The “Hashbury” Is the Capital of the Hippies – Hunter S. Thompson (1967)

A hippie lounges in front of the Drogstore Cafe, a local hangout notorious for the proliferation of hardcore narcotics, in the Haight-Ashbury district.
“In 1965 Berkeley was the axis of what was just beginning to be called the ‘New Left.’ Its leaders were radical, but they were also deeply committed to the society they wanted to change. A prestigious faculty committee said the Berkeley activists were the vanguard of ‘a moral revolution among the young,’ and many professors approved. Now, in 1967, there is not much doubt that Berkeley has gone through a revolution of some kind, but the end result is not exactly what the original leaders had in mind. Many one-time activists have forsaken politics entirely and turned to drugs. Others have even forsaken Berkeley. During 1966, the hot center of revolutionary action on the Coast began moving across the bay to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, a run down Victorian neighborhood of about 40 square blocks between the Negro/Fillmore district and Golden Gate Park. The ‘Hashbury’ is the new capital of what is rapidly becoming a drug culture. Its denizens are not called radicals or beatniks, but ‘hippies’ – and perhaps as many as half are refugees from Berkeley and the old North Beach scene, the cradle and the casket of the so-called Beat Generation. …”
John Riley
[PDF] The ‘Hashbury’ is the Capital of the Hippies – The New York Times
Welcome to Hashbury, capital of the hippies by Chris Wild