It's an American Dream...Includes Indians Too

The 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love is upon us, and the retrospective articles are appearing. Joel Selvin is writing a series of articles for the SF Chronicle. Selvin is a good journalist, and although it's hard to capture the zeitgeist of that time within the confines of a newspaper article, he does a good job. The Summer of Love was centered on the Haight neighborhood. It occurred one year before I was born, so all I have is the memory of the folks who were there. But I see what's become of the Haight, and I know modern hippies. Time has not been kind to either.

Of course, the Summer of Love was a media construct that died even before it started. As a rule of thumb, if you are reading about a happening in the media, it's generally dead. Such is the nature of the hip and cool: ethereal wisps that fall apart in your hands. The earlier groovy folks of the pre-67 Haight were replaced by something much more American. Selvin puts it this way:

But they didn't turn out to be the literate beatniks and poetic artists who had come out earlier. These kids were squalid, ragged castoffs and, as they crowded the sidewalks of Haight Street night and day, they came to be known as street people.

Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead says in his own mixed-metaphor way, “We would come together for celebrations and stuff like that, and it was a lot of fun. But starting around June, the creativity of the scene was starting to be piled over by just having to batten down the hatches, bar your doors and windows 'cause there were speed freaks on the street.”

Good old speed. Invented by the Germans and beloved by certain Sci-Fi novelists to marathon sex tweakers. And it’s safe to say those speedy street people are still on the Haight. I’m sure the original tweaks are dead, but young ones take their place. They sit on the sidewalk with their dreadlocks and puppies and ragged army clothes asking for spare change, hitting on the yuppie chicks and generally smelling less than sweet. I can’t say they are hippies. They resemble Mad Max Thunderdome desert rats. None of the ideas of revolution and utopia sweep their minds.

The Haight itself is now one big shopping mall. You won’t find real hippies, but for a steep price you can dress like one. Don’t get me wrong, I like the street. It has nice bars and restaurants, and Milk has some good Hip Hop shows, but there is not much life in the place when the sun goes down and the shoppers leave.

And the hippies that I’ve known in my life don’t really follow the ideals of their elders. They are left-wing, but most of them are not active in politics. They are attracted to pot and music. You would hope for some laid back and passionate guys, literate beatniks and poetic artists, but instead you have neurotic stoners.

Maybe there never was the perfect ideal, only pale shadows, but the general ideas of the counterculture were great. Freedom and equality, love and forgiveness, art and sensuality are all ideals to live up to, but it takes more than a joint and a flowery shirt. If the Summer of Love teaches anything, it teaches that we keep trying for utopias, even if they crash like a tweaker after a three-day binge.