with flowing, hard-to-read lettering that became the visual signature of psychedelia.

Local bands released influential records in 1967. Jefferson Airplane’s album “Surrealistic Pillow”, released in February, included the hits “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit”, and the Grateful Dead released their first album in March. In November 1967 Jann Wenner and the critic Ralph J. Gleason founded Rolling Stone magazine in San Francisco.

The hippies’ ideals were loosely defined. Many rejected consumerism, careers and conventional family life, and embraced peace, communal living, sexual freedom, Eastern religions and the use of psychedelic drugs to expand consciousness. The poet Allen Ginsberg had coined the phrase “flower power” in 1965 to describe peaceful protest, and flowers became a symbol of the movement. Underground newspapers such as the San Francisco Oracle spread these ideas.

Problems and decline

The idealism of the Haight did not last. The district could not cope with the number of newcomers. Housing was overcrowded, sanitation poor and diseases such as hepatitis spread. Many arrivals had no money and depended on handouts.

As the summer went on, harder drugs such as amphetamines (“speed”) and heroin became more common, and crime increased. Some young visitors were exploited or became victims of violence. Tourists arrived on bus tours to stare at the hippies, and businesses sold mass-produced versions of hippie fashion.

On 6 October 1967, a year after LSD was banned in California, local residents staged a mock funeral procession called the “Death of Hippie”. They carried a coffin through the streets to declare the movement over and to urge people to stay where they were and spread its ideas at home.

Legacy

The Summer of Love helped carry the counterculture to the rest of the world. Similar gatherings took place in London and other European cities, and communes, underground newspapers and psychedelic music flourished in the following years. Two years later the Woodstock festival in New York State became an even larger symbol of the era.

The counterculture influenced later movements for environmentalism, organic food, alternative medicine, the women’s movement and gay liberation. It also shaped fashion, graphic design and popular music, much as the earlier Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show had reshaped youth culture in 1964.

Critics, then and later, pointed to the damage caused by drug use and the hardship many young people faced. Historians generally see the summer as both a creative high point and the beginning of the decline of the original Haight-Ashbury scene.

Myths and facts

• Myth: The Summer of Love was a single organised festival. Fact: It was a loose, months-long gathering in one neighbourhood, with many separate events.
• Myth: Everyone involved was a committed hippie. Fact: Many visitors were short-term tourists or curious teenagers, and local activists complained that the media created the “hippie” image.
• Myth: The summer ended the counterculture. Fact: The original Haight scene faded, but communes, festivals and protest movements inspired by it grew in number in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Timeline

• 1966, 6 October: LSD becomes illegal in California.
• 1967, 14 January: The Human Be-In takes place in Golden Gate Park.
• 1967, spring: The Council for the Summer of Love is formed.
• 1967, May: “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” is released.
• 1967, 7 June: The Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic opens.
• 1967, 16–18 June: The Monterey International Pop Festival is held.
• 1967, 6 October: Residents hold the “Death of Hippie” mock funeral.

Why it matters

The Summer of Love turned a local bohemian scene into a global youth movement. Its ideals of peace, community and personal freedom left a lasting mark on Western culture, while its problems showed the limits of utopian living without resources or structure.