Excerpts of the CD-ROM Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties! released in 1996, featuring interviews, clips, light shows, poster art, narration by Allen Cohen and Raechel Donahue, and music by the Grateful Dead.
While the Haight-Ashbury eventually became
known as the center for hippies, acid, and acid rock music, it was also the center of many artistic efforts, including painting, poetry, performance art, comics, posters, and literature of all kinds.
From 1964 to 1968, there swelled a gigantic wave of cultural and political change that swept first San Francisco, then the whole United States, and then the world. What was fermenting in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco was a powerful brew that would ultimately stop a war.
As any history book will tell you, the Haight's popularity grew as the Beat Generation in San Francisco was dying out. Many of the Beats, such as Allen Ginsberg, crossed over, but a younger generation gravitated to the Haight-Ashbury district, where the rents were cheap. Many were students at nearby University of San Francisco, UCSF, and S.F. State University. Others were musicians (such as the Grateful Dead), philosophers, artists (such as Alton Kelley), poets (such as Allen Cohen), apartment-dwellers, panhandlers, and even future CEOs of companies such as Pepsi, the Gap, Smith-Hawken, Lotus, and Rolling Stone magazine.
"The Summer of Love [1967] was the peak of the Haight Ashbury experience," wrote founding editor Allen Cohen in his essay on the Summer of Love. "Over 100,000 youth came to the Haight. Hoards of reporters, movie makers, FBI agents, undercover police, drug addicts, provocateurs, Mafioso and about 100,000 more tourists to watch them all followed in their wake."
The efforts of the pioneers in the Haight-Ashbury to create an enlightened community took about two years, from 1964-66, to reach the flashpoint, and during those years the music reached an artistic high point. By the end, two years before Woodstock and Altamont, overcrowding and the negative reaction of police and the San Francisco city government combined to make life in the Haight miserable for everyone.
Still, the experience of enlightenment had left a lasting impression on the minds and hearts of those who participated in the "hippie scene" either in the Haight or in far-flung communities that sprouted from Be-Ins and the acid-tinged philosophers such as Dr. Timothy Leary. The experience, like acid, reached a peak, then subsided, leaving everyone bewildered and changed for life.
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Overall Copyright © 1996-2013 by Tony Bove (for Rockument.com). Individual art, music, and video clips are copyrighted by their respective owners. Images by Alton Kelley and Tony Bove.
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Overall Copyright © 1996-2013 by Tony Bove (for Rockument.com).
Rock music outfits similar to the disco era and cool 60s hippie tie-dye are still popular dress up at parties and music events. these outfits are sold at PureCostumes.com year round.
