The
Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged in the
Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of
San Francisco. Although
hippies also gathered in major cities across the U.S., Canada and Europe, San Francisco remained the center of the hippie movement. Like its sister enclave of
Greenwich Village, the city became even more of a melting pot of
politics,
music,
drugs, creativity, and the total lack of
sexual and
social inhibition than it already was. As the hippie
counterculture movement came further forward into public awareness, the activities centered therein became a defining moment of the 1960s, causing numerous 'ordinary citizens' to begin questioning everything and anything about them and their environment as a result.