San Francisco Neighborhoods · Haight Ashbury
Haight Ashbury
also The HaightTransition zoneTie-dyed and timeless, the Haight still hums with the ghost of 1967 — Victorian flats, record shops, and incense drifting toward Golden Gate Park.
- Birthplace of Summer of Love
- Grateful Dead history
- Vintage shops & Victorians
- Steps from Golden Gate Park
On the map
Open Haight Ashbury on the map →The story
Named for pioneer banker Henry Haight and Monroe Ashbury, an early San Francisco supervisor who shaped the adjacent park land, the district filled with Victorian flats after the 1880s. Cheap rents in those subdivided homes drew artists and students in the 1960s, and by 1967 the corner of Haight and Ashbury became the epicenter of the hippie movement, drawing tens of thousands of young people during the Summer of Love and birthing a counterculture of music, protest, and psychedelia.
Things most people don’t know
The Summer of Love
In 1967, an estimated 100,000 young people converged on the Haight during the Summer of Love. The neighborhood became the global heart of hippie counterculture, music, and the psychedelic movement.
The Grateful Dead house
The Grateful Dead lived communally at 710 Ashbury Street from 1966 to 1968. The Victorian became a counterculture landmark and was the site of a famous 1967 drug bust that the band protested publicly.
Janis Joplin lived here
Singer Janis Joplin lived at 122 Lyon Street, near the Panhandle, during her rise to fame in the late 1960s. Many leading musicians of the era called the surrounding blocks home.
Hippie Hill
Just inside Golden Gate Park near the Haight Street entrance lies Hippie Hill, a grassy gathering spot for drum circles since the 1960s. It remains the site of an enormous unofficial 4/20 celebration each year.
The famous corner
The intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets is the symbolic center of the neighborhood. A clock on the corner building is famously stuck at 4:20, and the street sign is among the most photographed in the city.
Eating and drinking
Restaurants
- Cha Cha Cha · 1801 Haight St
- Parada 22 · 1805 Haight St
- Pork Store Cafe · 1451 Haight St
- Magnolia Brewing · 1398 Haight St
Bars
- Aub Zam Zam · 1633 Haight St
- Toronado · 547 Haight St
- The Alembic · 1725 Haight St
Getting around and getting care
Transit. Muni bus lines 6, 7, 33, 43, and 71 serve the Haight; the N Judah Metro line runs a few blocks south on Carl Street and along the park.
Nearest hospital. UCSF Medical Center at Parnassus, 505 Parnassus Ave (about 0.7 mi)
Thinking about Haight Ashbury?
Send me an address and I will come back with its sun, wind and fog, what is under it, and what has closed on the block.