Associated with the Hippie subculture of the 1960s, the Haight-Ashbury is a district named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets in San Francisco district (also known as The Haight or The Upper Haight) and was an open space but full of farms and sand dunes until the Haight Street cable car line was built in 1883. Soon after, the neighborhood started to flourish eventually becoming a desirable upper-middle-class place of abode. However, during and after the Great Depression, the Haight as was much of the city experienced a crucial decline that made its residents leave the neighborhood for greener pastures and by the 1950s it was a less than desirable district with plenty of unoccupied houses.

This incident led to the sale of empty houses at very low prices, large single-family Victorian homes were split into apartments and plenty of cheap rooms were rented out. A group of young people were drawn to the place and by the mid-1960s, the Haight-Ashbury became a home for the Hippie subculture and by 1967 thousands of young people had moved in to the district. Subsequently, the San Francisco Renaissance transpired and the once tranquil community became local papers? favorite headlines. The drug culture rose and the rock-and-roll lifestyle started to evolve. Conservative groups who disapproved of the Hippie lifestyle threw negative publicity towards the Haight-Ashbury and many people looked down at San Francisco as a place that bred this nonconformist way of life. However, this did not stop the psychedelic rock groups like the Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead from performing in the district.

Despite the negative publicity and due to the almost daily reports that alerted the national media about the Haight-Ashbury district, the Hippies? number grew in size, mostly college and high school students who began flooding the area during the spring break of 1967. Determined to control and eventually stop the arrival of these young people in the district, the San Francisco government formed the Council of the Summer of Love. The ?Summer of Love? was organized to draw hundreds of thousands of people to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that aims to create a cultural and political rebellion. This social phenomenon was indeed a success because it attracted a wide range of people and the district became overcrowded, many came to be homeless, food shortage and illegal drug problems were difficult and crime was threatening. Many people started leaving and on October 6, 1967, a mock funeral ceremony called "The Death of the Hippie" was staged to mark the end of the Summer of Love and the Hippie culture. The following year and the years after that, the crowds did not come back to the Haight leading again to its decline from the 1970s to the 1980s.

In the 1990s, a citywide gentrification draws newer residents of various ages living the hipster lifestyle to the Haight-Ashbury. The district began to flourish again with the opening of local businesses and the streets were turned into tourist attractions which remain today.