Haight-Ashbury is a district in San Francisco, California, USA,
named for the intersection Haight and Ashbury streets.
It is commonly known as The Haight,
and is known to residents as The Upper Haight.
Back in the 60's this was perhaps the most famous intersection in the world,
famous for its role as the hippie movement,
a place where young people came from all over the world
in search of love & peace.
graffiti along the end of street, leading towards Golden Gate Park
graffiti of Hendrix, Garcia, Joplin
If there's any area in San Francisco that evokes the images
of the long gone 60's hippie culture, the Haight is it.
Fragments of that flower power, incense burning, acid dropping,
tie dye wearing, peace and love vibing era can be purchased at smoke shops
and Eastern influenced outlets bearing names like Dreams of Kathmandu,
Pipe Dreams and The Love of Ganesha.
But save for a few hippie relics, the Haight today is a whole new scene.
Exclusive boutiques, high end vintage clothing shops,
second hand stores, cafes and hip restaurants have all settled in,
making the Haight one of San Francisco's commercial centres.
The neighbourhood was the centre of the San Francisco Renaissance
and with it, the rise of a drug culture and rock-and-roll lifestyle in the mid 60's.
College and high school students began streaming into the Haight
during the spring break of 1967.
During that year, the neighbourhood's fame reached its peak
as it became haven for a number of the top psychedelic rock performers
and groups at that time. Acts like the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead
and Janis Joplin all lived a short distance from the famous intersection.
They not only immortalized the scene in song,
but also knew many within the community as friends and family.
The Summer of Love attracted a wide range of people of various ages:
teenagers and college students drawn by their peers
and the allure of joining a cultural utopia; middle-class vacationers;
and even partying military personnel from bases within a driving distance.
The Haight could not accommodate this rapid influx of people,
and the neighbourhood scene quickly deteriorated.
Overcrowding, homelessness, hunger, drug problems
and crime afflicted the neighbourhood. Many people simply left
in the fall to resume their college studies.
On 6 October 1967, those remaining in the Haight staged a mock funeral,
"The Death of the Hippie" ceremony, to signal the end of the played-out scene.
The message of the mock funeral is as follows:
"We wanted to signal that this was the end of it, don't come out.
Stay where you are! Bring the revolution to where you live.
Don't come here because its over and done with."
That message was taken literally as large crowds did not come back
in the following years, as the neighbourhood, and in particular Haight street,
fell back into decline from the 1970s till the 1980s.
Citywide gentrification in the 1990s brought newer residents to the area
in the form of young urban professionals, twenty somethings
and thirty somethings living the hipster lifestyle.
During this period, local store owners and merchants, looking to capitalize on its past Summer of Love legacy, turned the streets into a tourist attraction, which it remains today.
Haight-Ashbury street fair is held on the second Sunday of June each year,
during which Haight street is closed down between Stanyan and Masonic,
with one sound stage at each end.
This is a rather crowded event due to heavy tourism.
The Pork Store Cafe, opened in 1916 as a butcher and sausage shop,
the cafe turned into a restaurant in the 50s under another name
and assumed its current title in 1979.
I have personally been served a
"killa breakfast" there, opens till late afternoon.
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