2 - Drugs, Music, and Spirituality

Summary

During 1965 the young Americans who became known as “hippies” soared in numbers in the San Francisco Bay Area, as youthful use of still legal lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) swept the region. Trippers also grooved on “Acid Rock” music, and many were also spiritual seekers. Drugs, music, and spirituality were at the core of the hippie movement. Acid heads believed that psychedelic drugs would transform both individuals and society. Seeking the like-minded, freaks congregated in the city's Haight-Ashbury district. In the early Sixties, white working-class families had fled the Haight for the suburbs, and the large, old Victorian homes commanded little rent. San Francisco State College students moved into the area, and so did counterculture types driven from North Beach by rising rent, crowds of tourists, and police harassment. This hippie neighborhood was bordered to the East by a commercial area, to the North by the black Fillmore district, to the South by a steep hill, and to the West by Golden Gate Park.

Seeking authenticity, hippies moved to the Haight to enjoy rock music, easy sex, pot, and acid. Compared to the beatniks of North Beach, the hippies of the Haight were poorer and younger. Most were in their early twenties, and a few were teens. Many were college dropouts. Almost all were white, although the Haight was racially mixed, which was unusual for a neighborhood in an American city at that time. Too zonked to work due to frequent acid trips, freaks lacked cash and packed themselves into group homes. They shared rent, food, drugs, and each other. Sleeping on mattresses on the floor, they lived spontaneously, and, in the eyes of the mainstream reporter Michael Fallon, seemed apathetic. When Fallon asked a houseful of hippies how that night's dinner was going to be provided, one longhair answered, “A lot of us have straight friends. They bring us food.” Although there was no sign of any preparation for cooking, they said that they planned to eat lasagna.