The anniversary of the Summer of love which took place in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco was recently celebrated with the West Fest concert in Golden Gate Park. A celebration of counterculture, West Fest offered visitors a free concert complete with music, art, beat generation speakers, and advocates from such movements as the Anti-war Movement and the Green Movement. What happened in the summer of 1967 has become known as the height of bohemian culture and an embodiment of the Woodstock generation.
West Fest Summer of Love Celebration
The Summer of Love
The term Summer of Love refers to the summer of 1967 when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco creating a society of cultural and political rebellion. Hippies had gathered in many other locations including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, Washington D.C., Chicago, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and all across Europe, but San Francisco was the center of the counterculture.
Music, drug use, free love, creative expression, and politics fueled this society and the Summer of Love became one of the defining moments of the 1960s. The world had not expected such a large gathering of youth and the Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury was seen as somewhat of a social experiment. Everything was shared, often among total strangers including food, love, and even health care.
The Summer of Love also saw some of the worst violence in some U.S. cities as Detroit and Newark. While the Summer of Love was happening in various cities around the world, some cities were facing racial discrimination against African-Americans leading to anger and rioting.
Many of the inhabitants of Haight-Ashbury were college and high school students on spring break as well as teenage runaways. The increasing population alarmed the San Francisco authorities whose primary directive was to keep the hippies away. The national media was alerted to the growing numbers and helped popularize the movement. The mainstream media coverage of the hippie life in Haight-Ashbury was covered by such writers as Hunter S. Thompson in the New York Times; its activities were reported on almost daily. The community also hate its own media publication titled the San Francisco Oracle whose readership topped a half-million at its peak.
Music also played a large part in the popularization of the counterculture movement. Such artists living in the community as Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin had become national stars. Around thee same time the Mamas & the Papas recorded the hit song San Francisco (Flowers in Your Hair).
Free food, free drugs, free love, and a free clinic drew as man as 100,000 young people to the Haight-Ashbury community to join a popularized hippie experience. Unfortunately for the movement, the community could not support the high influx of middle-class vacationers, college students, and other individuals itching for the experience. Overcrowding, homelessness, hunger, drug problems, and crime eventually caused many people to leave in the fall to resume their college studies.
On October 6, 1967 the remaining Haight-Ashbury inhabitants held a mock funeral signifying the “Death of the Hippie” signifying that the collective gathering of the counterculture had ended.
The legacy of the Summer of Love had a profound effect on the country and the entire world. Those who had gone to the Haight-Ashbury district brought new ideals, behaviors, and styles of fashion to the major cities around the globe. The Summer of Love is still celebrated as one of the major events in the counterculture of the 1960s and an event that changed the entire world.
Summer of Love Gathering
Loading ...