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.
Read more about this topic: Summer Of Love
Famous quotes containing the word event:
“The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)