Hey y'all. I recently went on vacation to San Francisco and went to heights and ashbury as I've always wished to live in thr 60's and be there but honestly, I'm a tad disappointed with how over ran it was with homeless and trashy it has become. For so much amazing history it's so sad to see it not taken care of but all in all San fran was the most amazing experiences.
Haight/Ashbury has become a tourist trap. You can have a good time there but if you're looking for the hippie spirit of yesteryear you'll have to look hard. Golden Gate Park on the other hand is still imbued with the spirit. Go smoke a joint on Hippie Hill and you'll see.
The decline of the Haight happened in the late 60s. Jon Newman wrote in his essay Death of the Hippie Subculture:"By the fall of 1967, Haight-Ashbury was nearly abandoned, trashed, and laden with drugs and homeless people." Conditions there spurred a Hippie diaspora "bringing the spirit of Haight Ashbury in their hearts and to their hometowns spreading their love of free thinking around the world".Haight-Ashbury: The Hippie Epicenter. Some of them headed to the woods of Oregon and the mountain Northwest and eventually founded the Rainbow Family of the Living Light that posts on HF.
The Haight experienced a tourism boom in the 80s thru early 2000s, but over all it has declined along with the rest of SF... Golden Gate Park is a wonderful place however, and the museums in the city offer some cultural relief from the rest of it. Not my favorite city on the planet... but interesting from a historical perspective.
The saying--the bad always drives out the good-- is exemplified in the Haight. Another example is when someone writes about a wonderful, unknown vacation spot--soon the spot will be over run with tourists, changing the place forever. And of course--look at the political situation.
My brother lived in SF for nigh on 20 years. He moved out to the burbs to take care of his in-laws but confessed to me that he didn’t miss SF. It was always his dream to live there, but he said that in addition to the homeless/trash/drugs/bad behavior that the tech bros had really priced out the culture and character of the city in a big way and that it feels very bland/vanilla/corporate now.
Never been to the states, but the same thing goes for many old hippie spots in India. No point in visiting them IMHO, there are no material remains like there are with churches or palaces of other bygone eras. It is a human, social thing, so the best way to get a bit of that is to look for surviving hippie niches rather than places they used to gather at so many decades ago. It is not the same of course, but it is the closest you will get.
What is best, and more fun, is being in places where hippies live and thrive Like my county in Northern California. (Sorry, not Grass Valley...)
