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I spent the summer of '68 in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Lived in Haight\Ashbury (Hippie Heyday) on Page Street, just a block off Haight and two from Ashbury. I had rented the smallest room possible with a bed, dresser and still room to stand; a glorified walk-in closet really. I didn't believe in paying extravagant rent since I was living on savings and was not working. Most of the hippies spent their days hanging out on Haight Street, or maybe high on music and smoke in the beautiful and ornate Victorian flats. Many more hippies spent their days in Golden Gate Park, particularly at a place called Hippy Hill.
Hippy Hill was a distance of several foot ball fields at least from Stanyan Street, that separated the edge of the Haight Ashbury district and Golden Gate Park proper. It was a very large grass meadow bordered by Eucalyptus and Pine trees, with a children's playground and carousal on the south-west corner and Hippy Hill proper, on the north side. The hippies gathered in clicks and sat in circles on the grass most of the day. I was never a part of any of these groups. I spent my time deeper in the park by a couple of miles, out around the Japanese Tea Garden, which was admission free at that time, the Arboretum and Stow Lake. I had a route that I used, which was the prettiest most remote and secluded passage out there.
On a normal day, around nine or ten in the morning, I would walk down the Pan-handle, a block north of Page Street, which was a half block wide strip of grass and trees, between one way streets, heading down into and out of central San Francisco.
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