A Place Where The Flower Power Dominated And Where People Celebrated Ideas Of Love, Sharing, And Rejected Consumerism
“I’m one of the one hundred thousand kids who took part in the whole counterculture movement of the time,” says Pam Brennan, “the only difference is I still get to live it.” Pam Brennan is owner of The Haight-Ashbury Flower Power Walking Tour in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. For over 20 years, she has given 2.5 hour walking tours to the neighborhood that hosted a significant cultural revolution in America - the Summer of Love.
The Summer of Love, in a nutshell, was about 100,000 mostly young people who came to Haight-Ashbury in 1967 and celebrated ideas of love, sharing, and rejected consumerism. They trended towards peace, experiential practices, and exploration in art and music, as opposed to political activities such as protest. Of course, that is just a nutshell and someone like Brennan is available to discuss the nuances and the feel of it. She says, “One need not have necessary been there to ‘get it.’”
Brennan came to San Francisco permanently in 1973, but her association with the movement goes much further back. “My mother was heavily involved in anti-war movements in New York,” Brennan recalls, “she had two sons and didn’t want them to be cannon fodder.” Because of this upbringing, Brennan was predisposed to counterculture ideals. “We went to the marches in Washington DC,” she recalls, “even had peace vigils at our local post office, the only government entity in town, in the dead of winter.”
She fell in love with Haight-Ashbury at the age of 12, when she visited it first during the Summer of Love in 1967. “My grades were lacking at that time because I was already being taught that the system was messed up,” she recalls, “but I didn’t want to be a drop out. Still, I knew that I would move to San Francisco as soon as I could.” She improved her grades, graduated 6 months early and moved out to San Francisco. This was 1973. “The major mass had already moved on,” she says. In fact, in October of 1967, the hippies had a mock funeral, saying the movement is dead and to not come to San Francisco, instead start up the counterculture in one’s own town. Also, in the early 1970s, the hippies were interested in becoming more self-sufficient so a lot moved out to the country in order to grow their own food. “We used to go out to these farms on the weekends,” Brennan says.
Although at this time, the city of San Francisco frowned on aspects of the movement, especially when it came to things like communes, people like Brennan settled and supported the movement as much as possible. “I lived in a lot of different communes,” she explains, “some communes align to certain ideals or situations, such as religious beliefs, vegetarianism, or single mothers, and sometimes they don’t. I lived in one that was formed by a Unitarian Minister and within days we were travelling together, sharing chores, and became a family instantaneously.” She says that today that doesn’t happen very much at all because “a lot times your only friend is your cellphone.”
An interesting perspective Brennan brings is the association of the women’s liberation movement and the hippy movement. “I propose it was the men’s liberation movement,” she explains, “I saw brute men riding harley’s that took up crocheting, let their hair grow long and reading poetry. They were no longer satisfied with working in the corporate system.” That is what attracted her to the broader ideas of the movement.
“The mainstream media likes to portray the movements in Berkeley and Oakland as militant and ours in San Francisco as people staring at leaves on a tree,” Brennan chuckles, “but I participated in the protests, but didn’t want to get hurt.” She says she always believed in the flower power because she wants the counterculture to increase and not decrease by being thrown in jail, though she doesn’t have a problem with the militant aspects “If people feel like that is the way for them to be effective.” She says she much more likes the flower in the bayonet thing and the idea of “dosing the White House with LSD, which never ended up happening,” she laughs. Brennan is referring to the time that Grace Slick, beautiful poster child of the hippie movement, attempted to lace President Nixon’s tea with LSD so he could see the movement different.
Participation in the anti-war protests make sense with her upbringing. Growing up, her mother was close to Florynce Kennedy, the famous black activist, and she remembers being arrested and separated from her mother during protests. At heart, though, Brennan aligns more with the ideals of the counterculture - to detach from materialistic and capitalist ideals, though she doesn’t separate the two as “one is not higher than the other.”
“People arrive curious about the history and we are able to show it,” Brennan says, “the 50th year anniversary is coming up, but really we aren’t doing anything different. We live here.” Her goals are similar to the goals she had back in the 60s - to increase consciousness. “I know that not everyone can drop out of the system,” she says. She says that even back in the height of the movement, there were people that would take advantage of the system for their own benefit. “I probably volunteered too long and a lot of people were there to cash in on that,” she recalls. In the end, though, she thinks that the hippy movement can be a very positive force for good. “People dismissed us as utopian and perhaps that influenced us to not push hard enough,” Brennan explains, “but we can still strive for a just system and find creative ways to be effective.”
Andrew Malo
A graduate of Northeastern Illinois University in Education, Andrew has taught for the past decade in Chicago, New Mexico, and Japan. He enjoys tinkering with trucks and motorcycles, woodworking, reading and computer programming.
Make Sure To Stay At:
Olema Campground, located next to the Point Reyes National Seashore, just north of San Francisco. Offering the ideal place to enjoy different outdoor activities like bird watching, hiking, kayaking or just relaxing on the beach.