Everything all summer long in SF continues to officially be "hippie" themed because it's the 50th anniversary of the famed Summer of Love and if you haven't been already you should be wearing flowers in your hair and remembering it fondly.
PBS's American Experience: Summer of Love offers a look not only at the gorgeous and stoned hippies basking in the Golden Gate Park sun, but also of the uptight bespeckled squares who've paid for a tour to gawk at them, and the angry middle class San Franciscans who were getting squeezed off of sidewalks and busses.
The Summer of Love, while a defining moment for our city, was also kind of a nightmare just because of the sheer influx of humanity. As one talking head in the doc puts it, "It got ugly. And the original people who came there for peace and love left."
And as one San Francisco marm describes the hippies, "I don't like their morals... I don't like to look at them. I don't like the sound of their voices or the filthy words they use."
But some people arrived in San Francisco not to participate in any be-ins, but just to take in the show. In the cued-up clip above, a 1967 Gray Line bus tour went so far as to offer bemused patrons a hippie slang dictionary and leisurely drive down Haight Street before swinging them back to earth with a visit to the Japanese Tea Garden.
PBS will re-air The Summer of Love on Tuesday, July 25 at 8 p.m., but the full documentary (which first aired a decade ago, in 2007) can be seen below via YouTube.
Fun fact: My uncle was a tunic-clad Summer of Love hippie and claims his friends used to hold giant mirrors up as the tour busses passed so tourists could see the real freaks themselves.
h/t: Time
Related: What Was The Summer Of Love?: An Explainer As 50th Anniversary Celebrations Ramp Up