Summer of Love - Event

Event

In New York City, an event in Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan on Memorial Day in 1967 sparked the beginning of the summer of love there. During this concert in the park, some police officers asked for the music to be turned down. To reject the request, the crowd threw various objects, thus causing the police to make thirty-eight arrests/ A debate about the threat of the hippie ensued between Mayor John Lindsay and Police Commissioner Howard Leary. After this event, Allan Katzman, the editor of the East Village Other, predicted that 50,000 hippies would enter the area for the summer.

Double that amount - as many as 100,000 young people from around the world - flocked to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, as well as to nearby Berkeley - and to other San Francisco Bay Area cities, to join in a popularized version of the hippie experience. Free food, free drugs, and free love were available in Golden Gate Park, a Free Clinic was established for medical treatment, and a Free Store gave away basic necessities to anyone who needed them.

The Summer of Love attracted a wide range of people of various ages: teenagers and college students drawn by their peers and the allure of joining a cultural utopia; middle-class vacationers; and even partying military personnel from bases within driving distance. The Haight-Ashbury could not accommodate this rapid influx of people, and the neighborhood scene quickly deteriorated, with overcrowding, homelessness, hunger, drug problems, and crime afflicting the neighborhood.