Mural from Haight Ashbury
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was the summer of 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Thousands of young people traveled there from all over the world as the hippie counterculture movement grew in popularity.
The beginning of the Summer of Love was actually the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park on January 14th, but the peak was during the summer vacation season.
John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas wrote the song "San Francisco" that was recorded by Scott McKenzie :
Scott McKenzie's album that included San Francisco
be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...
If you come to San Francisco,
Summertime will be a love-in there.
The song was originally designed as a promo for the June, 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, a major rock festival, and became an instant hit (#4 in the United States, #1 in Europe), and was adopted as the Summer of Love theme song.
During the Summer of Love, an estimated 100,000 young people from around the world flocked to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, Berkeley and other San Francisco Bay Area cities to see what it was like to be a hippie. There, they picked up the nickname, "Flower Children" and When they returned home at the end of summer, they brought new styles, ideas and behaviors to most major cities in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand.