The problem the Haight faced
When thousands of young visitors arrived in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in the spring and summer of 1967, the neighbourhood had little capacity to house, feed or treat them. Many arrivals had little money, and some had left home in a hurry. Local residents, shopkeepers and volunteers improvised a set of services to cope. Together they are some of the clearest evidence that the hippie ideal of sharing was more than a slogan, though the services were always under strain and relied heavily on donations and goodwill.
The Diggers’ free meals
The Diggers, an anarchist-minded group that grew out of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, are best known for providing free food. From 1966 they served a daily meal in the Panhandle, the narrow strip of Golden Gate Park that runs into the Haight, usually late in the afternoon. The food, often a stew, came from donated or scavenged supplies, including produce and meat that suppliers or markets gave away. It was handed out to anyone who came, with no charge and no questions asked.
The Diggers took their name from a seventeenth-century English group of radicals who wanted land to be held in common. Their San Francisco counterparts also opened a “free store” where goods could be taken without payment, and staged street theatre. The Digger politics behind the meals were deliberate. Members said that giving things away was a way of challenging the idea that every exchange needed money. In practice, the meals also did something simple: they fed people.
How many meals were served is often given in round figures in later accounts, which makes them difficult to rely on. It is safer to say that the Diggers’ service lasted for months, and was one of the best-known aspects of life in the Haight during the Summer of Love.
The Free Medical Clinic
Health needs grew with the crowds. The Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic opened in June 1967, started by Dr David Smith and other volunteers, in a rented building in the neighbourhood. It aimed to provide care without charge and without judgement to anyone who came, including young people who might not otherwise have sought treatment for fear of being reported.
The clinic treated a range of problems, among them infections, malnutrition, venereal disease, injuries and the effects of drug use, including bad reactions to psychedelic drugs. Doctors, nurses and other volunteers gave their time. The clinic is still often cited as one of the lasting products of the period, and it continued to operate long after the Summer of Love ended, expanding its work on addiction treatment.
Crash pads and housing
Housing was harder to solve. Many newcomers found a place in a “crash pad”, a shared apartment or house where people could sleep on the floor or in a spare room, usually for little or nothing. Some of these were generous and well run. Others were overcrowded, unsanitary or unsafe, and landlords and city officials complained about them.
A few churches and local organisations offered shelter and meals, and the city’s concern about the number of runaways led to the creation of services aimed at young people in the following months. The overall effect was an informal and patchwork system that was never enough for the demand, and which could not cope with the number of people who stayed on as the weather turned in the autumn.
The Switchboard
Information also had to flow. The Haight Ashbury Switchboard, started in 1967, was a telephone service staffed by volunteers who matched callers with places to stay, rides, jobs, medical help and other services, and who kept lists of resources. It also served as a message centre for parents and young people who wanted to stay in touch. Switchboards of this kind later appeared in other cities, and they were an early example of the volunteer-run community information networks of the period.
Activism and its limits
The services connected to a broader activist side of the neighbourhood. Residents formed groups to deal with housing and health issues, and street theatre and community meetings were used to challenge city policy. Some of those involved were committed to wider politics, including opposition to the Vietnam War, while others simply wanted to help.
There were limits. The services depended on unpaid labour and donated goods, and as winter approached, many volunteers were exhausted. The press, which had spread the news of the scene, also drew in more people than the system could support. The Haight’s community leaders sometimes disagreed over strategy, and some of the free services were exploited or disrupted by outsiders. By October 1967, when the “Death of Hippie” ceremony was held, many people involved felt that the scene they had tried to look after had changed beyond recognition.
Still, the Haight community institutions of 1967 left a pattern that survived the end of the Summer of Love: volunteer clinics, drop-in centres, information lines and free meals have remained familiar forms of community aid in the decades since.