The Haight Ashbury - a History

Charles Perry, The Haight Ashbury - a History, 1984, Vintage Books, 306 pages.

This is a concise summary of certain counterculture events centered in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, USA in the approximate period 1964-1967. The paperback edition has no photos or illustrations.

The overall picture of the counterculture phenomenon that happened there and at many other places in the same years is well known to every reader. It is trite to go into the general lifestyle that emerged, since it is so well known today. At the time it was brand new to most of the people involved -- these things hadn't happened before, and there was no knowing where it was all going.

What I like about it is Perry's success in presenting the names of the principals, usually with some biographical information, together with a history of some of the more important events, such as Augustus Owsley Stanley III's chemical magic, or the Be-In of January 1967. Perry covers newspapers, bands, political and literary personalities of the day, and mentions in passing related events elsewhere in the U.S. He names about 200 people in his acknowledgements, a Who's Who of hippiedom. He also says, "Of the half-dozen people who refused to talk to me, four were still associated with the hard core of original Diggers and refused on grounds that I would misrepresent them because I didn't share their ideology." (preface page v.) The Diggers were a group that preferred anonymity and attempted to offer free services, such as food, to those in need.

Perry also does not neglect the rivalries and counterculture politics of the day:
dance promoter Chet Helms versus Bill Graham, City Council versus Diggers, Haight Ashbury Merchants Association versus Haight Independent Proprietors, Diggers versus Oracle newspaper, Oracle versus Berkeley Barb, left wing political activists versus anarchists, Allen Ginsberg versus no one, police versus everyone. And let's not forget, black versus white.

An Epilogue contains fascinating information about what became of some of the more notable players in the seventies and early eighties. Perry notes that while by 1969 the Haight had become "a heroin infested slum where someone could get knifed for a bag of groceries". He also says "the Haight did a remarkable job of pulling itself out... By the mid-seventies property values were up to five times what they had been at the lowest ebb in 1969, many buildings were freshly painted... the neighborhood looked livable again."

It was a dynamic time and place that hasn't been forgotten forty years later, and yes, I (dirtydog) was there, at least for part of it, an insignificant molecule bobbing in a sea of hundreds of thousands of similar molecules.

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