REDUX: If You're Going to San Francisco... Part 1 of 9: A "Trip" to Haight Ashbury

[city dweller]

After a year or so on the sidelines, I finally got around to making my first thread (I started getting into photography about a year ago b/c of this site - I'd just like to say thanks to everyone here for all the great threads and for keeping an update on the world's cities just a fingertip away).
Anyway, I traveled to the great city by the Bay, San Francisco in early April for Spring Break, a final jumbo-vacation before college. Here is Part 1 of 9: A "Trip" to Haight Ashbury. After finally getting back to San Francisco after a two-day sojourn back in '05 on a Vegas-LA-Frisco trip, I had over a week to soak it all in. Haight Ashbury became my personal Mecca immediately. The Victorian architecture is top notch and well kept. While the Summer of Love and hippy movement were some 40 years ago, the easy-going, accepting and laid back atmosphere of the love generation is still omnipresent. From smoke shops to vegan restaurants, Ben and Jerry's to the massive Amoeba Records, burnouts to freethinkers, Joplin to Garcia, VWs to Volvos, Haight isn't just a neighborhood - it's a way of life. If the world was more like Haight Ashbury it would probably be for the better...

More from the San Francisco Series...
-Part 2 (Downtown) - http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=130785
-Part 3 (Chinatown) - http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=130802
-Part 4 (Alcatraz, the Wharf & Skyline Shots) - http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=130829
-Part 5 (Berkeley & Wine Country) – http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...43#post2818243
-Part 6 (Coit Tower & Telegraph Hill) - http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=130846
-Part 7 (Night Shots) - http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=130908
-Part 8 (Golden Gate Bridge & Vicinity) – http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=130986
-Part 9 (Miscellaneous & Shots From The Plane) - http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=135626









San Francisco HQ of the Hell's Angels back in the day...




Once the house of the Grateful Dead...








































































































I spot John Lennon


Janis Joplin...


Bob Marley...












































































That's it for Haight. Up next Part 2 of 9: Downtown.

[sfcity1]

One of the colorful neighborhoods in San Francisco that is very unique to SF. It seldomly shows up in these threads probably because it is a good distance from the mainstream sections of this city.

[Manarii]

Thanks so much for those photos. It's incredible how photos can evoke and re stir memories. The Haight will always be a special part of me.

My first connection must have been in 1980 when a friend moved up there before I did and I'd visit her. I saw Siouxsie & the Banshees at a club on Haight in 1980 or 81. I then arrived in SF in 1982 to live and my friend then lived on Central at Haight. I spent some time visiting her while I lived closer towards SF State. I remember such places as Uganda Liquors, the Double Rainbow Ice cream and cafe further down, Watusi Records, various thrift stores and who didn't look for a roommate (before the internet) at the Original Roommate Finder at Cole and Haight. My first vietnamese restaurant was on Haight at the "Little Bigamist" restaurant. (just loved all those names for places then as it had such a counter culture environment probably left over from the 70's.

Later I had a another good friend who moved to Broderick and again, spent time in the haight having coffee at Beau Seventh Heaven, or Double Rainbow and going to the Sunday "tea" dances with him at the I-Beam, roller skating in GG park and so on. I was living at that time on Central and Oak St. a few blocks from him until I went to school in France for a year in 1986.

I lost connection with the Haight in the late 80s as my friend died and I had moved more towards Nob Hill and worked in the Financial District. I really didn't go there very often up until I left SF in 2002. too many memories. There was an alright Ethiopian restaurant there and a cool middle eastern restaurant where you could smoke Hooka pipes.

the architecture remains amazing in my opinion and it still seemed to have that left over vibe from different eras.

Thank you for posting these. I'ts nice to see them.

[nicopico]

Far from mainstream is right up my alley. I have wanted to visit SF forever and your pics make me want to go all the more. You have an amazing eye. I personally love the legs sticking out of the window and the evolution of man on the window shades. Kudos, sir. Kudos.

[Jularc]

These shots are so wonderul! San Francisco rocks!

[ikcyzrteip]

awesome. haight-ashbury is definately on my list of places to see.

[the Misanthropist]

Nice thread. However I can't get past the whole cliché of it. "Coffee to the people"? Check. Technicolor t-shirts? Check. LSD? Check. Janis Joplin shades? Check. Jesus lookalikes? Check. Bob Marley cleverisms? Check...

This is not a dig at your work, I'm talking about the subculture of the place.

Keep them coming.

[rriojas71]

Great pics City Dweller. You've somehow seemed to captured, through photographs, the essence of "The Haight" as us city folks call it. It is definitely one of the most unique and diverse areas of SF and probably the World, although I haven't visited much abroad. Having lived a block away from the Haight / Ashbury intersection I got to experience this anomaly first hand. You definitely have your hippies and wanna be hippies, smoke shops and tye-dyed shirts, but there is so much more to it that that. You have people from all walks of life that live in the area. Rich, Poor, Teen Runaways, Aritists, Straight, Gay, Transgender, White, Latino, Black, Asian, White collar, Blue Color and many many more all settled together into a hodge podge of cultural ironies. Not to mention the area is smack dab in the geographic center of the city with Golden Gate park at its doorstep. It's very real, yet surreal at the same time. It has lost most of the mystique back from the Summer of Love, but one can't deny the lure of SF's most misunderstood neighborhood.

[soleri]

If you're old enough to remember Scott MacKenzie singing John Phillip's famous ditty (1967), you'll look at this pics with maybe bit of pain. It's wonderful that this city never destroyed itself like so many others in North America did. But, still, this city is now so out of reach for most would-be hippies that the nostalgia feels like death. What a time it was, however.

Otherwise, thank God for San Francisco.

[city dweller]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Manarii - It must have been interesting living in Haight in the time period between the "Summer of Love" and the revitalization of the late 20th century - So did you narrowly miss the influx in prices that went along with the cleanup of the neighborhood? (we took a tour of Haight, and supposedly during its heyday it was actually very rundown [the Victorians were in dire ruin] - the reason the hippies collected there was because of how cheap it was)

nicopico & ikcyzrteip - 6 words: catch the next plane ticket out!

the Misanthropist - there's definitely a cliche to it, but I actually found that to be rather comforting. If I had gone to Haight and all of the aforementioned things weren't there I don't think it would have had nearly the same impact or kick that it did. It's stereotypical, but just wouldn't be the same without several tie-dyed shirts and VWs visible around every other corner. I'm just glad it hasn't succumbed to that Disneylandish approach that many cities are emulating right now (even San Francisco around the Wharf is beginning to look like this).

rriojas71 - a block from the Haight-Ashbury intersection - you've got to be kidding me - some of the best years of your life, I take it? The neighborhood is somewhat of an enigma, life a different time and place - the diversity and the acceptance of that diversity is ubiquitous.

soleri - It was depressing in a way, witnessing such a nostalgic spectacle as an aging hippie juxtaposed to the 21st century San Francisco - the city still holds a lot of the social morals brought about by the lover generation, but has definitely changed with the times. It's like there's this heart to the city that wants to emulate the ideals of the hippy generation, but has moved into the 21st century world of big businesses and all that jazz. The hippies had a great idea, yet sadly the movement lost it's steam. My favorite quote, one from Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" sums it all up EXTREMELY well...

"It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant... History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened... There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning... And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

And Scott MacKenzie's song is one of my favorites.

[peanut gallery]

I hope you stopped in at Magnolia (it's in the background of a couple of your pictures). Some tasty suds in that place. They have an excellent Stout and Porter - two of my favorites.

[ColDayMan]

Excellent.

[crisp444]

Wow! Very, very cool. Possibly the best SF photo tour I've seen on this site.

[mrherodotus]

Daaaaaaaaaaaym. Can we say: DOWNLOAD!!!!!!

[the dude]

oh wow, man! i dig.

[OfCourse]

<3

[ChrisLA]

I got to stay in the area during a visit back in the 90's. When I was living in Fresno a co-worker took a job in the bay area and invited me up for a visit. He stayed directly up the hill from the famous corner. I remember dinning at some famous dinner for breakfast, but for the life of me can't remember the name. A few years later I flew my mom up there with me to visit relatives. We decided to visit Haight/Ashbury and mom freaked, she didn't like this area at all. In fact she didn't even want to dine in the area and we had to take the Muni back downtown to find somewhere to eat. Its funny because nothing seem to faze my mom, but she didn't care at all for this neighborhood.

[BTinSF]

Nice. Captures the hood well.

I used to work part time at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic in the building on Clayton, just off Haight.

Walked the area a lot, then.

[shovel_ready]

Originally Posted by ChrisLA

A few years later I flew my mom up there with me to visit relatives. We decided to visit Haight/Ashbury and mom freaked, she didn't like this area at all. In fact she didn't even want to dine in the area and we had to take the Muni back downtown to find somewhere to eat. Its funny because nothing seem to faze my mom, but she didn't care at all for this neighborhood.

Acid flashback??

[city dweller]

Once more, thanks for the comments!

peanut gallery - Sadly, I did not make it to the Magnolia (I'm also not of age to purchase), although it was one of many eateries recommended when I asked the locals. The place people recommended the most was something like Cha Cha Cha, it was a Carribean place. I ended up going to a Thai restaurant (I just can't get enough of it lately)...and of course, Ben & Jerry's.

ChrisLA - That's strange that she freaked, I've never been to a more inviting place in my life.

BTinSF - They mentioned the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic on our tour, it's that kind of compassion that makes the area so great. In the 60s supposedly one of the most treated conditions was problems with people's feet, because all of the hippies went barefoot. And about the baby boomers - my parents were along (they just missed the height of the summer of love era by about 5-10 years) and reminisced about their days protesting and all that jazz in the 70s. I think we stopped at the "other" Haight Ashbury one night for dinner, it is must less cliched, but the politics and demographics are pretty much the same (the photo of the "evolution of man" building towards of the end of this thread was taken there, as was the psychic photo before it).

Thanks again.