August Adventures - The Summer of Love

Admittedly I was probably a bit young for the actual Summer of Love.  I was 12 in 1967, which is the year they are using as the 50th anniversary.  In that summer I was between 6th and 7th grade and going to a Catholic school.  Not much chance of free love or drug culture there, although I suspect some of my classmates might have been more adventurous than I.  Anyway, my husband was four years older than I and that made him a teenager at that time, not in Catholic school for sure and definitely more experimental than I was.  He was very interested in seeing some of the Summer of Love exhibits around San Francisco so we went to the DeYoung Museum to catch one of them before it ended on August 20.

In front of the museum they had street signs depicting the difference in the last 50 years:

In the entryway there were tons of button messages on the windows:

Once inside there were rooms and rooms filled with the clothes, posters and other artifacts from the Summer of Love.

Some of these clothes I would love to have.  Perhaps I am a hippie in spirit after all!

Love the fringe on the jackets

and the big bell sleeves

I can imagine this being very heavy to wear for a long period.  No wonder she is sitting!

I want this dress!

And this coat

Jerry Garcia's Hat

Cool boots, no?

There were pictures of the rock and roll groups of the times:

Jimi Hendrix

Santana 

Grace Slick and Janis Joplin

There were signs explaining different aspects of the culture and significance of sayings:

And posters, posters, posters:

These were in a black light room and were kinda cool the way they changed shapes.  

There was a whole room with posters covering every spot on the wall and ceiling.  

In fact, to be honest my husband was kind of disappointed in the exhibit.  He thought that it was too focused on the posters, clothes and photographs.  We did not pay the extra to get the audio tour and maybe that would have made some difference, although I don't really see how.  Everything had plaques with a description of what was being shown so we could read all about it, rather than listening to someone tell us the same thing.  There was a room with bean bag chairs and music playing so you could sit down and get the feel of what it was like to experience a concert but I think if I had tried to sit on one of them I wouldn't have been able to get up - these old bones you know?

The hippie

I dressed the part, don't you think?

It took us about an hour or so to go through the whole thing.  When we were done we drove around the actual Haight Ashbury district and I got a few pictures of interesting sights:

The real street sign

Painted building

?Drug culture?

Not the Painted Ladies but still kinda cool houses.

Not quite sure what goes on here but I made my husband go around the block so I could snag this photo.  

He took pictures of a few of the different houses he lived in when growing up in San Francisco.  That was not one of them :)  All in all it was a very fun day.  

What do you think?  Were you a hippie at heart?  In San Francisco during that time period?  Love to hear about it!