Loading ...that’s about right. i was in the haight the summer of 67. it was a magical place then. i came back the next year (but not to the haight. rents were better out by the airport in san bruno) and was there 68-69. the magic was fading. speed, as you say, but other factors as well.
i was back in 1995, and the magic was almost totally gone. the haight was full of people in a lot of leather and tattoos. the flower children had gone. i guess i was included. in the mid nineties, the haight was a tourist trap where people came to see the weirdos.
hunter thompson wrote a really insightful passage in fear and loathing in las vegas. it’s near the end. he writes about a youth wave starting in san francisco in the sixties and moving east. by the time he wrote, it had crested on the sierras and started to flow back. thompson was there for it. he was writing a book on the hells angels (an amazing book). he introduced the angels to ken kesey’s clan of acid heads. the book’s titled HELLS ANGELS. read it if you can find a copy. thompson left the haight in the late sixties, like a lot of the rest of us. the path he took from there was different from mine.