The 20 Anniversary of the Summer of Love
| never went to any of my high school or college reunions, but | couldn't resist attending the twentieth anniversary of the Summer of Love in San Francisco. At noon on the summer solstice of 1987, young and middle-aged hippies--gray hair and potbellies, but not having erased a certain gleam in their eyes--were marching in an All Beings parade down Haight Street. Costumes ranged from a giant snail to Zippy the Pinhead.
One fellow still in civilian clothes explained, “Il was supposed to be Tarzan, but | had to wash the dishes.”
Local countercultural fixtures were all there: The Mime Troupe, Rosie Radiator and her fleet of tap dancers, the Automatic Human Juke Box, and a panhandler asking, “Can you spare a hundred dollars?” The buses now had posters that suggested Shop the Haight.
The charm of that entrepreneurial urge was not to be confused with the mission of the Haight-Ashbury Preservation Society, whose targets were symbolized by a walking Big Mac cheeseburger, a prisoner of Thrifty’ s in chain-store chains, mock pallbearers carrying a casket to mourn the wished-for death of Round Table Pizza, a sign warning Don't
Mall the Haight! and somebody in a Merlin the Magician outfit with a
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