On the Road to the Summer of Love: San Francisco folk and jazz singer Barbara Dane marches with her son and daughter in 1964 at an early Vietnam War protest. This photo by Erik Weber is featured in "On the Road to the Summer of Love," an exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. It runs through September 24 at the California Historical Society in San Francisco.
Trips Festival: In this photo by Gene Anthony, a group dances during the Trips Festival at the Longshoreman's Hall in San Francisco. A year before the Summer of Love, the Trips Festival was the first large gathering of the counterculture community. The newly named Grateful Dead played, but it was not a concert, said historian Dennis McNally, the Dead's longtime publicist. "Instead of 'I'm the artist, you're down there, I will create art and you will reward me with applause and presumably money,' the artists saw the show as the audience, and they were merely supplying the soundtrack."
The Human Be-In: The Grateful Dead's Bob Weir (front) and Jerry Garcia perform at the Human Be-In, 1967, in this photo by Rosie McGee. The Be-In drew at least 20,000 revelers to Golden Gate Park for chanting, music and lots of drugs. Psychologist and LSD proponent Timothy Leary famously urged the audience to "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
The beat poets: Gary Snyder (from left), Michael McClure and Allen Ginsberg, Hell's Angel Freewheelin Frank and Ginsburg's girlfriend Maretta Greer lead the crowd in a massive chant at the Be-In, in another photo by Gene Anthony.
The Be-In audience at sunset: The event drew more than 20,000 people to the Polo Grounds in Golden Gate Park. There was so much attention about what was going on in the Haight that a group calling themselves the "Council for the Summer of Love" formed to plan for the hordes of young people they expected to join the party once schools let out that spring. That's when the term "Summer of Love" was born. This photo was shot by Erik Weber.
Poetry and Hell's Angels: Poet Lenore Kandel, a key figure in the Haight-Ashbury scene and the only woman to speak on stage at the Be-In, stands with poet Michael McClure and a member of the Hell's Angels in this photo by Rosie McGee. Kandel had written a book of love poems that was confiscated by police on obscenity grounds.
After the Be-In: A couple embraces on the ground after the Be-In has ended in a photo by Gene Anthony. "Ninety-five percent of the people have gone home, everybody's leaving, and there's the one couple that simply cannot take their hands off each other," says Dennis McNally, who co-curated the exhibit. "I think every show should end this way."
Fantasy Fair: The Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival on Mount Tamalpais in early June 1967 kicked off the Summer of Love. The rock festival featured performances by The Doors, The 5th Dimension, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds and many more bands. This photo by Elaine Mayes is "the perfect picture," McNally says. "It just captures this moment of ecstatic dancing, which was the center of what was going on in the Haight."
Jimi Hendrix: In his first American performance, Jimi Hendrix stole the show at the Monterey International Pop festival in June 1967. The festival was produced by John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, who also put out the summer's anthem, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)." "Every fantasy of what the Summer of Love was about -- bliss and love and being very high and listening to music -- came true that weekend," McNally says. The iconic shot was taken by Suki Hill.
Death of Hippie Procession: A group of street theater radicals called the Diggers staged a mock funeral procession to signal an end to the Summer of Love and the media's hyped version of what a hippie was, McNally says. "The media's coverage of the Summer of Love was implicitly reductionist. It boiled things down to superficial things like long hair and beads. That's not what had gone on before, and that's not what was important."
