Cross Stanyan into Golden Gate Park. The first slope of grass on your right, rising up toward a stand of eucalyptus, is Hippie Hill. The meadow at the bottom was called Sharon Meadow from 1887 until 2018, when it was renamed Robin Williams Meadow in honor of the comedian and longtime San Francisco resident.
Hippie Hill has been a gathering site since the 1960s. The drum circle that meets here on weekend afternoons is unbroken: some version of it has been playing on this slope every Saturday and Sunday for more than fifty years. The original draw was that it was the closest patch of free grass to the Haight, walkable from any of the band houses, with no rangers and no entry fee.
Almost every band from the Haight played a free concert on Hippie Hill or in the Panhandle behind you. Janis Joplin played here. The Grateful Dead played here. Jefferson Airplane played here. On June 25, 1967, Jimi Hendrix played a free 45-minute set from the back of a flatbed truck on Fell Street at Ashbury, in the Panhandle a few blocks northeast of where you’re standing, in the afternoon before his evening shows at the Fillmore Auditorium. He was traveling alone that day. The crowd was somewhere between two hundred and four hundred people.
On August 7, 1967, George Harrison and his wife Pattie walked into the Haight from Masonic and Haight, expecting to see the music scene that the British press had been describing as a utopia. They walked the length of Haight Street, ended up on Hippie Hill, were recognized, and were quickly surrounded by a crowd. Harrison later said it was the visit that ended his interest in LSD and turned him toward Eastern spirituality.
On October 6, 1967, the Death of Hippie procession came up Haight Street and ended near here, carrying a coffin labeled “Hippie, Son of Media.” You are standing where Hendrix played, where Harrison changed his mind, where the funeral march ended, where the drums still go.
This is the end of the main walk. To get back: the N-Judah light rail stops at Carl and Cole, four blocks south through Cole Valley, and the 7 Haight bus runs back downtown from Haight and Stanyan.