The Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco was one of the more interesting cultural experiments in LBJ’s America, at least before everyone and their sister left Idaho, and became an amphetamine junky walking the streets…
The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood is history. At least, so think two groups of residents who are planning museums to capture memories of the 1960s hippie movement before they fade with its aging participants.
One, led by Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics founder David E. Smith, will function as a “library museum” of the free-clinic movement, which began in the Haight in the 1960s to provide free health care to residents. The other effort, led by local artist David Wills, will chronicle the neighborhood’s history from its farming days in the late 1800s to the Summer of Love in the 1960s.
If the museums launch — neither is slated to open until after 2011 — they would be the latest in a recent push by San Francisco groups to better document the city’s history. The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society has been working to renovate the old Mint Building in the South of Market neighborhood into a San Francisco Museum by 2013. Last year, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender Historical Society opened a museum in the Castro district. Another half a dozen local museums have expanded in the past five years, according to the San Francisco historical society.
[Click to continue reading Museums Hope to Bring New Life to Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood of San Francisco – WSJ.com]
The museums will not be just a hippie theme park
Residents say they are eager to move past the neighborhood’s “hippie theme park” reputation emphasized by the head shops. With new museums, “We hope to educate people about what it was like here at the time, and try to get more into the philosophy of the free society that people don’t get,” said Jim Siegel, who owns the Distractions head shop and who likely will contribute items to Mr. Wills’s museum.
There is a nice photo essay (don’t need to be a WSJ subscriber to see it, I don’t think) of the Haight-Ashubry area if you click here…
Speaking of SF, I really want to visit there again, as it has been too many years1. When I was a younger dude, I spent several days strolling around the city on several different occasions, but I didn’t have a camera then2 so all the funky stuff I saw is relegated to my memory banks. I do love San Fran though, in an ideal world, I would have a house there for extended visits.3
Footnotes:- I’m thinking the last time was in 2003 – which is when the above photo was taken [↩]
- pre-digital years, and pre-photography years too when I think about it. I didn’t start carrying a camera around until I spent a couple months in Europe after I finished my undergraduate degree [↩]
- along with places in New York City, Venice, London, and wherever else. You know, if I was fabulously wealthy. [↩]