The Grateful Dead House

Just a few blocks up from the intersection of Haight-Ashbury at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco is where the rock and roll band the Grateful Dead lived in 1967. The house is also a short walk to Golden Gate Park and its eastward extension, the Panhandle. These public spaces were iconic hippie locations during the Summer of Love.

In 1967 the band was busted for illegal drug possession and held a press conference at this here arguing for decriminalization and claiming prejudice from local police enforcement. Cynically stating that if everyone who smoked marijuana were arrested, San Francisco would be empty.

During the 1960s, the combination of affordable housing and the bohemian lifestyle created an environment for hippies to thrive in Haight-Ashbury. The neighborhood became the epicenter of the counterculture hippie movement and the birthplace of various musical genres. In 1965 five musicians, originally called the Warlocks, created a musical group that would later gain national fame and rebrands themselves as The Grateful Dead. Grateful Dead founders Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron McKernan, and Bob Weir lived at 710 Ashbury Street from 1965 until 1968.

When not hanging out at the house, local hippies would walk down Ashbury, hang a left on Haight, and hang right there with the throngs of like-minded people gathered outside on the street. That stretch became hippie central, a phenomenon, a time and place that has since made it into the history books. Locals became entrenched in that scene, if not synonymous with it. Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzman recounted, "wandering around Haight, you’d end up bumping into everyone you wanted to find and — as the song goes — strangers would stop strangers, to shake their hand.”

To this day, tourist buses go down Ashbury Street to view the famous “Grateful Dead house,” and it’s a permanent part of San Francisco’s “map of the stars.”

Grateful Dead House. Lonely Planet. Accessed March 26, 2017. https://www.lonelyplanet.com/usa/san-francisco/attractions/grateful-dead-house/a/poi-sig/383905/3618....