What remained of the Summer of Love in 1971? The Observer headed to San Francisco to investigate and found Love was still there. That’s Love, a Persian aristocrat in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt ‘with the wildest red hair’ who sold hamburgers during Haight-Ashbury’s 1966 heyday, back when ‘people really meant it when they said, ‘We love you!’’
Now Love was selling Indian jewellery and incense in a Haight changed beyond recognition: a boarded-up no-go zone beset by violent crime. The journalist herself was threatened by two men ‘who swished an 8ft metal rod around my head until I stamped on their feet’. Firearms, broken glass and human casualties of that singular moment were everywhere: ‘Personal tragedy litters the Haight like the uncollected rubbish in the streets,’ the article commented, highlighting a recent study following 51 beatniks: ‘Three were dead; two were in mental institutions; five were alcoholics or destitute; 14 had returned to ‘square’ life.’
