Important Dates in Hippie History

January 14, 1967 - Human Be-In at Polo Fields

In January 1967, 15 months after the "Dr. Strange" dance at Longshoreman's Hall, a crowd estimated at 35,000 filled the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park for the Human Be-In. - view related link

January 3, 1966 - Haight Ashbury Head Shop opens

Jan 3 - The Psychedelic Shop head shop opens on Haight Street, S.F. - view related link

October 16, 1965 - Legendary Longshoreman's Hall "Dr. Strange" Dance

The most pivotal of the first outside gigs for Jefferson Airplane was undoubtedly the one that took place October 16th at Longshoreman's Hall, at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. - view related link

May 5, 1965 - First Grateful Dead Show

According to the database on the official website, Dead.net, the band's first show was at Magoo's Pizza in suburban Menlo Park, California on Cinco de May - May 5, 1965. - view related link

May 17, 1964 - Climax of Haight Ashbur Freeway Fight

In 1964 the Panhandle-Golden Gate Freeway plan reached a climax, with a May 17 rally at the Polo Grounds to save the Park - view related link

February 7, 1964 - Arrival of the Beatles

The Beatles arrive in America and hold a quip-filled press conference that sets the antic tone for their two-week stay. - view related link

March 17, 1960 - HANC formed

The Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council dates its official beginning as March 17, 1960, the day on which its by-laws were adopted. Its anniversary is usually celebrated in April, the month of its first official general membership meeting. - view related link

November 2, 1956 - Haight Ashbury Freeway Fight begins

On November 2, 1956 the San Francisco Chronicle graciously published a map of the proposed and actual freeway routes through San Francisco - view related link

History of the Hippies - Part I
by Nicholas Pablo

April 20, 2009

When people think of the Hippies they think of peace, love, flowers, psychedelic drugs, and social rebellion against the status quo. In many ways the Hippie Movement was primarily a reaction to the unstable times that dominated the mid 60s to mid 70s. In that regard, it’s no great surprise that much of this movement began shortly after Kennedy was shot in November 1963 and the Vietnam War truly began under LBJ. But there was much more to the story that just political reactions to the times.

It would be fair to say the Hippies began as a small folkie group in San Francisco in 1964. Much of this movement was based around the Beatniks that settled there in the late 1940s and 1950s. The Beat Generation were a group of influencial american writers that responded to their own unstable post World War II world with travel, drugs, and alternative philosophies on life. Chiefly among these was Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassidy, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg. These figures would all play important roles in the Hippie Movement. Allen Ginsberg led the eastern-based spiritual momentum of the Hippies. Neal Cassidy joined Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as well as driving for the Grateful Dead. Jack Kerouac returned to New York and published a series of influential biographical novels glorified the life of a "nation of rucksack bodhisattvas traveling the countryside".

Just as the Beat Generation writers bounced back and forth from San Francisco to New York not too suprisingly the hippie scene developed along a similar pattern as can be seen with the introduction of LSD. LSD was chiefly introduced on the West Coast through Ken Kesey, famous for authoring One Flew Over the Coocoo's Nest (1962). Kesey attended Stanford in 1959 and took part in the CIA-backed study called Project MK-ULTRA. These experiments studied the effects of psychoactive drugs on people : in particular LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT. Being an author, Kesey was very interested in the Beat Generation and wrote an unpublished book on them, but admitted he "was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie." He was influential however in inspiring a group of young followers that would be influential in the San Francisco Hippie movement. When the publication of his second novel required his presence in New York., Kesey along with Neal Cassady and others in a group of friends they called the Merry Pranksters decided to take their infamous cross-country LSD-based “trip”. Kesey required all who came along to either “Get on the Bus or Get off the Bus” referring to their dedication to the journey. The bus was a school bus nicknamed “Furthur" that eventually drove them to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York and back to San Francisco.

While Kesey was being a LSD test subject at Stanford, Professor Timothy Leary was studying the use of LSD as a therapy at Harvard. In August 1960, Leary traveled to the Mexico to try psilocybin mushrooms for the first time. Upon his return to Harvard that fall, Leary and his associates, notably Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass), began a research program known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Leary and Alpert also founded the International Foundation for Internal Freedom in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There was great interest in their experiments which led to a black market for psychedelics developing near the Harvard University Campus. In May of 1963, Leary was fired from Harvard University for experimenting on students and subsequently opened Millbrook which provided LSD experiences to the New York social scene. Many know Leary through the catch phrase he coined and popularized at the 1967 Be-In "Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

Kesey and the Pranksters visited Leary’s Millbrook during their long and winding On The Road style trip. While visiting New York, Neal Cassady had introduced Kesey and the Pranksters to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who in turn introduced them to Timothy Leary. After an unsavory visit to Leary they continued their LSD trip throughout the american countryside. Ken Kesey and the Pranksters returned to San Francisco in late 1964 and began holding Acid Test parties in 1965 in the San Francisco area. Local Haight Ashbury bands like the Grateful Dead played psychedelic music to go with the crazy sound and light shows at these Acid Tests. Their entire journey became much of the Electric Koolaid Acid Test book written by Tom Wolfe

To say that the Hippie Movement was simply an LSD based movement is a shortsighted review of events. There were multiple simultaneous and rather individual movements involved in what we now think of as the history of the hippies. Besides the Beat Generation origins and the LSD influences there were important societal revolutions in the music scene , in american politics, in the new frontier of space, in alternative philosophy and in countering the uptight and parochial 1950s lifestyles. What became known as Hippies were young people of the 1960s who rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Eastern philosophy, championed sexual liberation, were often vegetarian and eco-friendly, promoted the use of psychedelic drugs to expand one's consciousness, and created intentional communities or communes. They used alternative arts, street theatre, folk music, and psychedelic rock as a part of their lifestyle and as a way of expressing their feelings, their protests and their vision of the world and life. Hippies opposed political and social orthodoxy, choosing a gentle and nondoctrinaire ideology that favored peace, love and personal freedom perhaps best epitomized by The Beatles' song "All You Need is Love”. Hippies perceived the dominant culture as a corrupt, monolithic entity that exercised undue power over their lives, calling this culture "The Establishment", "Big Brother", or "The Man". Noting that they were "seekers of meaning and value", scholars like Timothy Miller describe hippies as a new religious movement.

Many think of the Summer of Love in 1967 as the beginning of the Hippie Movement – while this was actually much closer to the end. The San Francisco - Haight Ashbury scene developed much earlier than 1967. The Haight Ashbury district was originally the African-American and Japanese neighborhoods of San Francisco's early years. The Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC) was formed at the time of the 1959 revolt against a proposed freeway. As early as 1963, the Haight-Ashbury's elaborately detailed, 19th century multi-story wooden houses became a haven for hippies. The environment of cheap rooms and vacant properties was created in the most part from the proposed freeway. It was the younger generation who were attracted to the Beat Generation that gravitated to this cheaper Haight-Ashbury district where they could afford to live. Many were students at nearby University of San Francisco, UCSF, and S.F. State University. Others were musicians, philosophers, artists, poets, apartment-dwellers, panhandlers, and even future CEOs of companies such as Pepsi, the Gap, Smith-Hawken, Lotus, and Rolling Stone magazine.

The Haight Ashbury social scene and the "Party People" began as early as 1964 and gained momentum in 1965 and 1966. The word hippie, indeed the whole phenomenon of the Haight- Ashbury, first came to light in September 1965, in the course of a San Francisco Examiner article written by Michael Fallon about a coffeehouse called the Blue Unicorn. The Unicorn, which advertised the cheapest food in the city, was a little hole in the wall on Hayes Street, near Golden Gate Park, in the midst of the twenty-five-block height ashbury district that derived its name from two intersecting streets — Haight Street, which ran in a flat line toward the Pacific Ocean and Ashbury. At the time of the article there were by some estimates only a dozen actual “hippie houses” in the Haight. Much of Fallon’s writings served to obscure the fact that many “hippies” were in fact 2nd generation Beats who moved to this cheaper area. He coined the word hippie by using Normal Mailer’s “hipster” term and shorting it. The hippies weren’t all too fond of this nickname seeing it as another social convention to subtley degrade them. But they were different from their older beat generation. They didn’t wear black turtlenecks the wore bright colors. They weren’t solemn they were sunny and cheery and used the word love incessantly. They were a secret revolutionary bunch who on nights when the LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana Movement) wasn’t at the Unicorn café the Sexual Freedom League was. And they had a secret love weapon : LSD.

This community of peace and love could be seen even in many of the earliest manifestations of the movement. Movements such as the late labor movement. Bridges. and Dr. David E Smith’s Haight Ashbury free clinic showed a caring community. Many of the early Haight residents participated in the Mississippi Freedom Rides. There was the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and fights against segregated health care demanding that “healthcare is a free privelige for all”. Another well-known neighborhood presence was The Diggers, a local "community anarchist" group famous for its street theatre who also provided free food to residents every day. Despite all these community projects, by 1967, the neighborhood's fame chiefly rested on the fact that it became the haven for a number of important psychedelic rock performers and groups of the time. Acts like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin all lived a short distance from the famous intersection of Haight and Ashbury. They not only immortalized the scene in song, but also knew many within the community as friends and family.

The Bay Area folk music circuit was centered in the Haight Ashbury and had developed in the early 1960s, with folkies Palin and Kantner (of Jefferson Airplane), Jerry Garcia, David Crosby, Janis Joplin and others. In 1964, a wave of British musicians first took to the American stage. This was touched off by the Beatles (named after the Beatniks) and their first US performance. Many of these UK musicians were blues bands such as the Rolling Stones, The Animals, Herman’s Hermits and Manfred Mann that brought a unique soulful sound to a generation seeking something new. While touring in America the burgeoning hippie movement of San Francisco rubbed off onto the British bands. By 1966 the Beatles produced albums like Revolver and Sargeant Pepper and a hippie scene had developed in London where the Carnaby Street fashions led the way.

In 1965 bands such as Simon & Garfunkel and the Byrds started combining their folk music with UK blues and rock. Jefferson Airplane was soon formed in San Francisco during the summer of 1965. The Grateful Dead combined their jug band influence with blues for the psychedelic acid parties that began in 1965. Other bands included Country Joe, Mommas Poppas, The Doors, Sly & the Family Stone. There were also eastern music influences from Ravi Shankar and Allen Ginsberg. On October 16, 1965, the Family Dog (a collective created by Luria Castell, Ellen Harman and Alton Kelley that was modeled on their psychedelic Red Dog experiences,) hosted "A Tribute to Dr. Strange" at Longshoreman's Hall. Attended by approximately 1,000 of the Bay Area's original "hippies", this was San Francisco's first psychedelic rock performance, costumed dance and light show, featuring Jefferson Airplane, The Great Society and The Marbles. Two other events followed before year's end, one at California Hall and one at the Matrix. After the first three Family Dog events, a much larger psychedelic event occurred at San Francisco's Longshoreman's Hall. Called "The Trips Festival", it took place on January 21–January 23, 1966, and was organized by Stewart Brand, Ken Kesey, Owsley Stanley and others. Ten thousand people attended this sold-out event, with a thousand more turned away each night. On Saturday January 22, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company came on stage, and 6,000 people arrived to imbibe punch spiked with LSD and to witness one of the first fully developed light shows of the era

All through the summer of 1966 the San Francisco hippie LSD music scene continued to blew up. Bands such as the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, Captain Beefheart, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Family Dog, Lovin Spoonful, the Turtles and Velvet Underground played San Francisco venues like the Fillmore, the Avalon Ballroom and the Matrix thanks to promoters like Lenny Bruce,. Chet Helms, and Bill Graham.

The timing of this music movement coincided with the rise of dissenting groups of the 1960s counterculture including the New Left and the American Civil rights, Woman’s Rights, Gay and Lesbian rights and similar movements. Throughout 1966 and 1967 there were protests, marches and fundrasiers in San Francisco to aid the new political left wing and rising anti-war movements. Many of these hippie bands supported these causes with their music. Artists and writers such as Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Andy Warhol and others supported the SF Longshoremen, Artists Liberation Front, The Guardian Newspaper, and numerous other endeavours.

All of this was a bit much for the establishment who were used to being able to control their citizens. On October 6, 1966, the state of California declared LSD a controlled substance, which made the drug illegal. In response to the criminalization of psychedelics, San Francisco hippies staged a gathering in the Golden Gate Park panhandle, called the Love Pageant Rally, attracting an estimated 700–800 people. As explained by Allan Cohen, co-founder of the San Francisco Oracle, the purpose of the rally was twofold: to draw attention to the fact that LSD had just been made illegal — and to demonstrate that people who used LSD were not criminals, nor were they mentally ill. The Grateful Dead played, and some sources claim that LSD was consumed at the rally. According to Cohen, those who took LSD "were not guilty of using illegal substances...We were celebrating transcendental consciousness, the beauty of the universe, the beauty of being."

On January 14, 1967, the outdoor Human Be-In organized by Michael Bowen helped to popularize hippie culture across the United States, with 20,000 hippies gathering in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. On March 26, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick and 10,000 hippies came together in Manhattan for the Central Park Be-In on Easter Sunday.The Monterey Pop Festival from June 16 to June 18 introduced the rock music of the counterculture to a wide audience and marked the start of the "Summer of Love." Scott McKenzie's rendition of John Phillips' song, "San Francisco", became a hit in the United States and Europe. The lyrics, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair", inspired thousands of young people from all over the world to travel to San Francisco, sometimes wearing flowers in their hair and distributing flowers to passersby, earning them the name, "Flower Children." Homemade tie-dyed t-shirts added a psychedelic flavor to their hippie dress.

On July 7, Time magazine featured a cover story entitled, "The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture." The article described the guidelines of the hippie code: "Do your own thing, wherever you have to do it and whenever you want. Drop out. Leave society as you have known it. Leave it utterly. Blow the mind of every straight person you can reach. Turn them on, if not to drugs, then to beauty, love, honesty, fun." It is estimated that around 100,000 people traveled to San Francisco in the summer of 1967. The media was right behind them, casting a spotlight on the Haight-Ashbury district and popularizing the "hippie" label. With this increased attention, hippies found support for their ideals of love and peace but were also criticized for their anti-work, pro-drug, and permissive ethos.

By the end of the summer, the Haight-Ashbury scene had deteriorated. The incessant media coverage led the Diggers to declare the "death" of the hippie with a parade. According to the late poet Susan 'Stormi' Chambless, the hippies buried an effigy of a hippie in the Panhandle to demonstrate the end of his/her reign. Haight-Ashbury could not accommodate the influx of crowds (mostly naive youngsters) with no place to live. Many took to living on the street, panhandling and drug-dealing. There were problems with malnourishment, disease, and drug addiction. Crime and violence skyrocketed. By the end of 1967, many of the hippies and musicians who initiated the Summer of Love had moved on. Misgivings about the hippie culture, particularly with regard to drug abuse and lenient morality, fueled the moral panics of the late 1960s.

At the same time that psychedelic and rock music took off in a big way protests were increasingly common throughout the county. Continued civil rights boycotts, anti-war marches and social protests lead up to an unprecedented summer of revolt in 1968. In March the US government performs a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site and President Lyndon Johnson signs a bill removing gold backing from US paper money and later that month he informs the nation he won’t be re-running for president. On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated and later that month the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed and students also seized the administration building at Ohio State. In May the USSR performs nuclear test (underground). Democratic hopeful Robert F Kennedy was shot dead in June on the night he would have locked up the party’s nomination. Other famous events such as the Chicago Democratic Convention Riots in August, the riots in Watts as well as the election of a Republican president Nixon in November all changed the political scene in a short timespan. There was First day of San Francisco State College strike in November 6. The Beatles began their breakup when Ringo leaves the band and John and Yoko release their nude album in November.

The following year of 1969 wasn’t much better. In February of 1969 there was a Massive strike at Berkley for ethnic studies. In April 1969, the building of People's Park in Berkeley, California received international attention. The University of California, Berkeley had demolished all the buildings on a 2.8-acre (11,000 m2) parcel near campus, intending to use the land to build playing fields and a parking lot. After a long delay, during which the site became a dangerous eyesore, thousands of ordinary Berkeley citizens, merchants, students, and hippies took matters into their own hands, planting trees, shrubs, flowers and grass to convert the land into a park. A major confrontation ensued on May 15, 1969, when Governor Ronald Reagan ordered the park destroyed, which led to a two-week occupation of the city of Berkeley by the United States National Guard. Flower power came into its own during this occupation as hippies engaged in acts of civil disobedience to plant flowers in empty lots all over Berkeley under the slogan "Let A Thousand Parks Bloom".

Later the following year in Aug 15-17 Woodstock would capture the attention of the nation. Most of the San Francisco hippie bands like Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, County Joe, Janis Joplin and others would make it to the show. It’s unexpected (by the mainstream) attendance of 500,000 people shocked the establishment. It was a capstone on getting the voice of the underground movement heard. This was a revolutionary turning point in the Hippie Movement that in so many ways marked the end of hippiedom’s cultural domination.