Summer of Love: a journey through San Francisco 50 years on

21.07.2023 - 08:05 / roughguides.com / Bob Marley

San Francisco was the epicentre of the Summer of Love, a movement intent on changing the foundations of American society forever. Half a century later, Tamara Hinson journeys through the city to discover how much of that hedonistic era still lingers.

In Haight-Ashbury, a Bob Marley track blares from Amoeba Music, an independent bookstore. Nearby, fragrant clouds of smoke billow from an apartment above a street art-adorned smoke shop.

Modern-day hipsters are slowly replacing those in the neighbourhood with the closest ties to 1967’s Summer of Love. But look closely and you’ll still see reminders: in the tie-dye filled windows of Love on Haight, a glitter pot-filled store owned by Sunny Powers, a local woman whose motto is “Never be afraid to sparkle”. And in Jammin on Haight, an explosion of psychedelic T-shirts and Grateful Dead music posters.

The Grateful Dead’s former publicist, Dennis McNally, is the man behind On the Road to the Summer of Love, an exhibition helping refresh the memories of those with little recollection of that heady, marijuana-fragranced summer, 50 years on.

One of the stranger exhibits at the California Historical Society’s exhibition is a sheet of LSD. Its owner avoided prosecution by claiming his glass-covered sheet of class A drugs was clearly for display, not consumption.

It’s one of several events commemorating the 50th anniversary of 1967’s Summer of Love, when more than 100,000 activists, artists and entrepreneurs flocked to the city to change the world with music, art and positive vibes. They protested about the Vietnam War, set up organic food movements and sang about healing the world. And, as the LSD exhibit suggests, they got high.

It was an artistic revolution. A political revolution in many ways, too. It was like a carnival

One of McNally’s favourite photos depicts a smiling policeman threading flowers onto string. It was taken at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. “Everyone’s wearing flowers, they’re all high and having a marvellous time,” says McNally.

“The head of security said he could have employed Kindergarteners. There simply weren’t any problems. It’s an amazing picture: the policeman’s just there, stringing his orchids. He knows he doesn’t have to work that day.”

The California Historical Society is close to Haight-Ashbury, the epicentre of the Summer of Love movement. Historian William Schnabel was 17 years old in 1967, and spent that summer hanging out in Haight-Ashbury, mixing with Diggers – the name given to the people most closely connected with the Summer of Love. They opposed authority, championed communal living and believed that everything should be free.

Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco

Schnabel recently wrote about his memories of Haight-Ashbury’s most