The Flower Child Blogs

  • June 07, 2024

    Summer of Love

    By Nicole Kaplan
    Summer of Love

    The "summer of love" took place in San Francisco, California in 1967 and it was a pivotal moment in the history of the counterculture movement!

    So what was the summer of love exactly?

    Let's take a trip back to the psychedelic era of the 1960's to a groovy world of peace, love, and music! 
    So turn on, tune in and drop out with us as we head back to the summer of 1967!

    January 1967 seemed to be a time of possibility. There was a feeling of a revolution of consciousness. The idea that if you free your mind the rest will follow. It was a year of hope. Hope for peace and hope for a better world.

    🎶 "All come to look for America" 🎶

    How did the summer of love start?

    The origins of the summer of love started in January of 1967 at an event called "The Human Be-In".

    The Human Be-In took place on January 14th in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  Between 20,000 and 30,000 people gathered for the day long event. The Human Be-In was the beginning of the hippie phenomenon ultimately setting in motion the summer of love.
    The Human Be-In embodied elements of 1960's counterculture. From psychedelic drug use, peace, love, and rock and roll, to civil rights and antiwar protests, dancing, and performance art.
    It was a collective of people choosing a location to be in.
    "It's just being. Human's being. Being together."



    The Summer of Love

    In 1967 the Beatles released a song that best summed up the summer:

    🎶 “All you need is love” 🎶

    In 1967 the summer of love arrived under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD, magic mushrooms, and marijuana.

    LSD was legal in the US for 8 months. The summer of love was the start of the music led flower power philosophy that was spreading around the world. Peace, (free) love and music. Flower children left their parents and their lives back home in search of something better happening somewhere else.

    1967 was the turning point where young people stopped, opened their eyes and started questioning and protesting against the Vietnam war. The hippie movement had to be an escape from reality because there was a horrible fear of being drafted.

     Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco 

    While the hippie phenomenon was happening in many cities, San Francisco became the center of it all.
    The focus of the psychedelic movement started in the small San Francisco neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.

    The hippies lived side by side with musicians. The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin lived among regulars of the neighborhood instilling a real sense of community.



    🎶 "For those who come to San Francisco 
    summertime will be a love-in there
    in the streets of San Francisco 
    gentle people with flowers in their hair" 🎶

    The Grateful Dead was the band most tied into the Haight-Ashbury community largely because they were the house band at the acid test parties.



    Monterey International Pop Festival

    At the height of the summer of love was the Monterey Pop Festival in California June 16-18th 1967.

    The festival was planned 7 weeks earlier by record producer Lou Adler and the popular band, The Mamas and the Papas.
    Although there had been several small music festivals earlier that year, Monterey was the first widely promoted rock festival in the world.
    Rock stars like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin were not well known names at the time and this festival shot them to stardom.

    With 50,000 in attendance it would set a template for large scale hippie festivals- Woodstock being the most famous.

    Our product picks for the summer of love!

    "The Death of the Hippie"

    By August that summer in 1967 the local flower children had enough of the bus loads of tourists coming to San Francisco to gawk at this new strange way of hippie life. 

    Drawn in by the city's new counterculture, people arrived in numbers great enough to cause a crisis. There were people who were coming just for the drugs, not coming for a spiritual awakening. Thousands were coming from all over the country and the result was trouble. The once popular scene of peace, love and music had quickly turned into a hopeless mess. The local hippies wanted to signal “the death of the hippie” and had a mock funeral procession for "the hippies" in San Francisco in October 1967.
    The local hippies felt like animals at a zoo and they wanted to signal that this was the end of it, to stay where you are, bring the revolution to where you live, and don’t come to San Francisco because it’s over and done with. 

    It got ugly and the original people who lived there for peace and love ultimately ended up leaving San Francisco.

    Summer of love legacy

     Though the summer of love only lasted a few months the counterculture it created continued on for a couple more years.
    The Age of Aquarius and Woodstock resulted from the summer of love.

    It inspired a generation to question authority, embrace diversity, and strive for a more peaceful world. Ideas set loose on mainstream American culture. The ideals of the summer of love continue to resonate today, reminding us of the power of peace, love, and music.

     Any of our hippie products on our website will help channel your inner flower child!
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