Haight and Love in San Francisco

“San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words, or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world…
“Every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash…There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...
“We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…
“So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.”

-- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

Those words had a profound impact on me in the late seventies. Having been only ten- years -old during the fabled 1967 Summer of Love, I was late to the game, a neo-hippie. Nonetheless, in 1981, I made a pilgrimage to the epicenter of the sixties counterculture: the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets in San Francisco. I had hopes of seeing the high-water mark with my own eyes. Part of me fantasized that I would find a remnant of that time, an extant backwater, and magically manage to become part of it. The more realistic part of me knew better. Thompson knew it ten years earlier and tried to warn me.

By 1981, the high-water mark was gone. Or maybe, despite my best effort, I just didn’t have the “right kind of eyes.” All I found were shabby buildings and homeless people. The “energy of a whole generation” was all washed away. The only scrap I found was sidewalk graffiti saying “Thank you, John,” presumably Lennon, who had been assassinated just six months earlier. A homeless woman gave me the finger for no reason. I was crestfallen, but not surprised.

The counterculture died when the sixties ended. By late 1970, The Beatles had broken up; Jimi was dead; Janis was dead; four students were shot dead by their own government at Kent State. The counterculture had failed.

Raw consumerism and unbridled capitalism prevailed. The military-industrial complex raged on.

From 1981, fast forward nearly 40 years.  In 2019, My wife and I visited The Haight district, but as tourists, with no grand illusions about Thompson’s “High and Beautiful Wave.”

Haight-Ashbury has become a tourist trap, albeit with more grit than most of the city (and it still has its fair share of the homeless). Shops catering to hippie nostalgia crowd Haight Street. The house where Hendrix formerly lived is a smoke/vape shop (The Red House). There are ethnic restaurants of all stripes.

A ripple of sadness shimmered through me. So this is what it came to? All the hippie dreams of a better world came down to nostalgic sales of tie-dye shirts? At least there isn’t a McDonald’s, or even a Starbucks -- yet.

But really, what else should one expect? If the Hippie-Utopia was not to be, then what? Should the whole Haight-Ashbury district have been walled off and made into a museum? That seems impractical. Or perhaps razed to make room for a high-rise? That would be tragic.  With nostalgic commerce came rejuvenation. The architecture is still delightfully eclectic and in much better shape than in 1981.

The clock at Haight/Ashbury is permanently stopped at 4:20.

We spent a fair amount of time, and a fair amount of money, on Haight Street.  I bought a driver’s cap, of a style that could be purchased anywhere, but I found one I liked in a hat store that looked like it may have been there in 1967.  I wanted something to distinguish it as being from Haight-Ashbury, and came upon the idea of a small, enameled metal peace-sign pin.

Easy, right? There are literally dozens of shops up and down Haight that sell similar trinkets. I checked at least ten -- including The Red House smoke shop. There were hundreds of other enameled pins featuring pot-leaves, the Golden Gate Bridge, rainbows, etc., but no peace-sign anywhere. (Sign of the times: The pin I sought was two mouse clicks away on Amazon.)

Sigh. No Haight, no peace. Know Haight, know peace? Apparently not. No peace, no matter what. Too much money to be made to mess with that.

Yes, I bought a hat, and we bought a couple of over-priced meals, but I did not succumb to the temptation to buy a tie-dye shirt. Besides, I still have a couple.