The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco — known simply as "the Haight" — was the birthplace of the hippie counterculture that would reach its peak at Woodstock 1969. In the mid-1960s, this Victorian neighborhood near Golden Gate Park became home to a generation of young people who rejected mainstream American values and created an alternative culture based on peace, love, communal living, and psychedelic exploration.
The Summer of Love, 1967
The Summer of Love in 1967 brought an estimated 100,000 young people to Haight-Ashbury, drawn by the music, the community, and the promise of a new way of life. Bands like Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin's Big Brother and the Holding Company were all based in the Haight, playing free concerts in Panhandle Park and the famous Fillmore Auditorium.
The Haight became the most famous counterculture neighborhood in America, symbolized by its colorful Victorian houses, head shops, free clinics, and the pervasive smell of incense and marijuana.
The Road to Woodstock
The Haight-Ashbury scene directly spawned Woodstock. The San Francisco bands that defined the Summer of Love — Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Canned Heat — all performed at Woodstock two years later. The values of community, peace, and music that were born in the Haight were transplanted to Yasgur's farm in August 1969.
Many of the half-million people who came to Woodstock had been part of or inspired by the Haight-Ashbury experiment. They brought with them the communal ethic, the anti-war politics, and the belief in music as a transformative force that the Haight had cultivated.