A newsletter for alumni, students, parents and friends.

Remembering the Summer of Love

 By Kenneth Halliburton

 Ridge House

This year marked the 40th anniversary of the Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park, where 20,000 to 200,000 people assembled to hear such speakers as Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass), and Allen Ginsberg, as well as performances by The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, and BigBrother and The Holding Company.  Security was provided by Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang.  Buddha was listed on the psychedelic poster advertising the event, but no proof exists to show that he was in fact there.  There were, however, quite a number of co-opers.

The January 1967 Be-In represented a celebration of a Bay Area counter-culture that burst out in 1964; an attempt to follow a radically different lifestyle more in tune with the natural flow of the universe and drastically opposed to the dominant power structures. Many felt that the event signified a brief dawning of the Age of Aquarius. At the very least it marked the dawning of the Summer of Love. By the time the Tribal Gathering happened, ‘consciousness expansion’ had been flowering for years in Berkeley, including the Co-ops on Ridge Road.  The Haight-Ashbury and other San Francisco destinations such as the Avalon and Fillmore Ballrooms had been a destination for Berkeley Co-opers for a couple of years.  The community which existed in Haight and Berkeley shared many similarities, however the Berkeley counter culture community was generally more in tune with the Flower Power ideal.  At the time of the January 1967 Gathering, the Haight was still not well known outside of the Bay Area.  After the Be-In and the subsequent Summer of Love, the Haight-Ashbury district became universally known as the center of the American counterculture, and 'psychedelic' was introduced as a common expression known to every household in the USA. The new media publicity led to many criminals showing up by the end of the Summer of Love, and thus led to the end of the Flower Power good vibes part of the counter-culture movement.

With the downfall of the Haight by the end of the Summer of Love, Berkeley managed to maintain both the mystical and radical cultures of Telegraph Avenue into the 1970s.  Many Haight refugees moved to the mellower Berkeley scene.  At the same time, Berkeley also maintained more of a left wing radical political element. In 1965 and 1966 the co-ops were full of early ‘expanded consciousness’ vibes, occult ceremonies, mysticism, and the well-known clothing, posters, and herbs. Prior to the Fall of 1967, when the Camelot of Flower Power began to end, hitchhikers would show up and crash on the co-op couches. Despite this flow of strangers, theft was not an issue.  In 1968, the Ridge House stereo disappeared along with the hitchhiker we had let crash in the music room at the base of the stairs.  Back then this was a valuable common resource, as individual students couldn't afford stereos or records.  We were poor but happy.

Ridge House, had the highest proportion of any community house in Berkeley to be arrested in the Free Speech Movement's Sproul Hall Sit-In of 1964; an event that launched the Berkeley left wing political movement. The house contained early participants of the psychedelic counter-culture, and Avalon & Fillmore Ballroom posters arrived by mail, free, every week at 2420 Ridge Rd.  In 1965, the Ridge House President was arrested for going skinny dipping in Golden Gate Park.  One summer night in 1968, the over 100 residents of Ridge Project went skinny dipping in Lake Anza.  At the time, Ridge Project was the only co-ed student house in Berkeley.  Fortunately, we were not busted during this period of repression. It was the best of times.  It was worst of times.  It was the best of times.