Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Grateful Dead House
NOTABLE BUILDING
Like surviving members of the Grateful Dead, this purple Victorian sports a touch of gray
- but during the Summer of Love, this was where Jerry Garcia and bandmates blew
minds, amps and brain cells. After their 1967 drug bust, the Dead held an infamous press
conference here, claiming if everyone who smoked marijuana were arrested, San Fran-
cisco would be empty.
(710 Ashbury St;
6, 33, 37, 43, 71)
4
Buena Vista Park
True to its name, this park founded in 1867 offers splendid vistas of the city and the
Golden Gate Bridge framed by century-old cypresses as a reward for hiking up the steep
hill. Take Buena Vista Ave West downhill to spot Victorian mansions that survived the
1906 earthquake and fire. After-hours boozing or cruising is risky, given petty criminal
activity.
(
http://sfrecpark.org
;
Haight St, btwn Central Ave & Baker St;
PARK
sunrise-sunset;
6, 37, 43, 71)
Understand
Flower Power
The flower power movement kicked off in San Francisco with two critical miscalculations by Joe McCarthy and
the CIA. McCarthy chose San Francisco City Hall as the location to expose alleged communists in 1960. UC
Berkeley students organized a disruptive, sing-along sit-in on City Hall steps, and police turned fire hoses on
them. Thousands rallied in outrage, and when McCarthy left town in a hurry, it marked the beginning of the end
of the repressive McCarthy era.
In a pronounced lapse in screening judgment, the CIA hired local writer Ken Kesey to test psychoactive drugs
intended to create the ultimate soldier. Instead, they unwittingly inspired Kesey to write the novel
One Flew Over
the Cuckoo's Nest,
drive psychedelic busloads of Merry Pranksters across the country, and introduce San Fran-
cisco to LSD and the Grateful Dead. Another LSD tester hired by the CIA, Stewart Brand, proposed an out-
rageous idea inspired by his LSD experiments: the complex technology governments used could empower ordin-
ary people. The machines would be called 'personal computers.'
With free-thinking and futuristic visions, San Francisco seemed the obvious place to begin the civil rights era,
build a new society and end the Vietnam War. At the January 14, 1967, Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, trip-
master Timothy Leary urged a crowd of 20,000 to 'turn on, tune in, drop out.' Free music filled Haight St, free
