Time seemed to stand still in the Haight-Ashbury, the epicenter of a revolutionary, avant-garde community in the mid-sixties, where young people were exploring communal living and new ways of being alive. The Haight-Ashbury spelled hope for a generation that rejected war and America's affluent wasteland, and that believed LSD was going to save humanity by bringing peace and love into the hearts of millions. The psychedelic counterculture was swept away by the euphoria of the zeitgeist, with its new way of looking at oneself and the world. Yet no sooner had a generation begun expressing its newfound freedom and spreading its utopian vision, than the community in the Haight-Ashbury began to disintegrate and fall apart. By the time the Summer of Love arrived, the dream was all but over and soon a parade would celebrate the Death of Hippie. In Summer of Love and Haight, William Schnabel draws on his first-hand knowledge of San Francisco and the Haight-Ashbury in the sixties to discuss the events leading up to the Summer of Love, outline its social and historical context, and review its cultural and political significance. His informative narrative helps to understand the psychedelic movement in the Haight-Ashbury and its place in American history.
It's 1967, the Summer of Love. With the war in Vietnam raging and the draft hanging over their heads, three Milwaukee high school graduates set off on very different paths to seek their own destinies and discover that people, places, and things are neither what they expected, nor what they appear to be. Bob Ralston journeys to San Francisco-the epicenter of the hippie movement. John Haus enlists in the army and ends up in Vietnam. Jim Gaston beats the draft and seeks an alternative lifestyle. Each must live with their choices and survive in one of America's most tumultuous times. Those who experienced the 1960s will relive them as the author's words capture the awakening of millions of America's youth to a world of free love, drugs, and rock and roll like it's never been played before or since. Readers too young or too old to have lived through the Summer of Love will experience Haight-Ashbury through the eyes of someone who was there. My Summer on Haight Street is a remarkably insightful chronicle of three Baby Boomers in the turbulent 1960s that defined a generation and a nation. This fast-paced novel is based on several real people and some real events. Robert Rice, Jr., has crafted a compelling story that captures the aspirations and fears of young men who elected not to go to college immediately out of high school in 1966 and 1967 and faced the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam.
"Published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press on the occasion of the exhibition The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock and Roll at the de Young, San Francisco, April 8 through August 20, 2017"--Colophon.
A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book The year is 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad vibes, psychedelic music, lab-designed drugs, anti-war protests, racial tension, free love, dropouts, flower children. An age of innocence, a time of danger: The Summer of Love. San Francisco is the Summer of Love: a convergence where American youth seek a New Explanation, music is free in the park, and violence lurks just around the corner. Lost in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find her troubled best friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat's Eye in Draco, a strange and beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine. With the guidance of Ruby A. Maverick, a feisty half-black, half-white Haight-Ashbury hip merchant, Starbright and Chi will discover a love spanning five centuries. But Chi has traveled across the centuries on a vital mission-nothing less than saving the Universe. He, Starbright, and Ruby must unite to save all of spacetime from demonic entities who crave their annihilation. "Clear-sighted, witty, and wise." Locus Magazine Lisa Mason has published ten novels including Summer of Love (a Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book), The Gilded Age (a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book), Strange Ladies: 7 Stories (a collection of previously published short fiction), and thirty stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies worldwide. Her Omni story, "Tomorrow's Child," sold outright as a feature film to Universal Studios. Cover copyright 2010--2017 by Tom Robinson. Literary agent: Mark Gottlieb, Trident Media Group
In 1967, tens of thousands of young people streamed into San Francisco, kicking off a social transformation that shook the world. In this book, Harvey Kubernik embarks on an insider's musical exploration of the Summer of Love. The main narrative is multi-voiced, based on a treasure trove of exclusive interviews with 1967's significant scene-makers and musicians by Kubernik - who knows them all.
Though more than a generation has passed since the revolutionary fervor of the Summer of Love of 1967, the 1960s in many ways seem with us still. From recurring debates over the war in Vietnam to the perpetually appealing music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stone to the concern about youth drug use, the legacy of the 1960s is ubiquitous in contemporary life. The Summer of Love brings together an impressive group of historians, artists, and cultural critics to present a rich and varied interpretation of this seminal decade and its continuing influence on politics, society, and culture. The Summer of Love, which accompanies an exhibition at Tate Liverpool, pays particular attention to the wildly creative psychedelic art of the era. Perceptive essays on psychedelic comics, graphic design and typography, light shows, and film successfully rescue psychedelic art from the fog of nostalgia and unjust critical neglect. Distinguished contributors also explore the role of 1960s fashion and architecture, and they consider anew the central influence of hallucinogenic drugs on the art of the era. Running throughout the essays are the elements of epochal change—from sexual liberation to student revolutions—that still form the backdrop of our collective consciousness of the 1960s. An incisive collection of writings on all aspects of 1960s art and culture, tempered by time and critical distance, The Summer of Love will be indispensable for those who wish they had been there—or for those who were, but can't remember it.
2005 marks the 40th anniversary of San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury district. The psychedelic community was probably the most widely written-about phenomenon of the 1960s apart from the Vietnam War. As unexpected as it was inevitable, the whole eventfrom public manifestation to gaudy collapsehappened in less than two years. In this acclaimed, definitive work, Charles Perry examines the history, the drama, and the energy of counter-cultures defining moment. First published by Rolling Stone Press in 1984 and now re-releasedwith a new introduction by the Grateful Deads Bob Weirto time with Haight-Ashburys 40th anniversary, this highly acclaimed work is a must-have for anyone interested in the original sex, drugs, and rock n roll lifestyle.
The critically acclaimed, San Francisco Chronicle bestseller—a gripping story of the strife and tragedy that led to San Francisco’s ultimate rebirth and triumph. Salon founder David Talbot chronicles the cultural history of San Francisco and from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when figures such as Harvey Milk, Janis Joplin, Jim Jones, and Bill Walsh helped usher from backwater city to thriving metropolis.