The moment I heard the song, 50-years ago in April, I knew that the summer of 1967 in my hometown of San Francisco would be unlike that of any other.
I was in Portland at the time, finishing up my junior year in college. Scott McKenzie came over my car radio singing, “If you’re goin’ to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair, summertime will be a love-in there.”
The tune, a giant hit written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, was essentially inviting a curious multitude comprised of the mostly young from all parts of the globe to descend on the laid-back and mellow bohemian enclave of the Haight-Ashbury District, which for several years had become a singular haven for hippies and their emerging counterculture.
I had been suspecting such a pilgrimage for some time. Preceding McKenzie’s anthem by several months was another musical call to action (“The Flower Children”) but one without Top-40 presence, sung by Marcia Strassman, who inanely droned from some studio in Los Angeles, “The flower children are blooming everywhere, heading for somewhere,” which most correctly assumed just had to be north, especially considering the extensive attention given to the wild and wacky Human Be-in that took place in January.
That’s when 30,000 hippies gathered in Golden Gate Park to celebrate a “Gathering of Tribes.” And given the current widespread popularity of “Hashbury” bands like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, San Francisco was already well on its way to becoming the Mecca for turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.
My old schoolmate, Bobby Weir, who went on to become the lead guitarist for The Grateful Dead once said, “Yes, there was LSD. But Haight-Ashbury was not about drugs. It was about exploration, finding new ways of expression, being aware of one’s existence.”
Come June, the Monterey International Pop Music Festival and the arrival of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” would signal the official start of what became The Summer of Love.
And even I have to admit that good vibes were all over the place, initially anyway.
I remember picking up two bead bearing, incense laden carefree hippie hitchhikers outside of Portland in June, while I was driving home from college.
They returned my favor of taking them to the promise land, by not only unloading the contents of my trailer into my mom’s residence, but cleaning the entire household before they did, a joint effort if there ever was one.
No bummers on the streets yet either. I discovered that I could walk from my mother’s house on Fillmore and Washington streets in the darkest hours of the morning through what were considered dangerous neighborhoods all the way to either the famed Fillmore Auditorium on Geary or Avalon Ballroom on Sutter, without fear of being hassled.
Even the increasingly overcrowded Haight was still safe to negotiate, with “Peace and love,” the appropriate and appreciated password.
But as much as I liked the idea of expanding one’s mind and all that, I’m afraid I was not born to raise rice in a commune or crash in just anyone’s pad or paint my car in kaleidoscope colors. If there was ever a lifestyle to emulate, that of Maynard G. Krebs suited me just fine.
Frankly, most of the hippies I ever met were, I always believed, merely an extension of the televised bearded beatnik. Maynard, whose pastiche made the “Dobie Gillis Show,” had an aversion to any and all kinds of work (“WORK!”), a delightful disdain for all adults and their mores, and a strong conviction for enjoying life each day.
One episode in the early ‘60s showed Maynard noisily banging away on his bongos much to the anguish of a very irritated Dobie, who responded with his oft-used demand, “Now Maynard, cut that out!”
Maynard’s reply was priceless. “But Dobie, if I can’t play my bongos, how will the music know I care?” Now that was hip.
But nearly all parents across the land who thought Maynard was cute, amusing, and harmless, had little patience or understanding for the values of the genuine Beatnik counterculture, and would have even less for the hippies’ alternative lifestyle that followed. That was most likely because it spawned their long-haired, tie-dyed, pot powered, sexually permissive, barefoot children, whose very souls were now being “psychedelicized.”
My soul, much to the relief of my parents, belonged to the U.S. Naval Reserve, a preferable alternative to a deadly draft, so I missed the waning days of the Summer of Love, one that began with such incredible harmony but ended with such predictable discord.
The Haight-Ashbury could not accommodate the hordes, and by September, the street scene had sadly deteriorated due to drug problems and crime, homelessness and hunger. Original bohemians, including bands like the Grateful Dead left and moved to Marin County, no doubt because it was now nigh on impossible to “find” yourself or anyone else for that matter amidst the mass of 100,000 hippie hopefuls that were lured by a cultural utopia fueled by free food, free drugs, and free sex, in search of that ever elusive “Love Haight” relationship, one that would conclude with Woodstock.
Now where did I put my bongo drums?
