Hippie Hill

What you need to know

Hippie Hill is a small grassy slope in the southeast corner of Golden Gate Park, off Kezar Drive between Haight Street and the Conservatory of Flowers. Since the late 1960s, it’s been an informal gathering spot for the counterculture descendants of the Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love. Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and George Harrison played impromptu sets here during the 1960s and 70s.

What Happens There

A drum circle has formed at the base of the hill on warm-weather weekends since the 1960s. The instrumentation is mostly djembes, congas, tambourines, and improvised percussion. Participation is open. The drum circle is most active on Sunday afternoons in spring and summer.

The rest of the lawn is used for picnics, frisbee, and dog-walking. Cannabis use is legal for adults 21+ in California (Prop 64, 2016), and the hill draws plenty of it on warm afternoons. Hippie Hill has been the city’s traditional 4/20 gathering spot, though the official 4/20 events were cancelled in 2024 and 2025 due to lack of city resources. Informal crowds still showed up on the date.

Visiting

Address: Golden Gate Park, near Kezar Drive and Bowling Green Drive (across from the tennis courts)

Hours: Dawn to dusk (Golden Gate Park hours)

Cost: Free

Best time: Sunday afternoons in spring and summer for the drum circle.

What to know: No restrooms at the hill itself. The nearest restrooms are at the Kezar Stadium parking lot and at Robin Williams Meadow.

Getting There

The N-Judah light rail stops at Cole and Carl, a 10-minute walk into the park from the south. The 33 Ashbury/18th bus stops at Haight and Stanyan, a five-minute walk into the park. The 7 Haight/Noriega runs along Haight Street. From Haight Street, walk into Golden Gate Park at Stanyan; Hippie Hill is about five minutes in.