Abstract

From early 1965 until the autumn of 1967 the Haight-Ashbury community of San Francisco underwent a period of rapid change as it became an icon of the larger countercultural movement of the 1960s. Early psychedelic "happenings" helped to create and consolidate a non-conformist identity for the district and its inhabitants, as the area was transformed into a liberated zone of countercultural carnival. Attracted by the vivid visual style and exotic nature of the new culture, the mass-media and commercial interests helped to construct a standardized and stereotypical image of "the hippie" that then drew tens of thousands of tourists, teenyboppers, and "plastic hippies" to the Haight. These newcomers came to sample the commodified lifestyle elements of the Haight-Ashbury experience, often mimicking patterns of consumption deeply internalized by American society as a whole. This thesis examines the creation of community identity in the Haight-Ashbury district, and the subsequent transmission, standardization, and consumption of that identity