Summer of Love turns 50
People take pictures outside the exhibit “The Summer of Love Experience, Art, Fashion and Rock and Roll” in Golden Gate Park at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco. San Francisco, now a hub of technology and unrecognizable from its grittier, more freewheeling former self, is taking the 50th anniversary seriously.
A building painted in tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love on Haight Street in San Francisco
In a Jan. 15, 1967, photo, Timothy Leary, center, leads thousands in a song at the “Human Be-In” on the Golden Gate Park Polo Fields in San Francisco. Dennis McNally, who has curated an exhibit at the California Historical Society, says the national media paid little attention to San Francisco’s psychedelic community until January 1967, when poets and bands joined forces for the “Human Be-In,” which unexpectedly drew about 50,000 people.
Singer-songwriter Country Joe McDonald performs in April 2016 at the Vietnam War Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. Reflecting on 1967’s Summer of Love, McDonald says, “We created a mindset that became intrinsic to the fabric of America today. … Every single thing we did was adapted, folded into America: gender attitudes, ecological attitudes, the invention of rock ’n’ roll.”
Jimi Hendrix performs in June 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey, Calif. Before Burning Man and Bonnaroo, Coachella and Lollapalooza, Glastonbury and Governors Island, there was Monterey Pop.
Curator Dennis McNally stands by a photograph of the “Human Be-In” at the exhibit “On the Road to the Summer of Love” in the California Historical Society in San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO – The Flower Children climbed a mountain, swarmed a polo field and crowded a beach to welcome the arrival of their “summer of love.”
“A solstice happening,” one bearded hippie termed the turnout for the first day of a season which the nonconformist disciples of love predict will bring 100,000 hippies to San Francisco.
In the chilly predawn Wednesday, scores gathered on Twin Peaks – 900-foot mountains in the city’s center – where they chanted and meditated until the sun rose.
“It was a sort of Buddhist yogi,” explained bearded Bill Thomas, his arm crushing a red-haired girl in film gown against his suede jacket.
Wailing electric guitars and booming drums assaulted the ears of upwards of a thousand at the “happening” at Golden Gate park’s polo field.
Tribal groups clustered about small combo bands – the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Mad River, the Phoenix, Big Brother and the Holding Company.
One tribe squatted under fluttering flags with the Star of David and the Cross, keeping time with a table – a bongo-type drum – a tambourine and a portable reed organ.
“This is a Krishna, an Indian ceremony,” one explained. “This draws energy by clearing one’s state of mind.”
Nearby, a youth with hair hanging over his face ardently kissed a blonde.
The gathering ran the gamut of garb – miniskirts, shawls, black leather jackets, even a male wrapped in the royal purple of a Chinese Mandarin coat. Most of the males dangled bead necklaces. And everywhere were the paper flowers.
One squatting couple shielded a flickering candle from the wind with a sack, while they sipped wine from a silver chalice.
Grownups blew bubbles, while their children romped.
At the beach Wednesday night the moonlight ceremony focused on a 63-year-old witch.
“She’s freaking out a few people,” a hippie told a bystander.
“Freak out?”
“Well,” replied the hippie, fumbling for words, “that means blow out a few minds.”
That’s how summer came to Twin Peaks.