What Happened To The Haight-Ashbury?
You want to know what really happened in the Haight-Ashbury from 1964 to 1967? Good - then read this: Love and Haight, in today's Observer Music Monthly. It's really quite good. The first time I have ever read something semi-accurate in the major media.
Labels: Haight-Ashbury, hippies, Music, Sixties
posted by Christopher Newton at 9:23 AM
12 Comments:
Last week The History Channel aired a two-hour documentary entitled "Hippies." To my enormous surprise, it was factually accurate and very insightful, a far cry from the recent PBS documentary, "The Summer of Love," which was neither.
This week The San Francisco Chronicle is running a four-part series called :The Summer of Love 40 Years Later." It is available on-line at sfgate.com.
That is a pretty good article. I'll take your word for the conciseness of the information, as I was a scant 12 years old back then and not prone to hanging with hipsters, at least not until 1969.
I have a pic I took and got autographed by Country Joe from 1981 when he was on tour with Paul Krassner. I'll post it to you when I find it. Joe was in Tucson a few months back and was interviewed on the local underground radio station. They guy is still a hoot, though a bit on the depressed side it seemed. At that time he was singing "...next stop's Afghanistan."
"In the summer of 1967 as I drove my new Ford Mustang across the wide Golden Gate Bridge my thoughts were far from the hippie life. I looked forward to lively night life, bars catering especially to single people, sailing trips, weekends on the beach and riding little cable cars. Renting a comfortable apartment close to the University of California in Berkeley, I found a job teaching junior high school social studies. It seemed that I was well on my way to following the career of my father. However, my lifestyle and future plans were shortly to change radically.
"One Sunday I decided to go to the Haight-Ashbury district to a rock concert where thousands of hippies had gathered for a "love-in." A man wearing a beard, long hair, cowboy boots, jeans and a leather jacket crept up to me and said, "Hey, man, I have something you ought to try. It will expand your mind. You will begin to see things that you have never seen before, and hear things that you have never heard before. Here, try some marijuana." Attracted by the smell, I smoked the weed. There is a proverb that says, "the eyes of man are never satisfied." I was not satisfied with a few "tokes" or a few "joints," but the very next weekend I was back at the Haight to "score my own lid."
"Eventually, no longer content with marijuana, I journeyed on LSD trips and was emotionally carried about by the electronic waves of music as the rock superstars turned me into a wandering star reaching into the blackness of darkness. The Beatles sang, "All you need is love," but all I found was lust, as carnal gratification became the driving force of my life. Ungodly hippies became my constant companions in unknowing captivity as I marched through the streets shouting for peace in Vietnam and freedom to control the universities. The Scripture rightly said: "But the way of peace they have not known" (Romans 3:17).
"I turned on to drugs, tuned into the hippie scene and quit my teaching position to drop out and join the "revolution."
"Soon the devil began to break up his training ground at the Haight-Ashbury and on the Berkeley University campus. He directed his children to go home and sow his seed of drugs, disbelief, discontent and disillusionment in the virgin soil of cities, towns and rural areas outside of California. Thousands of hippies returned home, not with the repentant heart of a prodigal son, but to "hook" their younger brothers and sisters and old classmates who were still straight. I came back to Terre Haute, Indiana, wearing long hair and a beard, cowboy boots, jeans and a leather vest stuffed with marijuana. I crept up to old acquaintances, saying, "Hey, man, I have something you ought to try. It will expand your mind. You will begin to see and hear new sights and sounds." With lying words, I seduced many into the use of drugs."
-- excerpt from Jed Smock's autobiography http://www.gospeltruth.net/whowillriseup.htm
Interesting - but it makes me wonder how this fellow knows so much about the devil's plans and directions. I was there too, but I didn't experience anything like the picture he describes.
Personally, I'm rarely sure if God is behind an event, the devil is directing it, or if it's just people trying to get along and not doing it very well.
Hey P.P.,
I didn't read the entire article...skipped around. But as a little kid who pranced around Golden Gate Park that Summer of Love, here are just a few of my thoughts (I have too many to spill out here) -
First, I agree with Greg (the first poster) the History Channel's "Hippies" is the first documentary I've seen that gave the even amounts of good and bad. But it mostly received my respect for mentioning the children (people like me: small kids) raised in SF during '60s and '70s in the If it Feels Good Do It era. With drugs, sex and basically a free for all - it was not a safe-feeling or safe environment for many of us. It wasn't something I thought then, but it was deeply felt.
This is why I am conflicted about the whole hippie thing. While I grew up with great music, incredible experiences and fantastic hope for a perfect society - there was the aspect of learning too much (sex, drugs, etc) before I was six and then seeing many of these free spirits start wearing khaki and wrapping sweaters around their shoulders as they sipped chablis, talked about their mortgages while sitting in hot tubs over looking Marin County.
Not that I don't appreciate so much of the era, but - as the "Hippies" documentary on the History channel pointed out it was hardly the ideal for children.
And this article, too, mentions how things began falling apart.
As a teen, hanging out at punk clubs on Haight in the '80s it was a dark, almost sinister vibe - a frightening place at night with skin heads and other threatening types. I knew girls raped, mugged.
Just to reiterate what was stated in the article about the Haight's demise around that time.
Personally, I do like to focus on the positive parts of growing in the '60 and '70s. I always go back in my mind to our apartment in Glen Park, golden sun pouring in, Bob Dylan playing - and the whole day, my whole life before me.
Anyway, I thought (from what I read) this article seemed fair (with the good and bad)...I don't know. Maybe it's something Peter Coyote said (I'm paraphrasing) about in the end the genertation didn't END racism...)
I stopped to think - Yes, there are still racists, but my God - it's nothing like it was. As a child, I appreciated so much that I got to be a seedling in the shadow of the Civil Rights movement. My best friends' races were the last thing that occured to me. I lived that. So Mr. Coyotes statement I find sad.
Maybe that's another problem I had as a child growing up in that generation...being told to expect the ideal, a perfect nirvana of a society - and, somehow, feeling let down. Especially in the 80s, when most people seemed to give up...as though all that idealism was just a lark. It meant something to me. My brain was formed around these ideas.
Today, I am a patchwork of things - an Independent thinker - cynical about ALL political groups, yet open, too, to many political, philisophical and religious ideas.
While my parents' generation said, "Like Father, Like Son, Like Hell" I saw the good and bad in all generations. I don't so quickly assume their parents' generation had everything wrong with the world. I think these things go in cycles - the generation after wants to do things differntly - which is why I (and many of my hippie kid friends that I keep in contact with) all turned out more conservatively than our parents. We guard our children's innocence more vigilently...knowing what we were exposed to. I like to think we have unique perspectives...yet, as with most documentaries, articles, etc., about the '60s - our thoughts are usually ignored.
Pig, I know I rambled, but you've lived through it all and seem so open - I don't think you'll take offense to my childhood observations.
Michele (www.aprilbaby.typepad)
Hey Aprilbaby - who could not be ambivalent? That whole world of the Haight-Ashbury turned into a comedy of errors, and by 1967 I was on the run like everybody else I knew.
When I write the memory pieces, I just try to remember that world as I saw it and lived it - without a lot of propaganda for or against. I bought into a vision of a love winning out, of tribes and families and communes that protected each other from the straight (moneymad) world. But it never happened. What happened was life. I guess that vision of human nature's possibilities was way too optimistic.
Someday I hope you can trade stories with my daughter Jenny. Born in San Francisco, 1963 - she spent her early childhood in long dresses and flowers running barefoot down Haight St. In the eighties, she took me to that same nightclub, showing me around HER city. I liked it. I danced like a 1960s hippie and nobody seemed to mind. But my daughter's best friend was murdered by a stranger a block or two away.
I don't know, Michelle. I guess I'm just glad I'm still here to write some of it down.
P.P -
I'm glad you're around, too, to write this all down. As you said, the major media is hardly very accurate. Plus, you're a wonderful writer.
P.S. - Thanks for ignoring my typos. I just read what I wrote and had to shake my head. Yikes!
P.S.S. - I read your daughter's post on her SF destination recommendations. I see she's a musician who loves travel. Wow, you raised a free-spirit.
That's what I appreciate about being raised in the 60s...that we children were given so many options, allowed to follow our dreams. Very cool.
Michele, again.
Sorry to disappoint some here who maintain a common assumption, but it is just flat wrong that "the major media is hardly very accurate."
And, as I keep reminding people, media are not is. They range from The Village Voice to The Wall Street Journal and onward and outward to the broadcast and interactive media outlets.
The major media were there, covering all the beauty, wonder, weirdness and ugliness of the 1960s. More than 50 journalists died in Vietnam.
I have no doubt that if one were to do a thorough content analysis of the "major media" content of the 1960s, one might be surprised at the penetrating exposés and stunning kaleidoscopes produced by enterprising reporters.
There are some dusty pages of history out there from back in the day, some fine clips -- perhaps not all of them were distributed to the wire services -- but they were published and passed on.
Newspapers -- "the first draft of history" (rather kerouacian, wouldn't you say?) -- are very often amazingly accurate, and in rare cases prescient, on the first edition.
I'm tired of wags whose kneejerk reaction is to blame the media. They're most often politicians. Their fantasy exists somewhere in Pravda uptopia. They don't like the mirror held up to them.
Truth -- the first casualty of war (and this includes the spiritual realm; yes, Chris, there is a Conflict beyond your feeble, shallow, fleshly plane) -- often is abused and distorted in the media.
Here's why:
A terrible collision at the intersection of Fourth and Main. Four witnesses (standing at the four corners) each tell a different account.
Thus the old saying: "Newspapers don't always report the truth, but they will surround the hell out of it."
---
Suggestion for next topic: Now that we've trashed the media, let's bash teachers because we think they are screwing up our kids.
N'est pas, Leo?
Fair enough, Chronicler. I retract the statement. There's no excuse for sloppy writing. I intended to say the article was the first I had read about the Haight-Ashbury era (not reporting in general) that was semi-accurate, however, that statement is also a gross generalization.
Media as singular, plural - sorry, NOT my point. My unique perspective as a child during that period of time - that WAS my point.
Sure, journalists do fine individual work. But in the last decade I have been bombarded with documentaries, coffee table books, newspaper articles, and magazine spreads, mostly dreamy montages of those decades - that conveniently block out MY perspective. Yeah, we might get a mention. The History Channel's "Hippies" did say a few things. I appreciate that.
But in most film clips, with "Crosby, Stills and Nash" as the background, it all looks so groovy; the children are all naked, smiling babies. The little scraggly latchkey kids, fending for themselves are rarely seen.
The documentaries make that era look so groovy, I know many twenty-somethings today who would love to go back in time...I mean, it all seems like Nirvana.
But as a child who wasn't partaking of the mind-altering substances, I had a different view.
I think in the last month alone I've seen about six documentaries on TV. And everytime I walk into a bookstore I see stacks and stacks of books with smiling Flower Children on the covers. Few of them have anything new to say.
Other than a film called "Following Sean," the rare documentary from a child's perspective, I haven't seen much about us.
Weren't we part of the great experiment? The little petry dishes? Doesn't anyone want to know what we thought?
Media, medium...not my point.
Sorry, Pig - I love your personal perspective on that decade. But I'm getting cranky with these big scale retropectives. My own mother denies much of what she did during the 60s and 70s. Sometimes I feel like we kids didn't even exist during that time period.
That's all.
Michele, again (www.aprilbaby.typepad)
Maybe I'm just in a conciliatory mood, but it seems to me the.chronicler is using media to mean "journalism", while Michele is thinking of the broader spectrum of stuff that appears on TV with a passing semblance to journalism.
I don't really watch TV any more but when I did I was subjected to my share of 'dreamy documentaries' about that wonderful innocent time when hippies danced naked in the sun and everything was groovy. Knocked together by a video editor and a producer under deadline who were thinking more about groovy visuals and where to cut then seeking the truth or even presenting a point of view.
Oh dear, that's not very conciliatory to the producers and video editors. I must consider their feelings too, you know. Actually it was intelligent, thought-provoking pabulum. We were invited to carefully consider the pros and cons of burning one's draft card, should one happen to have one.
Television programming is created to entertain the masses between commercials. I guess it does its job, but it's not what the.chronicler is talking about. I think.
Well, I apologize for my rant. I kind of went off there.
Everybody made good points. Many good journalists here.
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