Okay, it's time to break out your Deadhead stickers, avoid soap at all costs, and hitchhike your hippie self to San Fran! Welcome to the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, ground zero for the hippie movement and the Summer of Love in 1967. 35 years ago, hundreds of thousands of young people converged on the Haight Ashbury district with shouts of "Make love, not war," "U.S. out of Vietnam!" and "equal rights for all!" Of course, today many of these now-aged radicals are probably yelling, "Honey, where's the Geritol?", but at the time, the spirit was free, the love was flowing, and the "consumables" were mostly homemade. Haight life became a cultural phenomenon, where artists like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin made names for themselves, and Bill Graham took the psychedelic music scene nationwide.

Inevitably, the middle-class kids started turning up for free food, free drugs, and free love. Not long after the 1966 Be-In and the Summer of Love the following year, an inrush of unsavory characters (i.e., Charles Manson, who recruited most of his "family" there) and organized crime instigated the Haight's gradual decline. See? Nothing good lasts forever... Of course, all that "free love" has a price, and that's where this place comes into play. As the first free clinic of its kind in the United States, the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic was created by Dr. Dave Smith in 1967 to meet the health care needs of the hippies who wound up with more than just a bad case of B.O. during the summer of love. Since then, the clinic has grown into one of San Francisco's largest multiservice agencies. Each year, 14,000 individuals receive physical health, mental health or substance abuse treatment here. So hats off to Dr. Dave and his staff for providing a beneficial service to the community. Fortunately for the beans, their only addiction is for traveling the world, and the occassional pint of Ben & Jerry's....

Which leads us to... (nice segue way, wasn't it???) Ben & Jerry's of Haight Ashbury!!! With original hippie flavors such as "Wavy Gravy", "Phish Food", and "Cherries Garcia", the nice people at B & J's still have that groovy momentum running through their tie-died souls, even though it's been 35 years... The beans think it's pretty nice of Ben & Jerry to keep the spirit of the movement alive, and are glad that they aren't marketing "dirty Birkenstock" flavored ice cream yet.