Walk back north on Ashbury and cross Haight. 635 Ashbury is mid-block on the west side, a four-story apartment building put up in 1905, about a block and a half from the Dead house. In 1967 Janis Joplin lived in a second-floor walkup here.
Joplin moved between several Haight apartments during the eighteen months Big Brother and the Holding Company was at its peak. She lived at 122 Lyon Street (a few blocks east, near Buena Vista Park) for about a year, June 1967 to April 1968, with her friend Linda Gravenites. Documentation lists the address as 122 Lyon, although some sources insist she actually lived at 112 Lyon, a few doors south. After Lyon Street she moved into 635 Ashbury, and from there into a place on Noe Street in the Castro.
What 635 Ashbury offers is proximity. The Grateful Dead were a block and a half south. Big Brother’s communal house was at 1090 Page. Quicksilver Messenger Service rehearsed eight to ten hours a day at 1839 Lyon. The Charlatans, Country Joe and the Fish, the Airplane, the Diggers, the Family Dog, the entire scene was a five-minute walk in any direction. Joplin walked everywhere. She drank at the Drogstore. She went to the Free Clinic.
Joplin died on October 4, 1970, in Los Angeles, of a heroin overdose, at age 27. The Big Brother years were already over. But for one window in 1967, this was the block where she lived. Private residence. View from sidewalk only.