Summer of Love – Where Were You?

As this Summer comes to a close (this Friday is the first day of Fall). I started thinking about another Summer that happened 50 years ago. It was called the “Summer of Love”. Some of you may have lived through it at the time, and others, like me only learned about it from popular culture. It happened in 1967 and was kind of overshadowed by Woodstock a couple of years later. About 100,000 young people known as hippies or flower children poured into the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco. They generally opposed the Vietnam War and were into art, music and poetry. They rejected materialism and capitalism and other trappings of modern society. They were into communal living and folk and rock music. Many music festivals were held in the area, such as the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival and the Monterey Pop Festival with artists like The Who, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The Mamas and Papas song lyrics…”if you’re going to San Francisco be sure to where some flowers in your hair” were written for the Summer of Love. I think the young people were rebelling (mostly in a peaceful way) and trying to find themselves at the same time. I was only five years old at the time, but I always wished I had been a part of that generation.

At the end of the Summer some locals actually held what they called a hippie funeral because they wanted to signal this was the end of it, that people should stay where they live and not come back because it’s over. Still, much in society resonated from the events of the Summer of Love. They fueled the antiwar and environmental movements, but more than anything I think they taught us it’s okay to pursue personal freedom and be more open minded.