The Haight-Ashbury, 1967

This is time capsule stuff. I was living on Frederick Street in 1967, working at a garment factory south of Market. Once when I was walking home up Ashbury after playing basketball on the Panhandle, some of the Dead were sitting on their front steps. One of them asked me to pass the basketball, and we did a quick back-and-forth with the ball. I wasn't very hip and barely knew who they were, though I had seen them perform at one of the free concerts on the Panhandle. (The crowds got so big on the Panhandle that the city made the concerts move to the Polo field.) 

Jerry Garcia before he grew a beard!

Odd to hear the neighborhood described as having crime and prostitution before the Summer of Love. Seemed like a regular neighborhood to me, though things got a little wild that summer.

Later that year---or maybe the next year---I saw a brilliant performance of Michael McClure's The Beard in a small theater on Mason Street next to a movie theater that is now Ruby Skye.

McClure was also part of this great poetry reading at the Nourse Auditorium in 1968.

Thanks to Bold Italic for the link.

Grateful Dead, 710 Ashbury Street