Enough time has passed for the scene in 60s San Francisco to turn from memory to history, now understood predominantly as a set of ideas and signifiers: flower power, free love, fringe vests, infrequent showers, idealistic good vibes giving way to an inevitable comedown. If this pivotal moment in time threatens to become self-parody, reduced to a tie-dyed Halloween costume, it’s due in part to the hyperbolic terms used by the Boomers who lived through it. The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood was a paradise too edenic to last, as the record goes, where “the streets were paved with LSD”.
In the new two-part MGM+ documentary San Francisco Sounds, poster designer Victor Moscoso – a pioneer of the far-out psychedelic aesthetic synonymous with this cultural moment – intends that description as firmly tongue-in-cheek. He shares an approximate viewpoint and goal with directors Alison Ellwood and Anoosh Tertzakian, who aim to recapture the magic of this fleeting, fertile heyday while focusing on the details of assorted lives over romanticized fantasy.
