Haight-Ashbury: The hippies
During the heady days of the massive "be-in" in Golden Gate Park in 1966 and the so-called "Summer of Love" the following year, no fewer than 75,000 pilgrims turned the busy little intersection of Haight-Ashbury into the mecca of alternative culture. Where Beat philosophy had emphasized self-indulgence, the hippies , on the face of it at least, stressed such concepts as "universal truth" and "cosmic awareness." Characters like Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters set a precedent of wild living and challenging authority. The use of drugs was seen as an integral - and positive - part of the movement. LSD , especially, which was not then illegal, was claimed as an avant-garde art form, pumped out in private laboratories and distributed by Timothy Leary and his supporters with a prescription - "Turn on, tune in, drop out" - that galvanized a generation into inactivity. Life in the Haight took on a theatrical quality: Pop Art found mass appeal, light shows became legion and dress flamboyant. The psychedelic music scene, spearheaded by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin, became a genuine force nationwide, and it wasn't long before kids from all over America started turning up in Haight-Ashbury for the free food, free drugs and free love. Money became a dirty word, the hip became "heads," and the rest of the world were "straights."
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