Did Anyone Live In The Haight District In The Late '60S

When I was seventeen, 1969, I left home and school to go live in a commune on Haight St. It was led by a gay doctor and his life mate "Tommy". It was about three blocks from Golden Gate State Park. While there, many very strange things happened. A guy came to live there named "Doug Marsh" and he brought with him a beautiful Vibraphone. I had brought my electric guitar and we jammed together. This guy was GREAT, could play beautiful music with 4 mallets! He ate some acid one day and got really strange. He sprayed the bathroom mirror with shaving cream, then put a bunch of junk in a coffee can and went around telling us that it was a bomb. When the Doc got back to the commune from work, Doug was caring a big car spring and yelled "Roland Ramsey eats worms!" and started swinging the spring at him. Someone had mace and started spraying it at Doug, but it was going everywhere, so we all had to go outside. Just days before a guy showed up and said that Doug had just went A.W.O.L in the band he was performing with in the city. He said that Doug was as good as Lionel Hampton, and was a world renowned Vibe player!
A guy on acid jumped from three stories up from a building across the street from us and hit the ground....died. We were told that he thought he could fly. Then a few days later the Hell's Angels came out in force to find some guy who ripped them off, and I was told to leave because a social worker was coming by the commune. I had to walk the street that night for about 3 hours scared as hell.
I was almost mugged twice by some black guys who were taunting me with "Hey, you one of those runaways!", luckily nothing happened and I just walked past them.
There were GREAT jams in the park on a hillside. About 10 conga players, and maybe 6 acoustic guitars, and tambourines, and other various noise making devices, and everyone in there hippie clothes.
When I left there to return back to the Santa Clara valley, I had dropped some really good Mescaline. Let me tell you, home never looked the way it did that day. My father looked like an alien, and our house looked like some tiny make believe place kinda like in "Alice in Wonderland".

 

Dude that sounds far out. Sounds like a lot of fun but also dramatic. What do you think of San Francisco now? I'm only 29, but I watched so many movies about that time, one by PBS called American Experience Summer of Love, another with Howard Zinn called Berkeley in the 60s. I moved to San Francisco in the mission in January of 2010 for about half a year. I guess I had this idea that people would still be like that now, but even the Haight is way different. I like Golden Gate Park, but from what I heard everything changed.

I would like to live there again anyway, and would've like to live there then. You're lucky to have experienced that. I wish more people would tell their stories like this. I can't imagine how easy it might have been to move there then, but now being the really high rent prices, it is like the total opposite.

 

To me Haight Ashbury is like a shopping mall with dope dealers now. I've been out here since 2002 so I can't tell you how it was back in the day. San Francisco is turning into one of those places where almost nobody who lives there works there and nearly nobody who works there lives there. I'm lucky since I live in a rent controlled apartment in Berkeley for $534 a month.

C/S,
Rev J

 

i was living just about 200 miles away, between sacto and donner summit at the time.

 

In 1968, in the summer, myself and two other high school juniors drove up from southern California and we spent a day wondering around on a very crowded Haight Street. There were broad sidewalks full of young people 7 blocks long. Every 5th person was saying "joints" "pot" "LSD". It was a beautiful summer day full of young people.

In late August 1969 I moved to Oakland just south of Berkeley across the bay from San Francisco to go to an Art College. My roommate was a drummer from New Jersey across of New York City. His dad was a record exec who signed the Rolling Stones and the Who and others. Art College was great and party. Every Friday, Saturday, or both he and I would go over to San Francisco and spend $3 per show at the Fillmore West or Winterland, or at the Family Dog at the Beach. Three major groups. Insane. And the Stones at Altamont. Often we'd go over to the Haight-Ashbury.

For a couple of years I lived in Palm Desert and Palm Springs. In '73 I moved to the Haigh-Ashbury and moved into the Good Earth commune. The largest commune ever in the Haigh. Dozens of houses and apartments.
The Church of the Good Earth. In these Forums it has it's own big thread or section listed under Hip Communities. "The Church of the Good Earth" Huge and it's a very interesting read. Have fun reading. It was REAL.

Later I moved to Palm Springs for a year and then moved back the the Haight until 1980. Then to the Santa Cruz mountains and later to Humboldt county in Garberville and in 1987 I moved back into San Francisco til '97. Now I'm elsewhere.

Life is FUN!!!!!!

 

I am only 23 and unfortunately, I never got to experience life back during that time I would love to though! Wouldn't it be nice if you could just get in a time machine and travel back to that time?! One can only dream though. I do enjoy hearing the stories

 

openmind693: I was there when the guy tripped out on acid and jumped off the Straight Theater. I was living there in the Third Eye, and I was on the roof trying to help some others calm that guy down! Actually, he lived, but was paralyzed for life. I remember Roland, and Tommy, and Cass, and Mary Alice ("Malice)", and Greg, Boston Bob, San Jose Bob, Boots, Paul, Phil, others whose names escape me. The hillside in the park was known as "Hippie Hill"; I remember Doug the vibes player. The commune ran the Third Eye Bookstore and The Tobacconist tobacco store/smoke shop at Haight and Masonic. You might have met me; I was known as 'Chuck'. I helped out running the tobacco store. There is another guy on the Forums named Scorpio Kenny who was also at the commune, but I don't remember him all that well. It's amazing that I remember ANYTHING about those days, actually!!!

 

i remember the third eye book store and DR Roland Ramses i also got robbed at the pan handle a knife at my neck later that night i seen the same two young black men robbing people in the Haight it was a very dangerous city after dark the lower Haight was bad ,what ever happened to Roland Ramses

 

Is the third eye book store still there and how is Roland Ramses is he still around.

 

The Haight in the sixties was a time and place that just happened it was not planed but it had to happen and it did change the world for better but it was also a two edge sword .