1 Haight-Ashbury

Haight-Ashbury

The Haight-Ashbury is a district of San Francisco, California, USA named after the intersection of Haight Street and Ashbury Street, commonly known as The Haight or, in recent years, The Upper Haight. The names of the streets themselves are taken from Henry Huntly Haight, Governor of California in the 1870s, and one of the city supervisors of the time, a Mr. Ashbury. Both of them had a hand in the planning of the neighborhood, and, more importantly, Golden Gate Park at its inception.

The district is famous for its role as a center of the 1960s hippie movement, a post-runner and closely associated offshoot of the Beat generation who swarmed San Francisco's "in" North Beach neighborhood 2–8 years before the "Summer of Love" in 1967.

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History

Before the completion of the Haight Street Cable Railroad in 1883, what is now the Haight-Ashbury was a collection of isolated farms and acres of sand dunes, ungraded or developed in any way. The new cable car line, completed in 1883, connected the west end of Golden Gate Park with the geographically central Market Street line and the rest of downtown San Francisco. Shortly afterward, the 1890s and early 20th century reinvented the Haight-Ashbury as an upper middle-class and residential home owners' district. It was one of the few districts spared in the disastrous fires that followed the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

The Haight was hit hard by the Great Depression, as was much of the city. Residents with enough money to spare left the declining and “crowded” neighborhood for greener pastures within the growing city limits. During the housing shortage of World War II, large single-family Victorians were divided into apartments to house war workers; others were converted into boarding houses. By the 1950s, the Haight was a neighborhood in decline. Many buildings were left vacant after the war. Deferred maintenance also took its toll, and the exodus of middle-class residents to newer suburbs to the south and west continued leaving many vacant units for rent.

The Haight Ashbury's elaborately detailed 19th-century multi-story wooden houses became a haven for hippies during the 1960s, due to the availability of cheap rooms and vacant properties for housing in the district. The Bohemianism subculture that subsequently flourished there took root, and to a great extent, has remained to this day.

San Francisco and the Haight gained a reputation as the center of illegal drug culture and rock and roll lifestyles soon after, especially with the use of cannabis (drug) and LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs. 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 mid-1960s. Acts like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin all lived a short distance from the famous intersection. They not only immortalized the scene in song, but also knew many within the community as friends and family.

The fabric of the neighborhood was forever altered in 1967 during the Summer of Love, much to the dismay of many residents. Psychedelic rock music was entering the mainstream, and received more and more commercial radio airplay. The song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" became a chart hit (music). The Monterey Pop Festival in June further cemented the status of psychedelic music as a part of mainstream culture and elevated local Haight bands such as Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jefferson Airplane to national stardom. A July 7th Time Magazine cover story on "The Hippies: Philosophy of a Subculture", an August CBS News television report on "The Hippie Temptation"[1] and other major media interest in the hippie subculture exposed the Haight-Ashbury district to enormous national attention and popularized the movement across the country and around the world. Thousands of disaffected youth migrated to the Haight-Ashbury district, including many runaway youth, irrevocably altering the social structure of the neighborhood. Diggers (theater), a local "community anarchist" group famous for its street theatre and for providing free food to residents every day, held a "Death of the Hippie" parade as the new residents poured in.

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Culture

The district has lost little of its status as a center of alternative lifestyles, though much has changed. The area still maintains a lot of its Bohemianism ambiance, though the effects of gentrification]] are apparent to a great degree. Perhaps the best illustration of the district's slide into the mainstream is the presence of a The Gap (clothing retailer) store, a major international retailer that (ironically) started in San Francisco in the late 1960s, now fell to mixed reviews by the city's trendy inhabitants. As of January, 31st 2007 the Gap inc. no longer operates a store on Haight-Ashbury. Though the Gap and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream are now located at the famous Haight-Ashbury intersection, the neighborhood remains a thriving center of independent local business. It is home to a number of independent restaurants and bars, as well as trendy clothing boutiques, book sellers, head shops and record stores including Amoeba Music]]: America's largest new and used record store, as well as vendors catering to anything retro, avant-garde, or strange. The cohabitation between throw-backs to the fifties lounge scene, organic and spiritual new age via the 60's, punk rock of the 1970s and beyond is one of the neighborhood's most interesting and endearing aspects. The creativity of the dot com boom only under-shadows the neighborhood's many metamorphoses. A good way to see it all is at the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, held on the second Sunday of each June.

To a great degree, the main commercial area's blend of diverse street life engulfs all types in the carnivalesque and liberal surroundings, just as it had in the sixties. Recent police and community efforts help maintain park curfews and "no camping policies" as well. The area suffers little in the way of crime, especially when compared to San Francisco's rougher neighborhoods. Both commercial and residential property in the area is in high demand today, a testament to the long history and many attractions of Haight Ashbury.

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