Haight-Ashbury takes modern turn
By Michelle Locke
September 17, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO - First came a moratorium on head shops. Then neighbors
turned out in force to support a new development that includes an
upscale grocery store. And the local street fair banned open
containers of alcohol.
There are signs of new times at the intersection of Haight and
Ashbury streets, the neighborhood that was the epicenter of the
hippie movement during the Summer of Love in 1967.
"It isn't drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll anymore,'' said longtime
resident and neighborhood organizer Ted Loewenberg. "It's a different
neighborhood.''
Drugs and music have not disappeared entirely from the Haight, and
judging by the baby strollers seen rolling along the sidewalks, sex
has not gone out of style, either.
Still, you know this is not your father's Haight-Ashbury when one of
the burning issues of the day involves whether a Whole Foods should
move into the neighborhood.
"Haight-Ashbury is a wonderful, iconic place that wrestles with its
past, present, and future,'' says San Francisco Supervisor Ross
Mirkarimi, who lives in and represents the neighborhood.
A walk through the Haight illustrates his point.
Here are lovingly restored Victorian mansions, glorious with details
accented with gold paint. Steps away is the slumbering form of a
homeless man stretched out near the front steps of a public library.
A "Tiny Tots'' diaper-service van zipping up the street spells out
the latest trend of the Haight - families.
On the main thoroughfare of Haight Street, wisps of the past are
brought to life in gusts of patchouli oil wafting out of vintage
clothing stores and vibrantly detailed murals painted on storefronts.
Interspersed along the street are more modern accents: bustling small
grocers, upscale coffee shops, and new retailers.
One of the newer stores on Haight Street is The Booksmith, an
independent bookstore operated by husband-and-wife team Praveen Madan
and Christin Evans.
More than two-thirds of Booksmith customers are locals who like
browsing shelves that carry a wide range of titles. Naturally, there
is a robust "counterculture'' section. The rest come from all over
the world, drawn by the lure of 1967, when thousands of young people
came to San Francisco, with and without flowers in their hair.
It was not a long-lived moment. By fall, residents held a "death of
the hippie'' funeral.
But the legend proved hard to kill.
"The narrative of what happened in the '60s is so powerful people
still come from all over the world; they come in here and want to
know where the hippies are,'' Madan said. "Well, the hippies have
been gone for 40 years.''
On a recent sunny morning, Jacob Rivers, 18, sat at the intersection
of Haight and Ashbury streets, trying to interest tourists in his
geometrically detailed drawings.
Tanned and towheaded, he hails from a suburb of Minneapolis, drawn by
something that happened years before his birth.
"We studied this stuff,'' he said. "It's a beautiful place. It's
crazy to think of the legends that went down here, you know. Jerry
Garcia. Jefferson Airplane. It's a cool place to be.''
These days, there are fights, often at the city Planning Commission,
over what to preserve and what to change to make the neighborhood more livable.
Take the proposal to bring in a Whole Foods Market as part of a
mixed-use housing development on the site of a closed food store.
Calvin Welch of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council said he does
not oppose a Whole Foods store per se, although he would prefer to
see local grocers at the site. But he said the project as a whole,
including the housing, was out of scale with the neighborhood and
would have generated too much traffic.
The project won approval from planning officials after supporters
showed up at a key meeting with more than 100 people.
Historian Joel Kotkin, author of "The City: A Global History,'' sees
the fight over the heart of the Haight as quintessentially San Franciscan.
"San Francisco, in a weird way, is the most conservative place in
America,'' he said.
"People went there for a particular ambiance and, even though it
really is not what it was, they are desperate to hold on to it.''
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