The Summer of Love: 40 years later
I am a little tender about the idea of being "40" and yet fascinated about the summer I was born–The Summer of Love. Just a few miles north from the San Jose, California, Catholic hospital I was being born in a cultural revolution arrived. Hippies in San Francisco made their debut. Thousands of teenagers experimented with mind altering drugs like LSD.
This most current issue of Rolling Stone is interesting to me for its recall of these events. My life came to be during a time when social experimentation began. I grew up with peers with names like Moon and Dweezle and Cuong or Carlos. Vietnam was ending and Reagan era was emerging.
The Summer of Love had a dark side. Acid was dropped, but heroine
and narcotics soon dominated. Chaos ensued. The social experiment had
a backlash, too. The hippies vacated the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury
to small rural places in Northern California. Now, crystal shops can
be found in these small mountain and coastal towns. Today you might
even find a VW bus painted with the rainbow colors of the era.
The hippie generation, or boomers, eventually discarded the flowers
for Wall Street and BMWs. My generation, known as "X" emerged while
the once idealistic baby boomers became the pragmatists they are
today. The Summer of Love left interesting art, music and cultural
icons such as Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The stale and conforming
50s were discarded for a time of freedom. Most boomers ended their
experimentation and began families and soon would transform corporate
America. Society and culture did go through massive changes during
the summer I was born. This kind of change is now the norm and so much
so that it is almost like The Summer of Love never really happen.
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