In 1967, 100,000 hippies from across the country converged on San Francisco in a mass phenomenon dubbed the “Summer of Love.” Many were college kids on summer break and would leave come autumn—others stuck around to witness the Haight’s slow decline into a cultural wasteland.
Like a lot of young people, Jim Marshall was there. Drawn to the city’s Haight-Ashbury district by the surge of culture manifesting there—in music and fashion, in politics and mind-expanding drugs. Unlike the hordes of flower children washing up in the bohemian enclave that summer, Marshall was there to work. As a photographer employed by the biggest music labels in the business his job was to create a visual record of what Hunter S. Thompson would later lament as “the crest of a high and beautiful wave.”
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| Dancing in the Panhandle, June 1967. |
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| Janis Joplin on her bed, taken in her apartment on Lyon Street, December 1967. |
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| The Who during their stop in San Francisco, where they played two concerts at The Fillmore, June 16 & 17, 1967. |
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| The famous corner of Haight-Ashbury streets, June 1967. The Unique Men’s Shop is now a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop. |
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| Panhandle crowd at Hells Angels’ Thanks for Diggers New Years Day Wail, January 1, 1967. |
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| Jimi Hendrix performing onstage at a free concert in the Panhandle, June 19, 1967. |
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| People dancing and enjoying the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park Polo Fields, January 14, 1967. |
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| Jerry Garcia and Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia on the steps of the Grateful Dead house at 710 Ashbury Street, May 1967. |
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| The Straight Theater on Haight Street, September 1967. |
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| Krishna’s Kirtan, a sacred chant music group, on the Diggers truck during the Ratha-Yatra Festival on Haight Street, July 9, 1967. |
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| A family driving down Haight Street, looking at hippies, June 1967. |
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| Eric Clapton playing guitar in Jim Marshall’s apartment on Union Street, August 1967. |
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| Hells Angels Thanks for Diggers New Years Day Wail free concert in the Panhandle, January 1, 1967. |
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| Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder onstage telling everyone to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out” at the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park Polo Fields, January 14, 1967. |
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| Jorma Kaukonen, Spencer Dryden, and Grace Slick during a photo shoot in Golden Gate Park, May 1967. |
(Photos © Jim Marshall Photography LLC, via
Timeline)
