The Summer of Love was the summer of 1967 and was centered in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Thousands traveled there from all over the world as the hippie counterculture movement grew in popularity. Some were hippies, many were wanna-bees, and like many other rock culture events, a lot more claim to have been there than actually were.

The beginning of the Summer of Love was actually the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park on January 14th. It was billed as “A Gathering of Tribes” and set the stage for the year. The Be-In was where Timothy Leary declared “turn on, tune in, drop out” and that pretty much described the underlying attitude. It was the first mass hippie gathering. Two young producers named James Rado and Gerome Ragni were there, let their hair grow with the rest, and captured some of the excitement in their musical “Hair” that is still being performed today.
John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas wrote the song “San Francisco” that was originally supposed to be a promotion for The Monterey Pop Festival in June, but is remembered as The Summer of Love theme. It was recorded by Scott McKenzie and became a worldwide hit:

If you’re going to 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 Summer of Love crowd peaked during the summer vacation season. Altogether, an estimated 100,000 hippies and others 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.

Flower Power became one of the Summer of Love themes. Originating with some Haight-Ashbury children who wore flowers in their hair while selling paper flowers, the flower became a sign of peace and love, and Flower Power became the name of a political movement.

As the Summer ended, many of the attendees headed back to school. There they were seeds for the growing hippie movement. Some went the Leary way of turning on and tuning out, others went the Flower Power way of promoting love and peace through political movements.

Want to read more?  Here’s an excellent video.  

The Rock era began with conservative 50s and 60s dress. Just check out some early pictures from Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, and you’ll see crew cuts on the boys and pony-tails or bouffant hairstyles on the girls. Knee length dresses were the norm for women and button down plaid shirts for men’s casual wear.

Note that the guys were all wearing sports coats and dress shoes. This was the norm for school dances in many parts of the country. Canvas sneakers were just coming into fashion but weren’t in fashion for a dance. Leather sneakers or athletic shoes weren’t around yet. School dances all had rigid dress codes. Jeans or skirts too short got you sent home.

Mid 60s Dress and Style

By the mid-60s, fashion had done an 180-degree turn. Miniskirts and hot-pants were in for girls, sometimes paired with go-go boots. Ponytails were gone and long, straight hair was in. Granny dresses, the peasant look, and clunky shoes were all in style. Quite a difference from just a few years earlier.

Men’s hairstyles grew long and shaggy, with beards, mustaches, and sideburns. The Afro was popular for blacks of both genders. Bright colors, Nehru jackets, and turtlenecks were in style.

The Beatles hair told the whole story. Their hair was slightly longer than normal in the early 60s, a contrast to the crew cut standard. It flopped around a little bit (driving the girls crazy) as the performed. By the mid-60s it was definitely long, came down to their eyes in the front, and flopped around a lot. By 1967, they added mustaches, and by 1970 they wore their hair shoulder length and with full beards.

Towards the end of the decade, unisex styles became popular 60s dress, with bell-bottom jeans, screened or embroidered t-shirts, and love beads being the fashion of choice. Flower, bright colors, paisley, and psychedelic themes were everywhere. And it’s tough to forget for formal wear, those big wide ties, 5 inches wide was the standard in stripes and plaid, and it made no difference what other pattern it was worn with. What were we thinking to wear one coupled with a polyester leisure suit?

It was clear that individual expression won out in the 60s. Teens, even from the most conservative areas, wanted to be different than their parents and dress was a big distinction. Older teens could choose their own clothes, younger teens that made up the majority of the baby boomers still had to stay within the school and parental guidelines. It made for some interesting combinations.

The Antiwar Movement was one of two major cultural shifts in progress during the golden age of rock. It grew as the civil rights movement, perhaps helped by the acceptance of Race music (R&B) into Rock and Roll was just gathering steam (read more).

At the same time, many people , including a large number of the youth of our country, began to question our country’s involvement in Vietnam. These were still conservative times, and maybe it was just that the kids were more open to questioning government authority, but it created a major division in our society.  The Antiwar Movement set up a situation where it was us (teens) against them (the establishment).

Perhaps it was because Vietnam wasn’t an official war … the government never actually declared war, and we never had clearly defined goals as in previous wars. There wasn’t a lot of commitment to fighting a “police action”. As the death toll continued to rise, teens of the 60s saw their friends get drafted, sent to Vietnam, and never return. On top of this,unlike previous wars that the country was familiar with, troops were “rotated”, brought home while the fighting was still going on, with first hand reports that the war wasn’t going well and we didn’t have a clear goal.

Early protest came mostly from the Folk side of Rock music. Songs by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were relatively mild as they introduced the seeds of protest. By the mid 60s, mainstream Rock joined in with Country Joe’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag”:

Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, don’t hesitate,
Send your sons off before it’s too late.
You can be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
Country Joe and the Fish

By the late 60s, there were nearly half a million soldiers in Vietnam and the draft was claiming more and more guys. College campus protests arose across the country, and protest music became a lot stronger. Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead mixed their protests with drugs, creating what became known as Acid Rock. By the time of Woodstock, flag burnings on stage were common and Jimi Hendrix’ version of The Star Spangled Banner let the world know that we saw our country in a different way than the establishment.

As the war wound down, protest music faded, but the Antiwar Movement’s influence still lasts. Country music, a close relative of Rock, grew in popularity through the South as Rock antiwar tunes alienated conservative listeners. The dividing line between “Country territory” and the “Rock world” closely matches the Red State / Blue State, division in today’s politics.

The Antiwar Movement Peace Sign was borrowed from a British nuclear disarmament movement and caught on quickly in the USA.  It’s still so popular today that it has it’s own Unicode … that’s the computer code that makes letters and numbers.  The code U+262E generates ☮.  An alternative peace sign, the V Sign was borrowed from a WWII victory symbol.  It’s origin was probably an expression of desire for the war to end.  The V Sign has it’s own Unicode,U+270C which generates ✌.  Note that the V Sign for peace is with the palm facing outward.  Be careful how you use it.  Facing inward is considered obscene and insulting in some cultures.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Haight Ashbury district grew as an upper middle class suburb.  It’s streets were lined with large Victorian homes tucked in to small city sized parcels. Just a few years earlier, it had been farmland and sand when the Haight Street Cable Railroad connected Haight Ashbury to to downtown San Francisco.

By the time of the great depression, the Haight Ashbury district area had already peaked as automobiles opened up the suburbs. World War II brought a need for low cost housing.  Many of the large old homes were divided into apartments or boarding houses, and the neighborhood was deteriorating. By the 50’s, lack of maintenance and the exodus of the middle class left the Haight in rough shape with lots of vacant apartments…just the type of low cost rents that attracted struggling musicians.

San Francisco already had a large arts community and a reputation for being a bit wild. The low cost rentals in the neiighborhood of the intersection of Haight Street and Ashbury Street intersection were a magnet for musicians. It was home for a number of important psychedelic rock performers and groups of the mid-1960s, including the Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, who all lived a short distance from the famous intersection.

Nearby are two large parks, Buena Vista and Golden Gate, which served as a haven for the homeless and added to the drug culture. Druggies and maijuanna use were so prevalent that, by ‘67 it was jokingly called “Hashbury”.

Combine these conditions with the leftovers of the beat Generation (Beatnicks), and the Haight  became the birthplace of the Hippie movement.

Top Musicians and Groups

Many famous 60s rock musicians lived in Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, during the countercultural movement of the 1960s.  They include Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix, Grace Slick, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The Mamas & The Papas, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Haight-Ashbury was known for its bohemian culture.  It was a center for the hippie movement, attracting many musicians and artists who sought to escape the constraints of mainstream society.

Today, Haight Ashbury is back in style.  Many of the old victorians have been fixed up.  Rents are sky high, and the streets are lined with upper end boutiques and cafes.  And the famous corner of Haight and Asbury streets is home to a busy Ben and Jerry’s.