The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. More broadly, the Summer of Love encompassed the hippie music, hallucinogenic drugs, anti-war, and free-love scene throughout the West Coast of the United States, and as far away as New York City.
During that time, amateur photographer Charles Weever Cushman wandered along Haight Street in Haight-Ashbury, a thriving San Francisco neighborhood where cultures and eras meld together. Made famous by the hippie movement in the 1960’s, Haight-Ashbury was once the home to revolutionaries, famous singers (including the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin) and cult leaders.
With his camera loaded with Kodachrome film, Cushman captured the culmination of a movement. Take a look back at the hippies in Haight-Ashbury through these vibrant pictures taken by Cushman:
Shit has always littered the streets of San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteYou can almost smell the stench through those photos.
ReplyDeleteThey wanted the hippies removed because of their clothing and their body odor. Now those hippies are paying over $3000 for a one bedroom apartment and are walking around naked except for a hat and shoes. The hat tells the world "I'm not homeless or crazy" and the shoes signify they know there's needles and feces on every street. Sand Francisco used to be a jewel of California and now it is merely stained glass: stained by human excrement literally and figuratively.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't look too bad to me. I thought the same thing when I saw the photos taken during Beatle George Harrison's legendary visit in August 1967. He was the one wearing dark sunglasses to hide the fact he was off his face. He went away saying Haight-Ashbury was full of grubby, spotty junkies and spent the rest of his life saying it was the turning point that put him right off drugs. Of course that's a textbook example of after-the-fact rationalisation if ever I saw it. His discovery of the Maharishi and meditation is what really made him take the same enlightened path as Donovan.
ReplyDelete"Enlightened"
DeleteI don't think that word means what you think it means.
I think these hippies were color blind, their clothes are too busy and mismatched. lol
ReplyDelete