Haight-Ashbury

3 bars 15 things to do

About Haight-Ashbury

Haight-Ashbury grew as a streetcar suburb in the 1880s and 1890s, after Golden Gate Park was laid out and cable car lines reached the area. Haight Street is named after Henry Haight, a 19th-century San Francisco banker. The Victorian flats that fill the neighborhood date mostly to that period and largely survived the 1906 earthquake, since the fire stopped at Van Ness Avenue well to the east.

By the 1950s the neighborhood had declined and rents were cheap, which drew students and musicians. That set the stage for the 1960s counterculture. The Grateful Dead lived at 710 Ashbury Street from 1966 to 1968, and in 1967 the area was the center of the Summer of Love.

The neighborhood splits into Upper Haight, around the Haight and Ashbury intersection, and Lower Haight, east of Divisadero. Most visitor traffic is in Upper Haight, where Amoeba Music occupies a former bowling alley at Haight and Stanyan. Record stores, vintage shops, and cafes run along Haight Street for about eight blocks.