Part of the brilliance of Freewheeling docs for me is that they’re accessible to anyone regardless of religious or political or philosophical persuasion, however fluid. And deeply engaging and thought provoking- especially those banger endings that make you feel a profound “wow …”
@@donnahilton471 ''Peace & Love''' ''Summer of love'' BAH!! What a load of BULLSHIT that was!, Look how the world we live in today turned out, Also, The so called ''Hippies'' were jerks
Enjoy yourself by all means. But be productive or you will surely die. Societies are built on individual efforts to survive. Any surplus should be put towards other individuals’ ability to thrive.
carl marx intentinally removed HUMAN NATURE cause his failed math eqaution and fooled many people with his failed social system marx is as smart as failed freud
Most all the chores of quotidian life fell to women. Many got fed up with the situation, during the incipient period of the feminist movement. Also, women felt vulnerable to the lawlessness and crime.
I was involved with Haight Free clinic and subsequently Marin Open House and your chronology is accurate and well done. I have also been apart of other non-publicized experiments that were free-spirited, creative, community expressions of "freedom, peace and love". Even communities that are away from the mainstream and non-publicized go through change and evolution and come to an end. It is important to understand that "everything exists as a moment in time". Events in time are unpredictable, chaotic and sometimes unbelievably wonderful, but they eventually change. Life continuously flows as people change, evolve and their lives change. Nothing is meant to last. What is important is what take away from it, what you give to it and what you use to build the next thing. Things can be going amazingly but then some key people fall in love, marry and have children, move away from the community to build their own family or members want to build a career separate from the community. It is important to remember that all creative outbursts whether it be beatnik, abstract expressionist, the folk scene, hippie, punk, the early 80's East Village art scene all become media fabrications and they all come to an end. None of CBGB original bands embodied the same ethos and applying a term to describe them is useless; the same with the 1940/ early 50''s NYC abstract expressionism. Life is too big and too complex to use a single term to describe it. And, people are too complex and evolving to stay together to maintain something forever. Contradiction is the nature of life. Nothing is meant to last; but many things are meant to celebrated! Let it Be, Forever, Now.
@@pbattis1 I am grateful to never have made either acquaintance! However, it's scary that Roger Smith did not have Manson's parole revoked after his repeated arrests.
portland is what happens when you hand out free money to millions of drug addicts and then make it legal for them to live on the streets. all the talk about open mindedness and liberalism is a crutch for a bunch of drug addicts with obliterated lives to cope with how they live. it is absurd that after watching cities like portland collapse under the weight of their misguided politics - that people still support the far left. because cities like sf and portland are their endgame.
George Harrison nailed it ! I was a Hippie ( I'm 71 ) , played guitar n bands ( still play solo ) , but I also worked and served my country in the Army for 10 years. I paid my bills and took showers and had a clean home .It was never a " Forever thing " . nothing is ! All movements , good or bad , will fade out and die ! It is the way of things ! Some of my friends tried to go out there and starved , then came back . Getting high only lasts a short time . Food , Rent and Bills are monthly , every month ! You could try farming , but you really have to work for that ! No getting high first thing in the morning , your feeding livestock at 04:00 in the morning and plowing until 12 midnight ! Utopia is for the Rich !
In 1967 I was 18,had shoulder-length hair with bell-bottom pants.Grass was $10 for a "lid",hash $10 a gram acid was a dollar a hit I remember much of the stuff in this video. By 1968 the speedfreaks and other trash moved in and destroyed the place Thus is the world!
Excellent. I was a hippie in upstate NY where we had a small scene. So glad I didn’t migrate to the Haight at the time when I was a minor. Ended up moving to SF in 74 when the Haight was dead and the gay movement was in ascendancy. I then worked doing outreach on the street there to help kids who were still running away to the Haight in the 80s. Kids STILL are runaways and homeless there to this day. The Haight has a powerful legacy. Oh, and I remember distinctly reading about The Death Of the Hippie in the newspapers of the time….
The Death of Hippie was one of many events organized by The Diggers < they started the "back-to-the-land" movement and free communes in Northern California.
I went to the Haight in the mid 1980’s. I was in my 30’s but still looked like a hippie. I was flabbergasted when some teenager asked me for money so he could buy some acid. I just laughed. I couldn’t believe it.
One of those times i've always been fascinated by, and i love mid/late 60's psychedelic music and culture. I was born in 71, so i was a generation late. I always think that with any of these countercultural moments, its not about the drugs, the clothes, the lingo, its the lessons that you should learn about not fearing difference and realising that behind the social divisions, constructs and labels of class, race, gender, nationality etc we are ALL the same humanity and no matter what happens in the future our shared humanity will remain. Once Haight Ashbury's moment ended, once the Monterey Pop concert or Woodstock were over, THATs when the hard work was needed. It is precisely when the musics over when the lesson should be understood. It is what you take with you in your heart and apply to the rest of your life when these cultural movements have gone. The peace and love, community, love for nature and others etc, was completely forgotten by the vast majority of those people once they grew up/got corporate jobs - save for an occasional joint, and listening to the doors while snorting a few lines. Once they realised that the REAL revolution meant giving up some of the privileges that mom and pops bestowed on them, they ran as fast as possible back to what was safe and comfortable. Some people DID walk the walk, and made sure that those core ideals got passed down to future generations. The late 80's/early 90's acid house/rave culture in the U.K was a seismic cultural shift that carried A LOT of those idealistic lessons from the 60's into a new cultural movement that spread around the world. Some people go along for the ride, but some people get the bigger message and emotion being expressed by everyone, and try and do better for the world. We are not just mindless drones existing on this rock just to slave our lives away for faceless corporations, we are thinking, feeling human beings, capable of creating beautiful things to inspire each other to make the world a better place for everyone like science, art, music and poetry! Pass it on!🫶
It should be mentioned that proliferation of amphetamines did a lot of damage to that scene. However, this video appears to be censored regarding drugs.
I understood it was hard drugs that flooded the Haight-Ashbury (Hashbury) and the early rise of the Reaganoids (aka vile capitalist racists), that refused to embrace the fresh winds of social change the hippies manifested.
I remember them, but why would us young kids need uppers anyway? LOL. Oh I remember, the thing was to MIX speed with Hash or pot. Man all that really was dumb!
I was born and raised in Hawaii and in 1967 I lived with my cousins in Santa Rosa. Curious about all the talk about Haight-Ashbury and the hippy movement we decided to check it out. What a culture shock. There were so many people from all walks of life sharing their music and artistic talents. What was really cool was the number of people gathering to share love for all. I never encountered any negative people. What a moment in time for me.
i was just south of you in petaluma. my crazy older brother ran away to go live in golden gate park in the summer of 68. The police caught his sorry ass and my mother drug me down to the haight police station on the greyhound bus to get his sorry ass. I will never forget the bra hanging over the haight/ashbury street sign. It was like navigating thru an insane asylum. People talking to themselves and others passed out on some drug. That image of him with his torn shirt and dirty clothes and defiant look on his face lives on in my memory. I really didn't like the city. The hells angels sf and oakland chapters used to come into town and take over one of the parks on their way up to the russian river in the summer. Lucky for you, you only saw the good side of it all. Santa rosa back then was pretty insulated from it
I was a doctor at the hate Ashbury clinic during the summer of love. It was quite an experience for a boy from Kansas. I watched the pitiful nature of the poor kids in 1968 that were our patients. There were some wonderful people who tried to take care of them And try to love them, but you could watch the whole thing disintegrate from our unique perspective. I enjoyed this documentary and I think I saw myself in one of the clips but I could be wrong. Thanks for documenting this so truthfully and the spelling the myth that the hippie culture was something to be admired. My book is on Kindle. It’s called the entry written and it pretty much reflects the anti-war movement and the pitiful MEDICAL shape that many of the hippies were experiencing. Jack Klausen MD
My documentation of the collapse of the. Hippie culture is juxtaposed to a story of true love in this chaotic scene. Read “THE END REWRITTEN” by Jack Klausen MD on Kindle
I remember the hippie movement well. In 67, I was living in the east bay and there was a teenage hippie couple that hung out at our local bowling alley. They told me they were moving to the Haight Ashbury district and they wanted me to go with them. I told them I was only 11 years old and I don't think my mom and dad would let me. I thought about it though.😧
I was right there on Stanyan at this time. It kills me that I missed Jimi in the Panhandle but I was only 7 at the time so it's understandable. I remember going into a Diggers Free Store on Carl and getting military Sargent's Stripes for free. Overall you have really captured the vibe of the time and how I remember it. Some of the photos I have never seen. Jack Cassidy looks so young! I ended up working for Bill Graham about 15 years after the "Summer Of Love". I also worked at the Fillmore for a time but it was a Punk Club called the Elite Club by then. Crazy memories. Thanks for the Trip!
@@lemurianchick If you get the chance, read a book about CIA's Dr Sidney Gottlieb titled "Poisoner in Chief". CIA set up two 'free clinics", one on the Lower East Side in Manhattan and the other in the Haight Ashbury. The CIA was convinced the Soviets were into mind control and they countered by trying to use LSD to do the same. The people in the Haight and on the LES they considered as nothing more than scum, so why not use them as human guinea pigs. Because of CIA intervention, I'm convinced people like Charles Manson were constantly released from prison simply because they were useful as CIA lab rats. Gottlieb every bit as evil as Dr Mengele.
@@lemurianchick The CIA angle is well documented. There was an ex New York cop who worked for the agency. He hired a hooker to bring guys to an apartment where he dosed them and filmed them. He was a monumental scumbag, claimed he could do anything he wanted, kill people, anything. Foreign and domestic press were everywhere, anthropologists doing field studies, tourists from Kansas and lots of parents looking for their kids.
The idealism of youth gives way to the realities of getting a job, paying the mortgage, and looking after the kids. Not to mention hard drugs and partying are a dead end.
@@davidcleveland-yv6my the moody blues song driftwood states time waits for no one my friend. no not even you. like sand through the hour glass,so are the days of our lives. drugs waste your time. i have wasted some time there years ago. learned my lesson got out with a brain left. no going back. time keeps on slipping into the future. i remember these words today.
@@julenepegher6999my one gf that attended the concert with me looked just like Janis. She sang like her, too. Janis brought onto the stage her "Lil' ol' friend from Texas" ... Johnny Winter came running on the stage with his white albino hair and guitar in the air. ... and one day my Janis-look-a-like friend had a new boyfriend ... he was albino!!
There were still some hippies hanging around the Haight in '73 when I went there. One house was open to the hippies to use as a crash pad. I was told it belonged to the grateful dead. It had no furniture but it was carpeted if I remember right.
The filth in the hallways of a lot of these dwellings was disgusting. I saw a girl of maybe 15, 16, sitting in a pile of filth, eating dog food from a can with a spoon. That is where the freedom and love of the summer ended for me, personally.
I lived in communal housing across the bay for 7 years. When I first went to San Francisco in summer of 1968, it was just about all over. The SF police had reportedly raided the community and everyone moved on, mostly north to Marin, I believe. By August 1969, the hippie momenent, despite Woodstock that same month, lost its appeal to young people due to the shock of the Murders by the the Manson communal family. The only thing that kept any of the pieces alive, perhaps, was resistance to the Vietnam War.
@@dsanders5142 yup so they did thei r best to brain wash the general public that eveyone with long hair who was unshaven and unshowered was another manson!!! it worked ..they succeeded!!
The "resistance to the Vietnam War" was only a resistance to the draft. Once Nixon ended the draft, no one gave a crap about the Vietnam War nor the 3+ million that were slaughtered by the Communists after the Democrats voted to cut off military aid.
I find it fascinating too. I was a kid in the sixties, living in San Francisco. I remember a lot of chaos, fear, and confusion. I also remember the peace, love, and laughter from the hippies. I didn't really understand what was happening since I was a child, but 'll never forget how it felt to me. What a time it was. I've still got a little hippie in me. Far out, man. LOL!
@@tw8464 You got that right, As the old saying goes, ' Things are not what they seem,' The reality is it was all nothing but an Illusion a cruel farce, Those kids that came out to Haight Ashbury believing in all that so called ''Peace and Love'' ''Utopian'' shit ended up homeless, alone, destitute, dying from drug overdoses, and murdered.
As a product of Haight street this is refreshing to see because the aurra is still there. It will never leave! I have been here since 1964.....I became homeless 2005-2008 and lived on and around HIPPIE HILL....The drum circle became integral again at that time and pivotal for a foundation of hope until the H.O.T. Team got me inside where last 4th of July I reached 15 years NO ALCOHOL! I am extremely thankful for San Francisco!!
@@Michelle-499hope that you get back again one day. Is there a park in Ireland like this? The freedom of expression was great especially to be homeless here! What really made it fun was all of the people that were experiencing this together. It harvested Camaraderie.
@@Michelle-499hope that you get back again one day. Is there a park in Ireland like this? The freedom of expression was great especially to be homeless here! What really made it fun was all of the people that were experiencing this together. It harvested Camaraderie.
@waynefoote3781 fingers and toes crossed I get to revisit. No we don't have anything like this in Ireland, plenty of parks but nowhere near the colourful expression like this.
Visited the Haight in summer of '68 to check out the scene. By then the summer of love had become the summer of hell. Lot's of young people sitting outside the shops very stoned and asking for spare change from passersby. Found out later that the Haight's freewheeling culture collasped under the weight of too many young people and the grifters attracted to that scene. Gracia was right: Freedom doesn't mean "free"; you must also have responsibility for the orderly functioning of the culture or it soons descends into anarchy. Sic transit gloria mundi
The demise? The ‘68 riots & democratic national convention in Chicago (the Chicago 7 and thousands came behind my house to avoid arrest & escape the anti war protests / riots & heal & head back to Cal etc or even Canada after burning draft cards) by “69 at the same time Woodstock was happening, the Manson family was killing & about to make hippies into the evil monsters that BigBrother & Nixon warned about 🙈🤬
Im going to see Dark Star Orchestra and take Loads of LSD There was no demise , your just not invited to the party I have been to 7 Dead gigs this year alone
the dealers moved in....got messy. twas still quite groovy in the late 70s & 80s when had a renaissance. today its quite touristy, but still has a fun flavor. tho few of the original shops remain.... the annual street fair was wild... The Grande Piano was a kool cafe where we all gathered for coffee and...... the free clinic was awesome and helped alot of folks.... i lived in a georgous old lady (victorian) bldg for yrs near haight and ashbury....rocker ghosts everywhere... The haight is beloved.
Yea, I remember when the dealers came in, our philosophy of down playing big money was over. The dealers looked just like us too. Really, looking back, there was no way to really win the world peace idea. We still spoke and sang of it for years and tried to be nice to each other though. The over 30's people would say we were communists. I was too young to really know anything about communism but, I see why they thought that now.
Yeah, I'm a 4th generation native San Franciscan, and I could answer the question of what led to the demise when it was posed 2 minutes in. It was people from San Francisco, till it was massively publicized, then it was people from everywhere, latching on and sucking the life out. In a very similar sense, this has always happened to San Francisco and its natives, and is happening to this day. The phenomenon just changes form over and over. People come and bastardize the pure nature of the city's culture and thieve what they can from the heart and soul of our city. With mass influx of people from elsewhere came predators and opportunists, people looking to manipulate, deceive, exploit, take advantage, rape, batter, pillage, and they did, leaving traumatized innocents in their wake, as those sorts always invariably do. That's not about San Francisco, and it's no reflection on the city, it's the exceedingly typical reality that something magnetically beautiful does attract something dark and ugly that seeks to abuse. And then, of course, drugs. Not weed, not psychedelics, the harder drugs. Speed flooded in via the Hell's Angels and others and turned young people inside out, people became violent, desperate, addicted, developed speed psychosis. Some of this was touched on in this video. It was disappointing to see the entire joyful spirit and idealistic culture of the location and time period end on such a dark deranged note here, which I can only understand as yet another transparent denigration and robbery from the pure heart of my city. Very weak, lazy way to conclude.
What happened to SF was the exact same thing that happened to Greenwich Village in NYC in the 60s : the Corporate Real Estate interests started jacking up the rents to insane prices, oftentimes not just doubling, but quadrupling rates for commercial and residential tenants, forcing tenants to move out and small business owners to close shop. Bookstores and record shops are never high profit businesses and once one 'counter culture' store closed, others had to follow suit. Large Real Estate developers are always the ones who kill communities and force people and small businesses out. I see it happening in 2024 like crazy in my suburban city just outside NYC; developers forcing out small business owners who've been in the community for decades to pave way for "Luxury" Co-ops and Condos. They've done the same from coast to coast in the U.S. They buy off local officials who will then declare "imminent domain" and pay small store owners only a fraction of what their property's worth. This is what led to the decline of NYC and SF and LA in the 1960s and made them some of the most expensive and unlivable and unaffordable cities in the U.S. It wasn't drugs or anything else but Greed pure and simple.
The irony of this run on sentence is the same "hippies" that frequented those neighborhoods are the same greedy corporate fuckers that jacked the price of everything 20 yrs later. It's almost like they knew that the communal ideology will not and can't work. Because......GREEED!
Sitting up straight and meditating... Breathing in... absorbing love... Breathing out... dissolving stress... Sending love and healing energy to everyone reading the comment section.(~);}
Good doc. I remember the popularisation of the Haight in the mass media in early 1967. I was very attracted by it but was too young to go there myself. But I was certainly influenced by the scene. Still have a romance about that time and place and still am fond of the music.
@@freewheelingideas amazing it is I still listen to this kind of music everyday but lately I've been playing a lot of Robin trower twice removed from yesterday and bridge of sighs those two albums are absolute fantastic I can not stop playing them lol 🥁🥁
@@julenepegher6999 hell yeah Robin trower yes man he's one of my favorite guitar players I'm being honest I like him better than Hendrix and I Love Jimi Hendrix but Robin trower 👍🥁🥁
Must have been fun for a few months or so in 1966 and 1967, for a few thousand people who were there. I find it all rather depressing to hear about now.
Spent time there and sure not the same. Love your video on RUclips and may God Richly Bless you and may Jesus Christ show you His GREAT love that He has for each of YOU ❤️ Just ask Him to show you personally His Love as He did to me years ago 😊
"When I hear them sing songs of love in the streets, I buy a gun and bar my door because I know there is a storm of hypocrisy brewing" - Alan Watts I've never seen anything good that didn't sour when enough people became aware of it. As soon as something takes on a sense of fashion and people start seeing that's there's money to be made, it's over. There's an honest, creative clique with special interest, and then there's everybody else. And on that note I'll add another quote: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” - Oscar Wilde Hell, throw in a zen proverb for good measure: Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
@TauruSeason I suppose. I know the zen masters laugh all the time, the idea being of course that taking existence seriously is fundamental to the mind construct, which in my humble opinion is the problem a lot of religion tries to mitigate in various ways. This is not a Christian bid, but I do find it interesting that Genesis more than implies that our transition from a "self unaware consciousness" (bit of a contradiction) to whatever we have now is going to be nothing but trouble. I'm not so sure that helps though, because it seems to me that if you boil it down, we're not deviating much from the script of a rabbit or even a virus (if you wanna get real misanthropic) anyway, so who cares what really goes on between here and there. And so I seem to drift into some form of nihilism :D
@TauruSeason I'm not going to watch a bunch of Heaven's Gate content. Are you asking me something? Boil it down. Chances are that if you're able to pose a question with clarity, you'll be able to answer it yourself.
Far out! I'm 66 now, and my "beatnik" parents dragged me out of North Beach, San Francisco (276 Francisco St., little hovel is still there) in '60 or 61'. I didn't know then what I would be missing until just a few years later! The drug me over to Germany to pick up our custom-made 1961 VW Bus and did Europe in style, apparently. I do remember some of it, but we shipped the bus and us back to NYC, moved not quite far enough upstate to a little factory village on the Hudson River. I'm still here, could never afford to go back. I started getting hip to the news when Kennedy was murdered, got a subscription to MAD magazine, and watched that disgusting "conflict in Vietnam" on TV. And listening to San Francisco and Greenwich village on the brandy new FM band radio. I lived what turned out to be walking distance to Yasgur's Farm, but Pop didn't want me to go, and he didn't want to drive me to Woodstock. The big kids wouldn't take me, and I chickened out on riding my bike the mile or so to Nyack, stash the bike, climb up onto the NYS Thruway and hitch a ride. Still think I could have pulled it off! Sometime around '74, the Grateful Dead (whoever they were) began following me around, I had gone haywire in middle (gulag) school, and Pop caught a miracle and put me in what I now have to call a "Hippie School", very hard to explain, experimental back then. And I grew up loving everyone and spreading as much Peace as I could. Pop married a wonderful woman who survived him, and we talk a lot. Turns out, while I was being a River Rat, and wharves, I guess, my Stepmom was in Haight Ashbury struttin' down the boulevard! Man! She hung around with all the people I wish I'd met! Jerry before the beard, even. Endless stories! Her favorite musician is Bob Dylan, and was then, but it turned out, over and over, they were at the same party, bar, park, and she never saw him! Stoned and she missed it, I guess. Sorry to blather, and I got lots more (met Kesey and Krassner, that's two chapters there.) Okay, back to your regular programming... Peace, Love, Earth!
Now the place is crime ridden, overrun with homeless people, businesses have abandoned it and the entire state, look at what they have done to this beautiful state and city.
I was there during 1980 on my first journey around America and just saw very sad burned out hippies who seemed disillusioned, burned out by substances without much to show for their lives. Others had turned to nature, left and had small holdings , self sufficiency A few had rediscovered the Holy Bible clinging onto its truth rather than seeing everything through a haze. .
The curiosity seekers didn't help matters. Jerry Garcia once said when tour busses filled with curiosity seekers rolled in that was it they moved to Micky Hart's ranch nearby.
@@freewheelingideas The Diggers held a "Funeral for a Hippie" procession down the street. It was Oct.6, 1967, the end of the Summer of Love. The casket was full of beads, shaved off beards and marijuana. The wanted to convince the media to stop.
I was in touch from the beginning and far after the end. I have never heard of beatniks being associated with Hippies. They were two distinctly different cultures and societies.
This is seemingly even handed. I love that Jerry Garcia talked about what freedom really is. It doesn't mean no rules and everyone must contribute. He certainly experienced moochers and people wanting to stay at his house for free. I'm so glad I was a little too young to fall for early hippie drug scene. Some of those people barely made it into their sixties with their mind intact.
Got a ride in 1967 to the Monterey Pop Festival from Fullerton with a friend, Jackson Browne and his lost wax gold jewelry partner, Thomas Thomas, as they had a display booth on the grounds. We spent 4 1/2 days on the grounds. Two weeks later, I went to the city (San Francisco) for the Summer Solstice Celebration, went back to playing in LA & Orange County until I got a call in 1969 to come up and play with a group headed by a vocalist living in Larkspur that I'd played with in So-Cal called Rejoice. While playing with them I ran into a singer I'd first run into a couple of years before at Sid's Blue Beet in Newport Beach - Lisa Kindred. After I left the group, Lisa and I started playing together, she on vocals & rhythm acoustic and I accompanied her on my Chet Atkins model Gretsch. Then we got married while living in North Beach, then Stinson Beach and, finally, the Haight where we played with Debbie Olcese's (now Sipes) band Ascension. Lisa best described the change in the Haight when bodies started showing up in dumpsters by making the following observation: "There was a time when anyone with long hair was your friend".
Every counter-culture scene is short lived. Nothing gets done when nobody wants to be productive. Yes producing art is fun and important, but you gotta pay the rent and eat.
I grew up in the Bay Area during that mess with the hippies. Yes indeed, I got caught in the middle between generations (baby boomer generation had just phased out in California), however I always wanted to be a hippie in my younger years. I saw those acid freaks spacing out the redwoods and thought wow, that looks like freedom! Little did I know about the dark side of that movement. By the time I left home (age 17 in 1976), the Jesus movement was in full swing. Little did I know about the dark side of THAT movement. What can I say... I was a misfit among misfits.
8:20 ... When some Madison Avenue suits notices The Psychedelic Shop (and others) the InStore chain (and others) was born and Psychedelia/Hippies/Counter Culture equaled $$$$... 8:29 .. "is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?" 🤣 14:25 ... Quicksilver Messenger Service was my SF band of choice (thd mid '60's lineup, minus Dino Valenti)..❤❤❤ To paraphrase Garcia and quote Robert Heinlein, "there's no such thing as a free lunch."
Moccasins were big in marketing and yes everything my sister or her friends made the industry just stole it. It took away the individualist in everyone.
@@LaurieValdez-zk3dy I was a little late to really groove in the scene - born late '52. Grew up in Brookhaven - would take the bus or train into Philly to enjoy the center city scene around Rittenhouse Sq., and on Sansom and Arch streets. The Be-In's in Fairmont Park culminated with the first Earth Day. I'd drifted into the local music clubs - Electric Factory, Main Point, 2nd Fret - my first big concert was "The English Invasion", JFK Stadium, Wed., July 24, 1968. The Who, Pink Floyd, and lots of rain - It was some crazy scene. After that, I tried to spend every weekend I could in town. The next major milestone was the Atlantic City Pop Festival in Aug., 1969 - that's when the worm fully turned for me. I graduated and left town in 1970, but it started a lifetime of following bands, playing music, and seeing concerts. Looking back, it was one of the most exciting and happiest times of my life.
It was a great scene. Hippie life had its perfect pure moments. Problem was humans are complicated and without some structure to your life there was a lot of free time and people got bored and took up careers and study and art expression and families and filled their days. Hippie life involved too much hanging around and music and partying. For most people it was a short phase in youth. I can move in any crowd and no one would ever know but I am still a pure hippie at my core. The beliefs and core tenants of the cultural revolution are so much a part of me that it's more powerful than religion.
The only difference I see is that the Beatles had a furious work ethic. They put out an unbelievable amount of songs and albums. They'd do things like 36 concerts in 35 days on tour. Incredible work ethic that the hippies didn't have.
I lived in the Haight in the early '70s. 2024 Oak Street, across from the panhandle. I remember a free store on Haight Street and the Omnibus Cafe, a beer joint. Very fond memories.
I lived very close to you at 1555 Oak Street, apt10, across from the Panhandle, too. Same time.as you, too. Janis Joplin lived around the corner on Lyon and Jefferson Airplane had a place n the opposite side of the Panhandle. What was the name of that street? (It was one-way running in the opposite direction to Oak) I remember I paid S97.50 a month for a HUGE, beautiful, but cock-roach infested apartment. Like you I too have fond memories. I feel blessed to have had that wonderful experience. ,
@@lindapearson881 Do you remember the fish & chips restaurant on Haight Street? Did you ever go to the Omnibus Cafe on Haight? Also, there was a free store on Haight Street. Remember? The #7 Haight bus was only 25 cents.
The time to have been there would have been 1966---before the rest of the world found out about this little Utopia for societal misfits and descended on the place and ruined it in 1967. I've heard more than one "native" of the area say that the REAL summer of love was in 1966--not 1967. Also, LSD was still legal up until October of that year.
Easy, people on drugs and doing nothing except hanging out. Even the Beatles said it when they visited. They found it depressing. The scene was a delusion.
My friends who lived in North Beach left California following the Monterey music event in June of 1967. My friend and his wife told me, "The experiment is over for us - it won't be too much longer before it all sours." The mass media at the time didn't help matters either. Too many under-age kids flocking to the Haight didn't either.
The only thing that flourished at Haight/Ashbury was the music and musical creativity. Everything else about the hippie culture was a downside. Drugs debilitated everyone who took them, some more quickly than others. Alcohol had the equivalent effect, and was just another drug to deaden your frontal lobes. "Free love' was nothing more than promiscuity with a cool name, which functioned to undermine the value of lasting man/woman partnerships as well as marriage. The hippies eventually settled on the "us versus the pigs" victim mentality, which was where radical feminism got its start in the US. The music is nostalgic and valuable, but the drug culture of the 60s was an abject failure on every other level. From the culture of "peace and love" emerged addiction, homelessness, mental illness, and societal disintegration.
I'm going to my 8th Dead gig this year, all on LSD with everyone else Some tourists come and go , that's true I guess they should just pass it on to me
Great video, both footage and commentary. Thanks! Interesting and thought provoking to step back to this place in time that led the country in many ways.
The Haight Ashbury scene peaked with the "Human Be In"--after that watershed moment mass media descended upon the community and it got commercialized. Additionally, once the district got mass publicity it drew the attention of a lot of shady characters who came in and created major problems--one writer described it as "a pack of hungry coyotes circling innocent lambs." Add to that the mass overcrowding with runaways along with infrastructure shortages and things collapsed pretty quickly. I think the ultimate lessons are: 1) A community like the 60's Haight Ashbury HAS to fly "under the radar" to be sustaining. 2) As Jerry Garcia stated in this clip--there truly is no "free lunch." Along with freedom comes responsibility. If you want a community like this the individuals in that community have to be responsible to do the necessary work to keep it going. (Sadly, many hippies only wanted the pleasure--and none of the sacrifice.)
Hustlers, Addiction, overdosing, predators, cons, bad drugs, thieves, evil vibes man, that's what killed the summer of love ☮️ Even Charles Manson had since it coming down, and had gotten the hell out of there.
Actually, Manson ran TO the Haight because he saw the runaway girls there as easy pickings. He preyed on lost souls, told them how beautiful they were, and they followed him to the ends of the Earth...sometimes literally.
@@frogger1952 He preyed on lost souls, told them how beautiful they were, and they followed him to the ends of the Earth...sometimes literally....... Same thing happened with Jim Jones a few years later in San Francisco.
this is awesome! A real human created documentary with real person narrating without that familiar fucking Ai mispronouncing shit out of context. 10 thumbs up!!! 😃👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
I didn't experience the Haight back then, but today it's a fun place to go. Obviously, it's nothing like it was before. Nothing is like it was before. Still, I love the shops, the restaurants, and those beautiful houses on its back streets.
One thing that made the Hippie scene possible was that a young person could get by on very little money. It was very possible to pursue other interests. Example a used car was under 100.00. Rent for a several bedroom house was 75 a month. All utilities and phone 30 a month. Hotels 30 dollars a week. A full meal in a restaurant with a tip 2 to five dollars. Full breakfast with coffee OJ toast eggs hashbrown bacon was 75 cents, Hotcakes were a quarter. All hippies shared houses so rent was 10-20 $ a month per person. A couple days work a week was enough to live very comfortably in the 60s.
Its hard to live where you just get high everyday and don't have to work and take responsibility for yourself. Alot of poor addicts we know that can't last long.
My mom and dad never got into this . I was born in the 60’s .dad was an officer flying helicopters in Viet Nam and mom was a nurse , we grew up in upstate ny . Mom saw a a lot of young people die from the drug scene and it broke her heart . We never had contact with these people . But mom spoke to grandma about the young people dying and getting very sick from the drugs .we kids were all to young to know about any of this .
My mother was into the music of the time and that rubbed off on me. I do remember her telling me to watch out for those Hippies when she would let me walk up to the store for candy.
A lot of the people I knew in the 70's that were into The Grateful Dead were literally incapable of taking care of themselves on their own. Some of them eventually committed suicide.
What a great name for a band - Big Brother and the Holding Company!!! I thought 1966 would've been a great time to have been young there!!! I was only five then, a bit too young. My sister went to Haight Asbury in 69 or 70, and became addicted...
In 1968 I was 15 and the idea of going to San Francisco seemed so cool to this English kid, the whole era seemed to shine with a promise of something new. A couple of years later I dropped out of school and reality hit. Now I am 70 and I look back to those ideas with a kind of wistful nostalgia and the echoes of that promise still resonate with me today. I now live in a communist country, not that I agree with that philosophy, and have mellowed. Maybe that is what the promise was about when tempered with reality; an acceptance of everyone for what they are, a dislike of fakery in all it's forms and still a belief that there is a better way to live if we could only overcome that human greed for more and more for me. Living here has shown me that I am more happy with the simple life than I ever was with the money driven way of this world.
We are the same age, with the same reverence for the ideals of this era. Like all movements, it was destined to be bastardized and ruined by the popular culture or just by popularity itself. The music survives. The goals were worthy-peace being foremost. The saddest remnant would be self-medication by those not equipped to understand what they were playing with!
Some great music and thought/culture came out of this time. Beautiful intentions that turned dirty and grim... My last memory there was when visiting in 1985. I was walking by the doorway in front of a beautiful Victorian mansion with my girlfriend, and some poor soul was putting a needle in his arm. I never returned. I hear it's worse now. It's a very sad story for a unique, historical American city. The flowers in" Flower Power "wilted and died quickly to line some graves. They still do.
It’s a common manipulation tactic called infantilization. When you treat a society as if they’re children who can’t handle reality, then in time they’ll behave like children who can’t handle reality. It’s very easy to dominate children if you’re in the business of controlling others.
In 1957 my friend parents sold their home, I was 5, we were in our way to San Francisco, then my Mother discovered she was pregnant. Damn I could have been there for the summer of love 💕
Heroin moved in, more destructive than pot and LSD. Mom and my uncle lived in the Panhandle 1968-74 and experienced everything, met Grace Slick, heard Janis, etc. Great creativity, though. Yuppies don't produce that.
It lasts with the successful commune, The Farm, near Summertown, TN. It lasts in the Rainbow Family that gathers all around the country, and world. It lasts in our greatest rock music from the Sixties and Seventies. It lasts in all who care about the earth and act to protect it.
I was 13 when this was going on. I was living in small town Texas. I wanted to go there because they seemed to be having a better time than I was. Finally visited in the summer of 2000. Tried to buy a T shirt at the corner of those streets but was yelled out of the shop because I was filming. Big difference between perception and reality.
It was an era where the untold truth centralized into the power of beautiful girls. You weren't cool unless you seemed cool to a Playboy bunny worthy girl. The world revolved around them. The hippy instincts were correct in that you didn't want the 'wage slave employed till you croak' script. But the biggest irony was to later find the only secure jobs were the ones- that nobody wanted.
I was in the Haight in ‘98. Expected hippies but didn’t see any. Based on what I *did* see, my take on Haight ‘98 was that it was *still* a counter-cultural youth enclave, but for the youth culture of the present, not the Sixties: grunge and Alternative music, funky facial hair, piercings, tattoos. (I call them AlternaKids.) It made perfect sense. The artsy drug-taking youth of ‘98 wasn’t going to be sporting the signs of Flower Power; they had their *own* youth culture, not rooted in THE PAST. Peter, Paul, and Mary were gone; it was now Nine Inch Nails, Candlebox, and Alice In Chains.
I grew up in the Sunset district in SF. I was 11 yrs old at this time, my friends and I used to go down to the Haight on Saturday mornings, it was a complete mess.
Part of the brilliance of Freewheeling docs for me is that they’re accessible to anyone regardless of religious or political or philosophical persuasion, however fluid. And deeply engaging and thought provoking- especially those banger endings that make you feel a profound “wow …”
Thank you so much! You made my day!
Charles Manson didn't help things out...
@@donnahilton471 ''Peace & Love'''
''Summer of love'' BAH!! What a load of BULLSHIT that was!, Look how the world we live in today turned out, Also, The so called ''Hippies'' were jerks
@@donnahilton471 The so called ''Hippie Movement'' of ''Peace and Love'' was hijacked by the thugs and criminals.
@@freewheelingideasthe people who commented on your very well done video are horrible I'm sorry
I was in Haight during the 1960s. I'm 78. I found the hippie movement a great illusion.
@catholiccrusader The so called ''Hippie'' movement was a grand illusion.
I'm going to my 8th Dead gig this year alone, coming ?
Enjoy yourself by all means. But be productive or you will surely die. Societies are built on individual efforts to survive. Any surplus should be put towards other individuals’ ability to thrive.
@@davidrossi1486 Put it towards veterans, working poor, the disabled, the elderly, the people who were born here only not towards illegal immigrants..
carl marx intentinally removed HUMAN NATURE cause his failed math eqaution and fooled many people with his failed social system marx is as smart as failed freud
If nobody is cleaning the bathrooms and taking care of the garbage, it will all go to hell. Truth.
And WORKING, serving the needs of other humans from food, clean water, clothing on. The need side is unlimited. The WORK side is limited.
Most all the chores of quotidian life fell to women. Many got fed up with the situation, during the incipient period of the feminist movement. Also, women felt vulnerable to the lawlessness and crime.
lets not even mention money here. That is just too much to bear in this context
Pigpen didn't pitch in on dishes and toilet scrubbing?
Hippies were the middle class in fancy dress. you don’t have to cut your hair but for God sake get a job. Delusion is easy in a time of plenty.
I was involved with Haight Free clinic and subsequently Marin Open House and your chronology is accurate and well done. I have also been apart of other non-publicized experiments that were free-spirited, creative, community expressions of "freedom, peace and love". Even communities that are away from the mainstream and non-publicized go through change and evolution and come to an end.
It is important to understand that "everything exists as a moment in time". Events in time are unpredictable, chaotic and sometimes unbelievably wonderful, but they eventually change. Life continuously flows as people change, evolve and their lives change. Nothing is meant to last. What is important is what take away from it, what you give to it and what you use to build the next thing. Things can be going amazingly but then some key people fall in love, marry and have children, move away from the community to build their own family or members want to build a career separate from the community.
It is important to remember that all creative outbursts whether it be beatnik, abstract expressionist, the folk scene, hippie, punk, the early 80's East Village art scene all become media fabrications and they all come to an end. None of CBGB original bands embodied the same ethos and applying a term to describe them is useless; the same with the 1940/ early 50''s NYC abstract expressionism. Life is too big and too complex to use a single term to describe it. And, people are too complex and evolving to stay together to maintain something forever. Contradiction is the nature of life. Nothing is meant to last; but many things are meant to celebrated!
Let it Be, Forever, Now.
Amazing! You must have seen so much, thank you for sharing your story and insights!
Well said! everything and everyone ….always in the flux of evolution….🐞
Did you run into Charlie Manson hanging around the Free Clinic? How about Jolyan West?
Low rents for Victorian houses gave birth to a brilliant creative community. High rents ever since are destroying the value of life!
@@pbattis1 I am grateful to never have made either acquaintance! However, it's scary that Roger Smith did not have Manson's parole revoked after his repeated arrests.
The same thing happened in Portland Oregon. Too many people, high rents, and drug addiction. They came, they saw, and they destroyed.
portland is what happens when you hand out free money to millions of drug addicts and then make it legal for them to live on the streets. all the talk about open mindedness and liberalism is a crutch for a bunch of drug addicts with obliterated lives to cope with how they live. it is absurd that after watching cities like portland collapse under the weight of their misguided politics - that people still support the far left. because cities like sf and portland are their endgame.
On to Seattle
Happening in Austin now.
And elected a democrat!
George Harrison nailed it ! I was a Hippie ( I'm 71 ) , played guitar n bands ( still play solo ) , but I also worked and served my country in the Army for 10 years. I paid my bills and took showers and had a clean home .It was never a " Forever thing " . nothing is ! All movements , good or bad , will fade out and die ! It is the way of things ! Some of my friends tried to go out there and starved , then came back . Getting high only lasts a short time . Food , Rent and Bills are monthly , every month ! You could try farming , but you really have to work for that ! No getting high first thing in the morning , your feeding livestock at 04:00 in the morning and plowing until 12 midnight ! Utopia is for the Rich !
Freedom without DISCIPLINE can only produce devastation in humans.
It's just human nature...I can't explain it!!! 😮
In 1967 I was 18,had shoulder-length hair with bell-bottom pants.Grass was $10 for a "lid",hash $10 a gram acid was a dollar a hit
I remember much of the stuff in this video. By 1968 the speedfreaks and other trash moved in and destroyed the place
Thus is the world!
Excellent. I was a hippie in upstate NY where we had a small scene. So glad I didn’t migrate to the Haight at the time when I was a minor. Ended up moving to SF in 74 when the Haight was dead and the gay movement was in ascendancy. I then worked doing outreach on the street there to help kids who were still running away to the Haight in the 80s. Kids STILL are runaways and homeless there to this day. The Haight has a powerful legacy.
Oh, and I remember distinctly reading about The Death Of the Hippie in the newspapers of the time….
The Death of Hippie was one of many events organized by The Diggers < they started the "back-to-the-land" movement and free communes in Northern California.
Very true, they are still dealing with the effects of all this. You made the right choice!
I went to the Haight in the mid 1980’s. I was in my 30’s but still looked like a hippie. I was flabbergasted when some teenager asked me for money so he could buy some acid. I just laughed. I couldn’t believe it.
@@markbrooks7157
wow ... and to think back in the day the Merry Pranksters used to throw the acid-of-the-day from Ken Kesey's bus named Furthur ✨️🚎✨️
@@LucyLennon20…..Scott Nearing was the fore runner of the back to the land movement. Making of a Radical.
One of those times i've always been fascinated by, and i love mid/late 60's psychedelic music and culture. I was born in 71, so i was a generation late. I always think that with any of these countercultural moments, its not about the drugs, the clothes, the lingo, its the lessons that you should learn about not fearing difference and realising that behind the social divisions, constructs and labels of class, race, gender, nationality etc we are ALL the same humanity and no matter what happens in the future our shared humanity will remain. Once Haight Ashbury's moment ended, once the Monterey Pop concert or Woodstock were over, THATs when the hard work was needed. It is precisely when the musics over when the lesson should be understood. It is what you take with you in your heart and apply to the rest of your life when these cultural movements have gone. The peace and love, community, love for nature and others etc, was completely forgotten by the vast majority of those people once they grew up/got corporate jobs - save for an occasional joint, and listening to the doors while snorting a few lines. Once they realised that the REAL revolution meant giving up some of the privileges that mom and pops bestowed on them, they ran as fast as possible back to what was safe and comfortable. Some people DID walk the walk, and made sure that those core ideals got passed down to future generations. The late 80's/early 90's acid house/rave culture in the U.K was a seismic cultural shift that carried A LOT of those idealistic lessons from the 60's into a new cultural movement that spread around the world. Some people go along for the ride, but some people get the bigger message and emotion being expressed by everyone, and try and do better for the world. We are not just mindless drones existing on this rock just to slave our lives away for faceless corporations, we are thinking, feeling human beings, capable of creating beautiful things to inspire each other to make the world a better place for everyone like science, art, music and poetry! Pass it on!🫶
It should be mentioned that proliferation of amphetamines did a lot of damage to that scene. However, this video appears to be censored regarding drugs.
I understood it was hard drugs that flooded the Haight-Ashbury (Hashbury) and the early rise of the Reaganoids (aka vile capitalist racists), that refused to embrace the fresh winds of social change the hippies manifested.
yup...the drugs turned from green (Weed) to the nasty white drugs (speed, cocaine , and heroin)
Yes. Speed is what killed the scene.
I remember them, but why would us young kids need uppers anyway? LOL. Oh I remember, the thing was to MIX speed with Hash or pot. Man all that really was dumb!
Plus all the other drugs - LSD was a favourite as well as speed. Not to mention venereal disease, that was rife.
I was born and raised in Hawaii and in 1967 I lived with my cousins in Santa Rosa. Curious about all the talk about Haight-Ashbury and the hippy movement we decided to check it out. What a culture shock. There were so many people from all walks of life sharing their music and artistic talents. What was really cool was the number of people gathering to share love for all. I never encountered any negative people. What a moment in time for me.
i was just south of you in petaluma. my crazy older brother ran away to go live in golden gate park in the summer of 68. The police caught his sorry ass and my mother drug me down to the haight police station on the greyhound bus to get his sorry ass. I will never forget the bra hanging over the haight/ashbury street sign. It was like navigating thru an insane asylum. People talking to themselves and others passed out on some drug. That image of him with his torn shirt and dirty clothes and defiant look on his face lives on in my memory. I really didn't like the city. The hells angels sf and oakland chapters used to come into town and take over one of the parks on their way up to the russian river in the summer. Lucky for you, you only saw the good side of it all. Santa rosa back then was pretty insulated from it
LOVE Santa Rosa today!
I was a doctor at the hate Ashbury clinic during the summer of love. It was quite an experience for a boy from Kansas. I watched the pitiful nature of the poor kids in 1968 that were our patients. There were some wonderful people who tried to take care of them And try to love them, but you could watch the whole thing disintegrate from our unique perspective. I enjoyed this documentary and I think I saw myself in one of the clips but I could be wrong. Thanks for documenting this so truthfully and the spelling the myth that the hippie culture was something to be admired. My book is on Kindle. It’s called the entry written and it pretty much reflects the anti-war movement and the pitiful MEDICAL shape that many of the hippies were experiencing. Jack Klausen MD
My documentation of the collapse of the. Hippie culture is juxtaposed to a story of true love in this chaotic scene. Read “THE END REWRITTEN” by Jack Klausen MD on Kindle
That's Haight not Hate street
Why don't you know that?
What was your level of involvement with MK Ultra and Operation Midnight Climax?
Liar... You would know the name of the two street if that was true
You're a doctor?? It's 'dispelling' not 'spelling'.
I remember the hippie movement well. In 67, I was living in the east bay and there was a teenage hippie couple that hung out at our local bowling alley. They told me they were moving to the Haight Ashbury district and they wanted me to go with them. I told them I was only 11 years old and I don't think my mom and dad would let me. I thought about it though.😧
Glad you didn't go.
Yeah, had you gone, you probably wouldn’t have lived to tell us what you said.
Creepy
That's crazy of them to try to take a kid with them away from their parents 😕
You should have went with them
I was right there on Stanyan at this time. It kills me that I missed Jimi in the Panhandle but I was only 7 at the time so it's understandable. I remember going into a Diggers Free Store on Carl and getting military Sargent's Stripes for free. Overall you have really captured the vibe of the time and how I remember it. Some of the photos I have never seen. Jack Cassidy looks so young! I ended up working for Bill Graham about 15 years after the "Summer Of Love". I also worked at the Fillmore for a time but it was a Punk Club called the Elite Club by then. Crazy memories. Thanks for the Trip!
That’s awesome..and you’re welcome! Glad I could help bring back some memories!
Harder drugs, creepers, criminal elements, and then the unsustainable theories of perpetual cooperation....now I will see what the documentary said.
💯
Um...CIA?
@@lemurianchickadd to that list with all other three letter organizations 🧐🤔🙏🏻
@@lemurianchick If you get the chance, read a book about CIA's Dr Sidney Gottlieb titled "Poisoner in Chief". CIA set up two 'free clinics", one on the Lower East Side in Manhattan and the other in the Haight Ashbury. The CIA was convinced the Soviets were into mind control and they countered by trying to use LSD to do the same. The people in the Haight and on the LES they considered as nothing more than scum, so why not use them as human guinea pigs. Because of CIA intervention, I'm convinced people like Charles Manson were constantly released from prison simply because they were useful as CIA lab rats. Gottlieb every bit as evil as Dr Mengele.
@@lemurianchick The CIA angle is well documented. There was an ex New York cop who worked for the agency. He hired a hooker to bring guys to an apartment where he dosed them and filmed them. He was a monumental scumbag, claimed he could do anything he wanted, kill people, anything. Foreign and domestic press were everywhere, anthropologists doing field studies, tourists from Kansas and lots of parents looking for their kids.
I loved going to Haight Ashbury, it was a beautiful place. Now it's downright scary!
Scary? LOL.
Now it is completely gentrified. So is the Fillmore District. You need to be wealthy to live there.
Wonderful!!! I was born in 73 and now I understand how everyone and everything from that time interconnects! Thank you!!
You are so welcome!
Jerry Garcia was super intelligent, talented. Always worthwhile hearing what he has to say. 👍🎬
Not smart enough to lay off Mr. Brownstone
I never liked even on of there 4 chord stupid songs.
@@orangeandslinky Well the Beatles were on 2
@@deanl0 George Harrison went to Height and he said it was super stupid and a bunch of drug addicts.
That mook had hhe IQ of an eggplant.
The idealism of youth gives way to the realities of getting a job, paying the mortgage, and looking after the kids. Not to mention hard drugs and partying are a dead end.
so true. some make it. some dont. drugs are a waste of precious time.
@@youngyeller you can't waste time.
@@davidcleveland-yv6my the moody blues song driftwood states time waits for no one my friend. no not even you. like sand through the hour glass,so are the days of our lives. drugs waste your time. i have wasted some time there years ago. learned my lesson got out with a brain left. no going back. time keeps on slipping into the future. i remember these words today.
Yeah... nothing is as easy as it seems. You learn that when you grow up.
@@davidcleveland-yv6my I wasted time, now doth time waste me- Richard II by the boss, Shakespeare.
My "First Concert"
12-19-1969 - my 16th Bday - Janis Joplin - NYC -
So cool
@@freewheelingideasthat concert changed 3 Jersey Girls' lives ...
... forever 🤍 Janis
I Love Janis, I was just ten in 69. But my older sister would blast her on her record player and I would imitate her singing.
@@julenepegher6999my one gf that attended the concert with me looked just like Janis. She sang like her, too.
Janis brought onto the stage her "Lil' ol' friend from Texas" ... Johnny Winter came running on the stage with his white albino hair and guitar in the air.
... and one day my Janis-look-a-like friend had a new boyfriend ... he was albino!!
Wow! I would have loved to see her❤
There were still some hippies hanging around the Haight in '73 when I went there. One house was open to the hippies to use as a crash pad. I was told it belonged to the grateful dead. It had no furniture but it was carpeted if I remember right.
The filth in the hallways of a lot of these dwellings was disgusting. I saw a girl of maybe 15, 16, sitting in a pile of filth, eating dog food from a can with a spoon. That is where the freedom and love of the summer ended for me, personally.
I lived in communal housing across the bay for 7 years. When I first went to San Francisco in summer of 1968, it was just about all over. The SF police had reportedly raided the community and everyone moved on, mostly north to Marin, I believe. By August 1969, the hippie momenent, despite Woodstock that same month, lost its appeal to young people due to the shock of the Murders by the the Manson communal family. The only thing that kept any of the pieces alive, perhaps, was resistance to the Vietnam War.
The government needed someone like Charlie to help dissolve the hippie movement.
@@dsanders5142 yup so they did thei r best to brain wash the general public that eveyone with long hair who was unshaven and unshowered was another manson!!! it worked ..they succeeded!!
7 Dead gigs this year :)
@dsanders5142 Now, they seem to be the government. California is one big hippie palace.
The "resistance to the Vietnam War" was only a resistance to the draft. Once Nixon ended the draft, no one gave a crap about the Vietnam War nor the 3+ million that were slaughtered by the Communists after the Democrats voted to cut off military aid.
Garcia was so perceptive and intelligent and articulate.
He really is!
Not bad for a cia agent!
@@Jay-n262 huh?
When Jerry spoke it was poetic, the same with Bill Walton (RIP)! We dead heads must keep the music alive!
@Jay-n262 not for the normies, dude. 😅
Still fascinated with this era; always will be, though I'd never pursue the lifestyle. I'm too prim!🙂↕️
Much of it is mythology and fantasy like so many other things people come up with.
I find it fascinating too. I was a kid in the sixties, living in San Francisco. I remember a lot of chaos, fear, and confusion. I also remember the peace, love, and laughter from the hippies. I didn't really understand what was happening since I was a child, but 'll never forget how it felt to me. What a time it was. I've still got a little hippie in me. Far out, man. LOL!
@@tw8464 You got that right, It's one big pack of lies glossed over, A facade.
@@michaelquinones-lx6ks No...early 70s in the Bay Area was fun and interesting.
@@tw8464 You got that right, As the old saying goes, ' Things are not what they seem,' The reality is it was all nothing but an Illusion a cruel farce, Those kids that came out to Haight Ashbury believing in all that so called ''Peace and Love'' ''Utopian'' shit ended up homeless, alone, destitute, dying from drug overdoses, and murdered.
As a product of Haight street this is refreshing to see because the aurra is still there. It will never leave! I have been here since 1964.....I became homeless 2005-2008 and lived on and around HIPPIE HILL....The drum circle became integral again at that time and pivotal for a foundation of hope until the H.O.T. Team got me inside where last 4th of July I reached 15 years NO ALCOHOL! I am extremely thankful for San Francisco!!
I came to San Francisco from Ireland in 1999, my mind was blown by Haight, even in the 90s I just couldn't get over it. I'll get back to SF one day.
@@Michelle-499hope that you get back again one day. Is there a park in Ireland like this? The freedom of expression was great especially to be homeless here! What really made it fun was all of the people that were experiencing this together. It harvested Camaraderie.
@@Michelle-499hope that you get back again one day. Is there a park in Ireland like this? The freedom of expression was great especially to be homeless here! What really made it fun was all of the people that were experiencing this together. It harvested Camaraderie.
@waynefoote3781 fingers and toes crossed I get to revisit. No we don't have anything like this in Ireland, plenty of parks but nowhere near the colourful expression like this.
@@Michelle-499 Well it is great then that you got to visit at least once then...Thank you.
Visited the Haight in summer of '68 to check out the scene. By then the summer of love had become the summer of hell. Lot's of young people sitting outside the shops very stoned and asking for spare change from passersby. Found out later that the Haight's freewheeling culture collasped under the weight of too many young people and the grifters attracted to that scene. Gracia was right: Freedom doesn't mean "free"; you must also have responsibility for the orderly functioning of the culture or it soons descends into anarchy. Sic transit gloria mundi
The demise? Drug addiction, STD's, and bums.
Like the entire country…
The demise? The ‘68 riots & democratic national convention in Chicago (the Chicago 7 and thousands came behind my house to avoid arrest & escape the anti war protests / riots & heal & head back to Cal etc or even Canada after burning draft cards) by “69 at the same time Woodstock was happening, the Manson family was killing & about to make hippies into the evil monsters that BigBrother & Nixon warned about 🙈🤬
And greed.
They were all bums.
Im going to see Dark Star Orchestra and take Loads of LSD
There was no demise , your just not invited to the party
I have been to 7 Dead gigs this year alone
the dealers moved in....got messy. twas still quite groovy in the late 70s & 80s when had a renaissance. today its quite touristy, but still has a fun flavor. tho few of the original shops remain.... the annual street fair was wild... The Grande Piano was a kool cafe where we all gathered for coffee and...... the free clinic was awesome and helped alot of folks.... i lived in a georgous old lady (victorian) bldg for yrs near haight and ashbury....rocker ghosts everywhere... The haight is beloved.
What great memories you must have! Wow!
That's so cool!
Yea, I remember when the dealers came in, our philosophy of down playing big money was over. The dealers looked just like us too. Really, looking back, there was no way to really win the world peace idea. We still spoke and sang of it for years and tried to be nice to each other though. The over 30's people would say we were communists. I was too young to really know anything about communism but, I see why they thought that now.
yup
Hows the homeless situation in the Haight? Don't hear much about that area having any major problems.
Yeah, I'm a 4th generation native San Franciscan, and I could answer the question of what led to the demise when it was posed 2 minutes in. It was people from San Francisco, till it was massively publicized, then it was people from everywhere, latching on and sucking the life out. In a very similar sense, this has always happened to San Francisco and its natives, and is happening to this day. The phenomenon just changes form over and over. People come and bastardize the pure nature of the city's culture and thieve what they can from the heart and soul of our city. With mass influx of people from elsewhere came predators and opportunists, people looking to manipulate, deceive, exploit, take advantage, rape, batter, pillage, and they did, leaving traumatized innocents in their wake, as those sorts always invariably do. That's not about San Francisco, and it's no reflection on the city, it's the exceedingly typical reality that something magnetically beautiful does attract something dark and ugly that seeks to abuse. And then, of course, drugs. Not weed, not psychedelics, the harder drugs. Speed flooded in via the Hell's Angels and others and turned young people inside out, people became violent, desperate, addicted, developed speed psychosis. Some of this was touched on in this video. It was disappointing to see the entire joyful spirit and idealistic culture of the location and time period end on such a dark deranged note here, which I can only understand as yet another transparent denigration and robbery from the pure heart of my city. Very weak, lazy way to conclude.
💯
What happened to SF was the exact same thing that happened to Greenwich Village in NYC in the 60s : the Corporate Real Estate interests started jacking up the rents to insane prices, oftentimes not just doubling, but quadrupling rates for commercial and residential tenants, forcing tenants to move out and small business owners to close shop. Bookstores and record shops are never high profit businesses and once one 'counter culture' store closed, others had to follow suit.
Large Real Estate developers are always the ones who kill communities and force people and small businesses out. I see it happening in 2024 like crazy in my suburban city just outside NYC; developers forcing out small business owners who've been in the community for decades to pave way for "Luxury" Co-ops and Condos. They've done the same from coast to coast in the U.S. They buy off local officials who will then declare "imminent domain" and pay small store owners only a fraction of what their property's worth. This is what led to the decline of NYC and SF and LA in the 1960s and made them some of the most expensive and unlivable and unaffordable cities in the U.S.
It wasn't drugs or anything else but Greed pure and simple.
Well said thank you!
The irony of this run on sentence is the same "hippies" that frequented those neighborhoods are the same greedy corporate fuckers that jacked the price of everything 20 yrs later. It's almost like they knew that the communal ideology will not and can't work. Because......GREEED!
Yes. Right on.
Its the cycle of cities
Thanks for that, man. It needed to be said.
Sitting up straight and meditating... Breathing in... absorbing love... Breathing out... dissolving stress... Sending love and healing energy to everyone reading the comment section.(~);}
✌️
As long as you're sitting up straight...
aum shante aum(*)
Yes TM and Hinduism was very strong back then. Yoga and learning about prana and chi was the thing.
It was a great time to be young❤🎉
Vietnam war.. are yu serious
@@kellyannpage1469 word
I was young then, but thank God I was not anywhere near Haight Ashbury 'paradise'.
Good doc. I remember the popularisation of the Haight in the mass media in early 1967. I was very attracted by it but was too young to go there myself. But I was certainly influenced by the scene. Still have a romance about that time and place and still am fond of the music.
Music and Haight aesthetic is still great!
My mom and dad raised me on a lot of this type of music when I was a kid in the seventies me and my sisters great music 👍🥁🥁
Amazing music!
@@freewheelingideas amazing it is I still listen to this kind of music everyday but lately I've been playing a lot of Robin trower twice removed from yesterday and bridge of sighs those two albums are absolute fantastic I can not stop playing them lol 🥁🥁
I was a teen in the 70’s. The best times and music. I love Robin Trower too. Memories.
@@julenepegher6999 hell yeah Robin trower yes man he's one of my favorite guitar players I'm being honest I like him better than Hendrix and I Love Jimi Hendrix but Robin trower 👍🥁🥁
@@RonaldWilliams-lp3bg Too Rolling Stoned.
Must have been fun for a few months or so in 1966 and 1967, for a few thousand people who were there. I find it all rather depressing to hear about now.
So true, Racketmensch. When a monkey stares into a mirror, no saint stares back out.
Spent time there and sure not the same. Love your video on RUclips and may God Richly Bless you and may Jesus Christ show you His GREAT love that He has for each of YOU ❤️ Just ask Him to show you personally His Love as He did to me years ago 😊
Amen dear friend, Jesus is the Way, the only way 🙏💖
"When I hear them sing songs of love in the streets, I buy a gun and bar my door because I know there is a storm of hypocrisy brewing" - Alan Watts
I've never seen anything good that didn't sour when enough people became aware of it. As soon as something takes on a sense of fashion and people start seeing that's there's money to be made, it's over. There's an honest, creative clique with special interest, and then there's everybody else. And on that note I'll add another quote:
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” - Oscar Wilde
Hell, throw in a zen proverb for good measure: Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
@TauruSeason :D Unpack that for me please.
@TauruSeason I suppose. I know the zen masters laugh all the time, the idea being of course that taking existence seriously is fundamental to the mind construct, which in my humble opinion is the problem a lot of religion tries to mitigate in various ways. This is not a Christian bid, but I do find it interesting that Genesis more than implies that our transition from a "self unaware consciousness" (bit of a contradiction) to whatever we have now is going to be nothing but trouble.
I'm not so sure that helps though, because it seems to me that if you boil it down, we're not deviating much from the script of a rabbit or even a virus (if you wanna get real misanthropic) anyway, so who cares what really goes on between here and there. And so I seem to drift into some form of nihilism :D
@TauruSeason I'm not going to watch a bunch of Heaven's Gate content.
Are you asking me something? Boil it down. Chances are that if you're able to pose a question with clarity, you'll be able to answer it yourself.
Fantasy is a deadly playground.
Far out! I'm 66 now, and my "beatnik" parents dragged me out of North Beach, San Francisco (276 Francisco St., little hovel is still there) in '60 or 61'. I didn't know then what I would be missing until just a few years later! The drug me over to Germany to pick up our custom-made 1961 VW Bus and did Europe in style, apparently. I do remember some of it, but we shipped the bus and us back to NYC, moved not quite far enough upstate to a little factory village on the Hudson River. I'm still here, could never afford to go back. I started getting hip to the news when Kennedy was murdered, got a subscription to MAD magazine, and watched that disgusting "conflict in Vietnam" on TV. And listening to San Francisco and Greenwich village on the brandy new FM band radio. I lived what turned out to be walking distance to Yasgur's Farm, but Pop didn't want me to go, and he didn't want to drive me to Woodstock. The big kids wouldn't take me, and I chickened out on riding my bike the mile or so to Nyack, stash the bike, climb up onto the NYS Thruway and hitch a ride. Still think I could have pulled it off!
Sometime around '74, the Grateful Dead (whoever they were) began following me around, I had gone haywire in middle (gulag) school, and Pop caught a miracle and put me in what I now have to call a "Hippie School", very hard to explain, experimental back then. And I grew up loving everyone and spreading as much Peace as I could. Pop married a wonderful woman who survived him, and we talk a lot. Turns out, while I was being a River Rat, and wharves, I guess, my Stepmom was in Haight Ashbury struttin' down the boulevard! Man! She hung around with all the people I wish I'd met! Jerry before the beard, even. Endless stories! Her favorite musician is Bob Dylan, and was then, but it turned out, over and over, they were at the same party, bar, park, and she never saw him! Stoned and she missed it, I guess. Sorry to blather, and I got lots more (met Kesey and Krassner, that's two chapters there.) Okay, back to your regular programming... Peace, Love, Earth!
overcrowding ,homelessness hunger, drug addiction,and crime affected the neighborhood
This film had impact 25 years ago, The standards and morals sure have gone down hill since then
True
Not true it's just different now ..not the 60s anymore
But it's not run down or hedonistic . Actually very corporate now if anything its boring.. not much interesting things happening
Now the place is crime ridden, overrun with homeless people, businesses have abandoned it and the entire state, look at what they have done to this beautiful state and city.
Erdington Birmingham in England has become like that as well
I was there during 1980 on my first journey around America and just saw very sad burned out hippies who seemed disillusioned, burned out by substances without much to show for their lives. Others had turned to nature, left and had small holdings , self sufficiency A few had rediscovered the Holy Bible clinging onto its truth rather than seeing everything through a haze. .
We stopped there several years back when visiting SF. It’s a damn trippy place.
The curiosity seekers didn't help matters. Jerry Garcia once said when tour busses filled with curiosity seekers rolled in that was it they moved to Micky Hart's ranch nearby.
Yea not very fun to be the subject of the freak show brigade..
@@freewheelingideas
The Diggers held a "Funeral for a Hippie" procession down the street. It was Oct.6, 1967, the end of the Summer of Love. The casket was full of beads, shaved off beards and marijuana. The wanted to convince the media to stop.
I was in touch from the beginning and far after the end. I have never heard of beatniks being associated with Hippies. They were two distinctly different cultures and societies.
truth, i think the beats hated the hippies, just as the punks did later.
The stars are only in alignment for so long.
well put
So true. Jupiter did not stay aligned with Mars for long.
@@HungryH1951 Just like I said.
This is seemingly even handed. I love that Jerry Garcia talked about what freedom really is. It doesn't mean no rules and everyone must contribute. He certainly experienced moochers and people wanting to stay at his house for free. I'm so glad I was a little too young to fall for early hippie drug scene. Some of those people barely made it into their sixties with their mind intact.
Got a ride in 1967 to the Monterey Pop Festival from Fullerton with a friend, Jackson Browne and his lost wax gold jewelry partner, Thomas Thomas, as they had a display booth on the grounds. We spent 4 1/2 days on the grounds. Two weeks later, I went to the city (San Francisco) for the Summer Solstice Celebration, went back to playing in LA & Orange County until I got a call in 1969 to come up and play with a group headed by a vocalist living in Larkspur that I'd played with in So-Cal called Rejoice. While playing with them I ran into a singer I'd first run into a couple of years before at Sid's Blue Beet in Newport Beach - Lisa Kindred. After I left the group, Lisa and I started playing together, she on vocals & rhythm acoustic and I accompanied her on my Chet Atkins model Gretsch. Then we got married while living in North Beach, then Stinson Beach and, finally, the Haight where we played with Debbie Olcese's (now Sipes) band Ascension. Lisa best described the change in the Haight when bodies started showing up in dumpsters by making the following observation: "There was a time when anyone with long hair was your friend".
Great story!
I was born there in 1952.
The haight was definitely a eye full , I feel lucky to live through it,,, never to be repeated.
W hat a fantastic video have a wonderful day ❤❤❤❤❤❤😊😊😊😊😊😊
RIP Phil Lesh the music never stops ⚡💀🌹
Every counter-culture scene is short lived. Nothing gets done when nobody wants to be productive. Yes producing art is fun and important, but you gotta pay the rent and eat.
so true.
I felt the same about Woodstock - who was picking up the tab?
I grew up in the Bay Area during that mess with the hippies. Yes indeed, I got caught in the middle between generations (baby boomer generation had just phased out in California), however I always wanted to be a hippie in my younger years. I saw those acid freaks spacing out the redwoods and thought wow, that looks like freedom! Little did I know about the dark side of that movement. By the time I left home (age 17 in 1976), the Jesus movement was in full swing. Little did I know about the dark side of THAT movement. What can I say... I was a misfit among misfits.
Really nice to see Jerry Garcia again.
8:20 ... When some Madison Avenue suits notices The Psychedelic Shop (and others) the InStore chain (and others) was born and Psychedelia/Hippies/Counter Culture equaled $$$$...
8:29 .. "is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?" 🤣
14:25 ... Quicksilver Messenger Service was my SF band of choice (thd mid '60's lineup, minus Dino Valenti)..❤❤❤
To paraphrase Garcia and quote Robert Heinlein, "there's no such thing as a free lunch."
Moccasins were big in marketing and yes everything my sister or her friends made the industry just stole it. It took away the individualist in everyone.
The term "Free Love" meant to free your love, not screw anybody anytime
God Bless Always
Thank you very much Philadelphia USA 🇺🇸 ❤❤🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉❤
I did visit their way after the coolness left
@@LaurieValdez-zk3dy I was a little late to really groove in the scene - born late '52. Grew up in Brookhaven - would take the bus or train into Philly to enjoy the center city scene around Rittenhouse Sq., and on Sansom and Arch streets. The Be-In's in Fairmont Park culminated with the first Earth Day. I'd drifted into the local music clubs - Electric Factory, Main Point, 2nd Fret - my first big concert was "The English Invasion", JFK Stadium, Wed., July 24, 1968. The Who, Pink Floyd, and lots of rain - It was some crazy scene. After that, I tried to spend every weekend I could in town. The next major milestone was the Atlantic City Pop Festival in Aug., 1969 - that's when the worm fully turned for me. I graduated and left town in 1970, but it started a lifetime of following bands, playing music, and seeing concerts. Looking back, it was one of the most exciting and happiest times of my life.
It was a great scene. Hippie life had its perfect pure moments. Problem was humans are complicated and without some structure to your life there was a lot of free time and people got bored and took up careers and study and art expression and families and filled their days. Hippie life involved too much hanging around and music and partying. For most people it was a short phase in youth. I can move in any crowd and no one would ever know but I am still a pure hippie at my core. The beliefs and core tenants of the cultural revolution are so much a part of me that it's more powerful than religion.
"horrible, spotty, drop-out kids... on drugs/// It was like the bowery, like alcoholism, like any addiction." George Harrison
The Beatles promoted drug use, they share some of the responsibility.
The only difference I see is that the Beatles had a furious work ethic. They put out an unbelievable amount of songs and albums. They'd do things like 36 concerts in 35 days on tour. Incredible work ethic that the hippies didn't have.
I lived in the Haight in the early '70s. 2024 Oak Street, across from the panhandle. I remember a free store on Haight Street and the Omnibus Cafe, a beer joint. Very fond memories.
I lived very close to you at 1555 Oak Street, apt10, across from the Panhandle, too. Same time.as you, too. Janis Joplin lived around the corner on Lyon and Jefferson Airplane had a place n the opposite side of the Panhandle. What was the name of that street? (It was one-way running in the opposite direction to Oak) I remember I paid S97.50 a month for a HUGE, beautiful, but cock-roach infested apartment. Like you I too have fond memories. I feel blessed to have had that wonderful experience.
,
@@lindapearson881 Do you remember the fish & chips restaurant on Haight Street? Did you ever go to the Omnibus Cafe on Haight? Also, there was a free store on Haight Street. Remember? The #7 Haight bus was only 25 cents.
The time to have been there would have been 1966---before the rest of the world found out about this little Utopia for societal misfits and descended on the place and ruined it in 1967. I've heard more than one "native" of the area say that the REAL summer of love was in 1966--not 1967. Also, LSD was still legal up until October of that year.
Easy, people on drugs and doing nothing except hanging out. Even the Beatles said it when they visited. They found it depressing. The scene was a delusion.
My friends who lived in North Beach left California following the Monterey music event in June of 1967. My friend and his wife told me, "The experiment is over for us - it won't be too much longer before it all sours." The mass media at the time didn't help matters either. Too many under-age kids flocking to the Haight didn't either.
It was founded by NFs. Then SPs swarmed in, ejected them and replaced them. (Myers-Briggs)
The only thing that flourished at Haight/Ashbury was the music and musical creativity. Everything else about the hippie culture was a downside. Drugs debilitated everyone who took them, some more quickly than others. Alcohol had the equivalent effect, and was just another drug to deaden your frontal lobes. "Free love' was nothing more than promiscuity with a cool name, which functioned to undermine the value of lasting man/woman partnerships as well as marriage. The hippies eventually settled on the "us versus the pigs" victim mentality, which was where radical feminism got its start in the US.
The music is nostalgic and valuable, but the drug culture of the 60s was an abject failure on every other level. From the culture of "peace and love" emerged addiction, homelessness, mental illness, and societal disintegration.
Awesome, most accurate description of the hippie movement and its societal impact I've heard.
Every beautiful scene once discovered and flocked to, soon comes crashing down man.
Because it always presents an opportunity, not just for the good, but also for the bad. Who immediately identify a weakness that they can exploit.
@@yinoveryang4246 facts. Human nature on full display on the canvas of a microcosm
grateful Dead scene Summer 1995
Well, what you just spoke about might be why the Jesus culture started. It started in CA also.
I'm going to my 8th Dead gig this year, all on LSD with everyone else
Some tourists come and go , that's true
I guess they should just pass it on to me
Great video, both footage and commentary. Thanks! Interesting and thought provoking to step back to this place in time that led the country in many ways.
You’re welcome! Than you for the positive feedback 🙏
The Haight Ashbury scene peaked with the "Human Be In"--after that watershed moment mass media descended upon the community and it got commercialized. Additionally, once the district got mass publicity it drew the attention of a lot of shady characters who came in and created major problems--one writer described it as "a pack of hungry coyotes circling innocent lambs." Add to that the mass overcrowding with runaways along with infrastructure shortages and things collapsed pretty quickly.
I think the ultimate lessons are: 1) A community like the 60's Haight Ashbury HAS to fly "under the radar" to be sustaining. 2) As Jerry Garcia stated in this clip--there truly is no "free lunch." Along with freedom comes responsibility. If you want a community like this the individuals in that community have to be responsible to do the necessary work to keep it going. (Sadly, many hippies only wanted the pleasure--and none of the sacrifice.)
Hustlers, Addiction, overdosing, predators, cons, bad drugs, thieves, evil vibes man, that's what killed the summer of love ☮️ Even Charles Manson had since it coming down, and had gotten the hell out of there.
STD’s
Actually, Manson ran TO the Haight because he saw the runaway girls there as easy pickings. He preyed on lost souls, told them how beautiful they were, and they followed him to the ends of the Earth...sometimes literally.
@@frogger1952 He preyed on lost souls, told them how beautiful they were, and they followed him to the ends of the Earth...sometimes literally.......
Same thing happened with Jim Jones a few years later in San Francisco.
this is awesome! A real human created documentary with real person narrating without that familiar fucking Ai mispronouncing shit out of context. 10 thumbs up!!! 😃👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Thank you sooo much for the wonderful feedback!!
I didn't experience the Haight back then, but today it's a fun place to go. Obviously, it's nothing like it was before. Nothing is like it was before. Still, I love the shops, the restaurants, and those beautiful houses on its back streets.
The dream became a nightmare thanks to excess.
Yep
I think it became a nightmare when all these people showed up wanting to leech as opposed to wanting to contribute.
This story is as old as Adam and Eve. We were literally given Eden and found a way to screw it up. It's in our nature.
@@markbrooks7157 yup...and to deal the new nasty white drugs, speed, coke and heroin
You know hundreds of thousands are going to Dead gigs and taking LSD every year ?
One thing that made the Hippie scene possible was that a young person could get by on very little money. It was very possible to pursue other interests. Example a used car was under 100.00. Rent for a several bedroom house was 75 a month. All utilities and phone 30 a month. Hotels 30 dollars a week. A full meal in a restaurant with a tip 2 to five dollars. Full breakfast with coffee OJ toast eggs hashbrown bacon was 75 cents, Hotcakes were a quarter. All hippies shared houses so rent was 10-20 $ a month per person. A couple days work a week was enough to live very comfortably in the 60s.
Its hard to live where you just get high everyday and don't have to work and take responsibility for yourself. Alot of poor addicts we know that can't last long.
A sad existence for sure.
Do you want to come to the next dead gig ?
@@gratefulkm let's kick it home Dogg.
@@bradleylove8606 I get home via LSD every waking moment of my life
i retired...speak for yourselves....
My mom and dad never got into this . I was born in the 60’s .dad was an officer flying helicopters in Viet Nam and mom was a nurse , we grew up in upstate ny . Mom saw a a lot of young people die from the drug scene and it broke her heart . We never had contact with these people . But mom spoke to grandma about the young people dying and getting very sick from the drugs .we kids were all to young to know about any of this .
My mother was into the music of the time and that rubbed off on me. I do remember her telling me to watch out for those Hippies when she would let me walk up to the store for candy.
A lot of the people I knew in the 70's that were into The Grateful Dead were literally incapable of taking care of themselves on their own. Some of them eventually committed suicide.
Wish I had a time machine….can’t imagine how cheap it was to live in one of those beautiful Victorian homes compared to how expensive it is now.
I still think that it would have been fun to live during that time. And it's to bad that San Francisco has gone down hill over the last few years.
What a great name for a band - Big Brother and the Holding Company!!! I thought 1966 would've been a great time to have been young there!!! I was only five then, a bit too young. My sister went to Haight Asbury in 69 or 70, and became addicted...
Things seemed pretty good in 66 still. Sorry to hear about your sister.
The time was wonderful but not enough to overcome the basic greed and violence that define humans
In 1968 I was 15 and the idea of going to San Francisco seemed so cool to this English kid, the whole era seemed to shine with a promise of something new. A couple of years later I dropped out of school and reality hit. Now I am 70 and I look back to those ideas with a kind of wistful nostalgia and the echoes of that promise still resonate with me today. I now live in a communist country, not that I agree with that philosophy, and have mellowed. Maybe that is what the promise was about when tempered with reality; an acceptance of everyone for what they are, a dislike of fakery in all it's forms and still a belief that there is a better way to live if we could only overcome that human greed for more and more for me. Living here has shown me that I am more happy with the simple life than I ever was with the money driven way of this world.
We are the same age, with the same reverence for the ideals of this era. Like all movements, it was destined to be bastardized and ruined by the popular culture or just by popularity itself. The music survives. The goals were worthy-peace being foremost. The saddest remnant would be self-medication by those not equipped to understand what they were playing with!
Some great music and thought/culture came out of this time. Beautiful intentions that turned dirty and grim...
My last memory there was when visiting in 1985. I was walking by the doorway in front of a beautiful Victorian mansion with my girlfriend, and some poor soul was putting a needle in his arm. I never returned. I hear it's worse now. It's a very sad story for a unique, historical American city. The flowers in" Flower Power "wilted and died quickly to line some graves. They still do.
The Haight withered, but Hippies, and flower power, grew and spread around the world and thrive to this day.
Absolutely. The Beautiful people.
@@jontomas2271 true
Jerry Garcia sounded like a politician at times, and other times, a brilliant philosopher.
Love in the Haight ☮️
They took out the freely distributed medical LSD window and replaced it with a methadone maintenance clinic. That’s what happened.
Hippies grew up and turned i to what they fought against
Nope that's the tourists , the hippies are sitting crossed legged on a floor smoking bongs and taklinG LSD
@ user-qr7ee2cp4y Kinda Ironic wouldn't you say.
Yes, it's called responsibility. Eventually long term survival instincts sink in to the sensible.
I live here and I love it
Why do they censor the audio when pot or acid is mentioned?
It’s a common manipulation tactic called infantilization. When you treat a society as if they’re children who can’t handle reality, then in time they’ll behave like children who can’t handle reality. It’s very easy to dominate children if you’re in the business of controlling others.
In 1957 my friend parents sold their home, I was 5, we were in our way to San Francisco, then my Mother discovered she was pregnant. Damn I could have been there for the summer of love 💕
DAVID CROSBY: "We were RIGHT about Vietnam. We were WRONG about drugs."
He is dead but they weren't wrong about Nam but agree on drugs. I wish I'd never taken a drug.
He should know,drugs cost him alot of misery.
@@johnjaco5544 And a liver transplant relatively young from all the hard liquor.
Heroin moved in, more destructive than pot and LSD. Mom and my uncle lived in the Panhandle 1968-74 and experienced everything, met Grace Slick, heard Janis, etc. Great creativity, though. Yuppies don't produce that.
As Lennon said "IT could never make it with a name like that"
Zappa's "We're Only In It or the Money" is the most concise commentary on this scene.
Zappa wasnt a hippie.
@@MarlinWilliams-ts5ul I don't blame him.
Nothing beautiful lasts.
It lasts with the successful commune, The Farm, near Summertown, TN. It lasts in the Rainbow Family that gathers all around the country, and world. It lasts in our greatest rock music from the Sixties and Seventies. It lasts in all who care about the earth and act to protect it.
I was 13 when this was going on. I was living in small town Texas. I wanted to go there because they seemed to be having a better time than I was. Finally visited in the summer of 2000. Tried to buy a T shirt at the corner of those streets but was yelled out of the shop because I was filming. Big difference between perception and reality.
You should have just gone to a Rainbow Family gathering. -- It's never too late. 8^)
It was an era where the untold truth centralized into the power of beautiful girls. You weren't cool unless you seemed cool to a Playboy bunny worthy girl. The world revolved around them. The hippy instincts were correct in that you didn't want the 'wage slave employed till you croak' script. But the biggest irony was to later find the only secure jobs were the ones- that nobody wanted.
Quite ironic
I was in the Haight in ‘98. Expected hippies but didn’t see any. Based on what I *did* see, my take on Haight ‘98 was that it was *still* a counter-cultural youth enclave, but for the youth culture of the present, not the Sixties: grunge and Alternative music, funky facial hair, piercings, tattoos. (I call them AlternaKids.) It made perfect sense. The artsy drug-taking youth of ‘98 wasn’t going to be sporting the signs of Flower Power; they had their *own* youth culture, not rooted in THE PAST. Peter, Paul, and Mary were gone; it was now Nine Inch Nails, Candlebox, and Alice In Chains.
I grew up in the Sunset district in SF. I was 11 yrs old at this time, my friends and I used to go down to the Haight on Saturday mornings, it was a complete mess.
Not too many escaped the joy and turmoil of those turbulent years We laughed and cried.