The OB Rag’s Final Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Summer of Love

Labor Day 1968 – the Long Branch “Riot. The author can be seen at the far right standing on the porch wearing white pants.

The Memories of Our Readers Keep the Spirit of Love and Peace Alive

By Frank Gormlie

As we approach the official end of the Summer of 2017, we offer our final tribute to the 1967 “Summer of Love” with memories from our readers of that summer 50 years ago, whether from Ocean Beach, San Diego or other parts of the country.

Why 1967?

The summer of 1967 was a transitional and historic time, when young people across the country flocked to San Franciso’s Haight-Ashbury district to check out the burgeoning capital of hippiedom, the Counter-Culture, the Youth Culture – it’s music and lifestyle changes. An estimated 100,000 young people flocked to San Francisco, jamming the streets and playing in the parks, listening to musical groups play for free – groups we now consider big-name bands.

And a parallel development occurred in Ocean Beach, as well. OB became the Haight of San Diego, our conservative city’s very own hippie town.  If you were young and in San Diego and a hippie wannabe, you came to OB – unless your parents forbade it, as some of our readers recall. The cultural wars were played out on the streets of the seaside village of OB, emerging from a beach and surf town into a youth and student ghetto.

The summer of 1967 certainly changed OB.

Changes in music – the Golden Era of Rock and Roll exploded – , outlandish or simple clothing was in, as were crazy new fads, experimentation with drugs, a new rebelliousness among the young – coupled with harsh efforts by the establishment and police to crack down on  all of it  – these were the hallmarks of this emerging counter-culture, bursting upon the national – and international – scene. And OB was right there – becoming the hippie capital of San Diego – a unique character that has lasted and is celebrated to this day, 50 years later. [See my post about “Hippie Life in OB“.]

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco 1967

Most of this summer the OB Rag has been collecting memories of those who lived through that cultural and mind changing summer – asking our readers to send us their experiences so we can share them. Boomers and those younger than boomers who recall those days have been emailing us and making comments about their memories – and we have published a few of them up to now.

So, here is our finale – the last chapter of our celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love – with the memories of those who were around:

Judy Dibble was living in OB that summer; she was 20 and going to State. She remembered:

We tie-dyed various garments in a tub that my grandmother had used for washing cloths. And yes we smoked a couple of doobies while grooving to the music of the day. Sing-alongs on the beach accompanied by guitars and bongos.

World Surfing Contest in OB, Summer of 1966.

Doug Blackwood, who still lives in OB, definitely remembers the summer of ’67. He was a young surfer and was commuting from Pacific Beach to OB for its better waves – “Avalanche, middles, jetty & the pier.” He recalls:

Many great house parties, real honest people & cheep cheep rent. My 2 bedroom OB house (still standing) with a front & back yard, driveway and garage for $125.00 a month. Greed was frowned upon!

Bruce Coons told us that he “was in OB on the beach most of the summer” and claiming to only leave the beach to attend a “Love-in” in Balboa Park, music concerts at Balboa Stadium, and “the big peace march downtown [San Diego].” We believe he is mistaken about San Diego’s first, large-scale peace march, as it didn’t occur until the Fall of 1969. He also remembers:

There were war protests in OB then and I remember one where the police started at the North end of the beach and cleared us all off the beach all the way to Newport in the best storm trooper style. I still remember their black boots glistening in the Summer Sun.

Future SDPD police chief Ray Hoobler admonished crowd of unruly, fun-loving young people during the Labor Day Riot of 1968 on Long Branch Ave.

The issue of the San Diego Police presence in OB (and other beaches) was also brought up in Seal‘s lengthy memories of Ocean Beach – which we published it in late August -. He wrote:

The violence of the San Diego cops in OB was part of the Summer of ’67 that all young people faced. I remember watching cops smiling and even laughing as they beat young people bloody with nightsticks, punches, kicks, and when they threw them against cars to search them because they didn’t like their looks or they had suspicious behavior.

Just about anything was considered suspicious because I often saw them pull a car over for a broken taillight driving down Newport or south on Abbott St., and invariably it was a surfer with boards on top or longhair in a VW bus or hippies in a broken down old car, and they would proceed to rip the car apart pulling seats out and emptying the trunk after searching those in the car right there on the sidewalk. And if they didn’t find anything, they’d just drive off leaving everything strewn all over the ground. After writing a ticket for every infraction they could find.

Police ordered OB youth off the streets – and they complied, they got on the steps, porches and rooftops of the houses along Long Branch Ave., Labor Day 1968.

The OB Rag has published accounts of the youth and hippie vs police conflict in Ocean Beach during the late 1960s, and early 1970s. It was common knowledge among many back then that young, long-haired men would be pulled over if driving or stopped if walking by police in OB at night, and harassed.  Back then San Diego cops employed what were called “Field Interrogations” or “FI’s” which allowed them to stop and ask questions of anyone – and invariably used against young people, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans; FI’s have since been declared unconstitutional by the courts.

Seal recalled:

I was told numerous times ‘what are you looking at?’ or ‘get the hell out of here unless you want to be arrested’ or ‘it’s after curfew, kid, and I’ll take you to juvie’ and many other wonderful verbal threats from the angry ‘peace officers’ when I was standing around and watching what they were doing to people. I knew what they were doing was illegal and against the Bill of Rights in the Constitution we were learning about in school. …

I’d go back to my Grandma’s and tell her what I heard and saw and she’d get this sad look on her face and tell me that this is what happens in the Soviet Union and not here. She used to tell me stories about the cops during the Great Depression and they didn’t sound any different than what I was seeing in 1967. Grandpa Harold would get mad and say he didn’t fight in WWII for Democracy and Liberty to see this crap happening in his own country. He won the Bronze Star on an island in the South Pacific, and he would drink a lot to not remember. He warned me to stay away from the cops and try not to be noticed because it ‘was safer.’

Labor Day 1968 on Long Branch.

The cops did the same thing in MB as I saw the same behavior happening on the other side of the jetties in 1967.

Fortunately, reforms in police behavior in San Diego were made – particularly in the mid-1970s – and since. Today’s OB officers and their leadership are a lot more savvy and smart. There have been no wide-scale police actions in the community for a long, long time.

Remembering the happier times, Bob Immel – who now lives in Galveston, Texas, also lived in Ocean Beach in the summer of 1967.  He told us:

I lived with my mom and brother and sister in an apartment on Narragansett St., very near the cliff. I graduated that summer from Point Loma High School and will be returning for our 50th year reunion in September.

Charlie Brown’s Windjammer menu. Look at those prices. As with any of other graphics, simply click on image for a larger version to read.

He also worked at Charlie Brown’s Windjammer Restaurant on Bacon Street where he was a cook. He sent us copies of the original menu and it’s a blast seeing the prices. He said:

 I was there from the first day they opened and Bob Saunders (BooBoo) and I were the two cooks.  Charlie Brown and Clark Brott, the owners, and were a couple of great guys.

To aid with memories, we sent some readers who showed interest, a questionnaire about their experiences in ’67.

Steve Zivolich answered our survey. He graduated from Point Loma High in the class of 1966, and was still living in OB by the next summer.  Curious about what was happening up at Haight-Ashbury, he said, “I did make a trip up to San Francisco to check out the scene.”

At first he lived at home with his parents on Narragansett but for his second year in college, he moved to a converted garage in Pacific Beach for $30 a month rent. For school and work, Steve recalled he:

transitioned in college from USD, known as horny hill at the time since it was an all male college then, to Mesa College for a year, then on to CSULA.

Worked as a chicken delivery guy in P.B.

Like others who were politicized once at college, Steve told us:

Heavily involved in free speech and anti-war activities; suspended from school for a time due to my activities.

We asked him if he remembered anything happening in OB during the Summer of Love? He responded:

Well not much, I was still only in OB to surf, which kept me out of a lot of trouble I think. Started seeing old surf buddies and beach friends reducing their time at O.B.; they had better things to do.

My memory of OB was mostly related to surfing and baseball. I was pretty clueless to any other alternate cultures going on.

OB Spaceman on TV with Bob Dale.

One character in OB’s history is the OB Spaceman (Clint Cary), an innovative artist whose presence on the beach in the Sixties always excited the kids. Spaceman would give out “space numbers” and if you had a space number, you would be spared when the aliens came. Steve said:

Of course, got my number etc., but had no clue to his art work and music skills.

There is anecdotal evidence that many OB and Point Loma young people began smoking marijuana during the Summer of 1967.  What about Steve?

Started smoking the summer before. But not to much into it until a few years later. Mostly put me to sleep.

OB Spaceman poster

What happened later? Steve said:

The next year I was up in LA at CalState as a left wing anti war activist. Worked in the college chaplain office as a draft counselor for 3 years.

And he became, a “Long haired college dude.” He still has some friends from that era, –

a few old male buddies,  but mostly reconnected thanks to Facebook. Lost one really good friend to drugs and mental illness.

Living now in northern California, he said:

I still love to visit, do a little surfing, and having coffee with old friends at the New Break Coffee house.

Most of the time I still find Mousie Jim Robb in the water or at the lifeguard parking lot. He taught me how to surf the big waves at the cliffs, and he is still stand up paddle surfing at 84. He is my inspiration for the sport. He and his crew of “old men” were like uncles to me and were very encouraging to my college efforts. (Unlike my counselor at Point Loma High).

On a clear day – like this day – one can see the mountains off in the distance over the waves of Sunset Cliffs.

Mary Cairns also responded to our questionnaire. She lived in the OB/ PL area that famous summer.

 I actually live in “OB Highlands/Point Loma Heights South” – on Del Mar Avenue and Santa Barbara – but my family did most of their business in OB.  I was born here where I currently live (parents bought house in 1949).

Mary was still fairly young in 1967, as she was in-between grade school (Silvergate) and junior high (Dana).

 I spent a lot of time at the San Diego Yacht Club swimming, and my summer vacation was camping with the family and Camp Fire Girls Camp in Cuyumaca.  Typical summer of no summer school, playing outside, horse back riding, etc.  And of course piano lessons.

Newport Ave circa 1941

Her older brother, Tom, was involved in happenings in OB. She does recall:

We shopped in OB, like Burdine’s Stationary, I think the nursery was still there (my mom’s gardening), church, etc.   It was the time when my parents were discouraging me to go down to the “lower OB” area.  It’s too bad, as in my younger years before the pier that was the go-to beach for locals where we usually went after church on Sundays. 

I was just starting to pay attention to music.  Although I loved the Turtles song “Imagine Me and You” and anything by the Monkees.  I recall listening to other music my brother had, including the Beatles.

My hippie years didn’t start until around 9th grade.  More like after 9th grade at camp with a counselor who was going to PLHS, sort of a “free child” sort.  It accelerated in 10th grade with the return of a childhood friend from Hawaii whose family was ingrained in smoking pot, etc.  

In high school I use to go down to the beach wall and play guitar with my best friend – course there were not as many drug users and drunks/homeless there as now.  

The day the OB Pier opened – July 1966.

Mary has many memories:

OB/PL was a great place to grow up.  The library was “my” library, and a lot of the small town shopping was done in OB (Food Basket in Point Loma, now Jensen’s, was the closest grocery store growing up).  My family also had the bread van, milk delivered, the fuller brush man, etc as my mom was a stay-at-home-mom.

Use to walk to church in those days.  Loved Homers and Coronet.  Bought my mom slippers at the Vera ladies shop for Christmas presents for years and  years.  And Rexall Drugs.  As a Camp Fire Girl, one Christmas after the palm trees were planted on Newport in OB, we made big balled ornaments out of old Xmas cards and hung them on the palm trees.  

Mary continues to frequent Ocean Beach:

Now I try to shop or go down as much as possible, but I am not in favor of all the bars/beer and wine tasting rooms.  I feel it detracts from having OB very family friendly for the younger folk that are moving into the area.  It’s still a nice walkable community.  

The OB Longhorns were / are a local surfing club or gang.

Other readers remember OB that summer. OB Uncle Mickey wrote us:

This is my 50th anniversary of hanging out. Originally, I visited by hitch hiking or riding the O bus in from Valencia Park. I’ve lived on the 5100 block of Long Branch for 30 something years.

He recalls the “underground newspapers of those days (prior to the OB Rag or San Diego Street Journal / Free Press) – “The other free papers were the Good Morning Teaspoon, and the Teaspoon Door.”

Albert C. Elliott – who still lives in OB – told us:

Graduated PLHS (’67)} set free to the sun surf and fun … Somehow survived.

And Janet Mann Sanford was 11 years old that summer. She remembers:

My grandmother lived in the apartments on the alley just before the pier. We lived and still do on the hill on Narragansett. Spent all day at the beach. Fished the pier with Darleen Sanford-Armstrong and played with other OB kids!

Paul Bolton – a musician and hair dresser, who along with his spouse, own The Electric Chair on Newport, was also too young to be there. But he certainly has the spirit, as he told us:

I’ve always believed OB is San Diego’s version of Haight Ashbury. Yes the Summer of Love happened in San Francisco but OB was there as well. The Summer of Love is a vibe non specific to the bay area. It’s about love, acceptance, free spirit and peaceful civic rebellion. For me the music totally opened my eyes & ears to the hundreds of GREAT BANDS that came out during this time period.

The 13th Floor Elevators, Iron Butterfly, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Fever Tree, The Doors, Blue Cheer, Big Brother & the Holding Co. and dozens more!

To show the spirit, Paul organized a celebration this summer of the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love at Kilowatt Brewing in OB, which we covered.

We received a number of responses from readers who didn’t live in OB those days of ’67, including some who moved to OB and or still live here.

KT Robinson remembers:

I was seven living in La Mesa. Because my parents convinced me Ocean Beach was so sketchy, it took my hip daughter coming since 2006 to tell me it’s where I belonged. Moved here 4 years ago. Looong over due. ;)
Happy to have found my spot here.

Chris wrote:

Being at the very end of the boomer period I was in kindergarten at Fuerte Elementary school in El Cajon.

Gordon McLachlan has positive memories of that summer:

I turned 21 that year.  Did drive my VW bus to SF for a long weekend. Saw the Airplane at the Fillmore for $6 ticket. Went to all the “love ins” at Balboa Park.  There were even a few in La Jolla.  Met lots of pretty girls.  It was a great time to be alive.

Doug Porter answered our questionnaire, and although later ended up in OB and working on the first OB “underground newspapers” the Liberator and the OB People’s Rag, he was in Norfolk, VA in the summer of 1967. He didn’t make it to OB until the spring of ’68 when his family moved out here into a residence in Point Loma, next to the Naval Electronics Lab HQ. Doug graduated PLHS in 1968. (Doug currently is an editor and writer for the San Diego Free Press.)

Nancy Cassady, formerly of OB Peoples Organic Market remembers:

In 1967 I was a housewife in Pacific Beach with two small kids.  I didn’t get to OB until 1969 when we came over from the free clinic in Mission Beach–which Derek and I started with a couple friends.  One of them–Ann Mosher – ran the In Between [a youth drop-in center on Newport]. 

Marilyn Steber also responded to our “Questionnaire for Summer of Love in OB”:

I lived in Clairemont and didn’t come to OB until clogs came in style in the ’70s, and Chandlers Shoe Store was the only place that sold them. I take that back. My ex was stationed on a Destroyer and  was considerably older than most of the other officers; nevertheless, we were invited to a patio party in Ocean Beach.

I never had experienced artichokes that were not in a jar, so the best part of that party I remember was learning the joy of pulling leaves off a boiled thistle and scraping the soft part off with my front teeth. The best part was gone before I learned it was the base of the flower that was the goal!

I didn’t move to OB until the 90s, so I missed the Summer of Love, but I didn’t miss out on the effort to save Famosa Slough from developers.

Liz Minnick has a different take on OB of the late 1960’s:

Mission Beach was actually wilder in the 60’s…we always thought OB was too quiet… imagine that.

A number of our readers who now live here, were not close to OB back then, but have still shared their Summer of Love experiences.

Rick Callejon in 1967 was about to enter high school in the suburban San Francisco Bay Area and has lived in OB for many years since. He recounted to us:

My mother, a San Francisco native, drove us through the Haight. We laughed when we saw a long-haired mail carrier.  Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead had carried mail years earlier for USPS in SF. He got fired when he declined to cut his hair.

Another current OBcean, Stu, recalled:

I wasn’t near the west coast and thought San Diego was just a Navy town but I knew San Francisco was the hippie capital. I did spend the summer of love in Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod. P-town was the center of the east coast beatnik scene. It was a very hip place or so I was told.

Stu added:

I was an east coast kid. I had just left the Navy in 66, and I was hangout in Boston and Cape Cod in Provincetown. I was becoming a HIPPIE. Pretty much getting high a lot and working for a theater group in P-town. It sure  was fun.

I did have an apartment in Boston that was in the same building that the J Giels Band lived in at the same time. My girl friend at the time had gone out with Jay.  I worked very little janitor, washing dishes, painter and at a fancy pipe and tobacco store that has probably been in existence now for 150 yrs. 

I really didn’t know OB existed. Even when I moved to San Diego I didn’t know anything about OB.

I looked at a house here and it was the cheapest one I had seen near the beach. When I told the folks at my office they warned me against it and said it was nothing but drugs and bikers here.  Drugs no problem; bikers – I was invited to be a prospect during my Boston/New York days. So I had no problem there either.

The rest is history – been here 31 years now longer than I had been anywhere else. I did meet Spaceman after I moved here.

Hitchers’ Corner in OB at the corner of West Pt Loma and Sunset Cliffs.

Both of Stu’s daughters went to Point Loma High School.

Geoff Page lives on the OB – Point Loma border, and like many San Diegans, moved to San Diego because of the Navy. He told us:

My dad was in the Navy and we moved to Coronado in the winter of 1965. Sadly, we left CA in June of 1966 and were stationed back on the East coast as my dad was assigned to the Pentagon.

I have forever regretted that we left when we did. I went to a good public high school in Arlington, VA where they did educate us on the Vietnam War but I really didn’t know anything about 1967 and what I missed until years later.

I would have loved to have been in OB at that time, it would have fit me to a “T.” I envy anyone who was able to experience those times. It was 11 years before I was able to get back to San Diego in 1977 and three more before I found OB. Better late than never. I now envy my children whom I have managed to raise as OB natives. Cheers to anyone who was actually here in 1967!

Nancy Witt – who now lives in Point Loma near south OB – also answered our questionnaire. In 1967, she lived in Rudolph, Wisconsin where she was going to college, and didn’t arrive in OB until February 1971.

She does recall she – “did march in a parade in late 60’s to protest the Wisconsin law changing the 18 year old beer age to drink, and it was changed to 21.” She also stated:

I did smoke pot a couple times at most; didn’t care for it. I was a hippie to a point; had a cool leather hat and bell bottoms.

Nancy had also heard about Spaceman. She said:

He came to our house in OB when I lived with my first husband Vince Finnneran, and they talked for a couple hours., but that was in the mid 70’s maybe. I was living on Santa Cruz Street.

Steve Wimmers remembers where he was in ’67:

I was living in a small city in Ohio in 1967 and turned 16 during August of that year.  I lived a very sheltered life, and had never even seen weed, let alone tried it.  I was still a virgin, and probably wasn’t aware of the summer of love. The closest I got to “love” that summer was messing with my then girlfriend!

Jeoff Gordon MD, now retired, had a long-time practice in the beach area, including a medical office in the building since demolished for the in-coming Ocean Beach Plaza at Santa Monica and Cable.  He shared with us what he was doing that summer, which include some sobering and exhilarating memories:

Sorry, no summer of love for me.  I graduated medical school in 1967 (off to my 50th reunion in October) and spent the next 12 months busting my butt as an intern at the old but prestigious Boston City Hospital which from today’s perspective was a building from Victorian England.

The old Arizona Cafe bar.

We had a wire cage, incredibly slow, mechanical elevator between our two floors; there were ceramic “beds” where poor moms in labor were literally hosed off before delivering; we treated alcoholics in DTs with chloral hydrate enemas or “spirits frumenti” (whisky) we kept in the locked drug safe; we docs ferried patients ourselves from the ER to the ward – always through X-ray because 10% of our patients – along with my chief resident and my social worker had active acute tuberculosis.

Sick, delirious elderly patients were often anonymously “dumped” in the ER by their families when they had neither the funds nor the ability to care for them. There were no ICUs and the only treatment for heart attacks was IV morphine.

My memories include one doc who was publicly and professionally pilloried by doing an abortion to save the mother’s life and being on high alert and anxious during the Detroit riots.

My karma was rehabilitated when I spent the summer of 1968 in San Francisco working as a doc establishing a neighborhood health center in Black Panther territory in Oakland. I remember visiting the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic and being introduced to R. Crumb by a medical school classmate.

At the end of the summer I migrated  to Chicago to provide medical presence at the 1968 Democratic Convention. That experience was neither happy nor loving, but, boy, in those days we really knew how to confront politics which threatened democracy.

The media may want to romanticize the drugged hippie love culture of the late 60’s but the amount of domestic political turmoil is much more important to recall.

Ocean Beach 1946.

OB George Murphy told us: “I was ‘stuck’ in Detroit listening to Motown! Didn’t get to SD until ’71.”

Award-winning photographer, Fred Lonidier, visited Haight-Ashbury:

My first wife, Paulette, and I were training for Peace Corps service at Stanford U. at that time.  When we got a week off at the end, we came back to the Haight-Ashbury district where we had an apartment and found the streets full of hippies and tourists.  I took a few photos in the pan handle of Golden Gate Park of the scene there…

Marguerite Scott wrote and told us what she was doing the Summer of Love in 1967:

I was back packing Yosemite whoohoo!

There you have it, kids! The Summer of Love is now all memories – but if we who remember it and those who were too young – keep the spirit alive – it will stay alive, and maybe someday, the Summer of Love will become every summer.