![]() ![]() Residents and business owners say the Haight now feels more like it did pre-pandemic. The Piedmont Boutique costume shop in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood is one of the quirky features of the neighborhood that has made it such an attraction. Other encampments sprouted on normally clear neighborhood thoroughfares like Oak Street, Waller Street and Masonic Avenue. In one notable instance, neighborhood tensions flared over an increasingly sprawling encampment on the corner of Clayton and Haight that blocked the corner and both sidewalks, with people sleeping in filthy tents and visibly in need of help. ![]() Recovery seemed far off during much of the past couple of years in the Haight-Ashbury, one of the city’s central neighborhoods, bounded by Golden Gate Park and Stanyan Street to the west, the Panhandle to the north and running roughly to the leafy environs of the aptly named Buena Vista Park to the east, with its steep winding paths that reward visitors with soaring views of the city and bay beyond.ĭuring the darkest times of the pandemic, with travel shutdowns removing tourists and residents mostly staying indoors, tent encampments began to crop up around the neighborhood, the streets increasingly littered with refuse. While downtown areas like the Financial District are still struggling to attain their former economic vitality, the Haight-Ashbury has begun to once again find that mix of edgy street scene and freewheeling counterculture destination, replete with incense-scented head shops and an abundance of vintage shops that has made it one of the city’s most storied and romanticized neighborhoods. Violent crime has fluctuated in the Park Station district that covers the Haight, but restaurant openings have surged, as have Airbnb rentals, pointing to the enduring popularity of the area that some residents said is having its best summer since just before the pandemic. Goodfellas, a smoke shop, attracts customers in the Haight. “That’s the balance,” he said of the neighborhood. ![]() Or another instance when an unhoused man popped his head out of some bushes and asked, “Hey, Dr. “The Haight is like a living organism of ecology and balance,” Smith said, recalling a time when the police approached a man they believed to be homeless on the front porch of his Frederick Street home just as his wife opened the door to serve him coffee. Dave” walks the neighborhood he still calls home these days, most of the shops once obscured by wood planks during the earlier days of the pandemic have reopened, and foreign tourists are once again present, gawking at the street life and buskers that made the Haight-Ashbury world famous. From where he stood that April morning, it looked as if a bad trip had wound the clock back 50 years.īut when “Dr. #Grateful dead tie dye freeSmith, founder of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, said he flashed on a memory of Garcia playing a free show on the back of a flatbed truck near that very intersection, recalling how the area looked much the same in in the late 1960s and early ’70s when heroin and amphetamines overtook psychedelics like acid, and boarded-up storefronts littered the neighborhood as street violence surged. David Smith was walking his dog last year, past the mural of Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia at the corner of San Francisco’s Haight and Cole streets, when a recollection hit him. ![]() Salgu Wissmath/The Chronicle Show More Show Lessĭr. Stanley Mouse signs Linda Kelly’s arm during the artist’s exhibit at Gallery 1506 in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Salgu Wissmath/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 5 of5 Owners of Amoeba Music in San Francisco’s Haight say business has returned to levels seen before the pandemic. James/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 4 of5 The musician says the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood feels less dangerous than it did during the darkest days of the pandemic. Brandy plays his piano, Little Peter, inside his live-in van at the corner of Haight and Cole in San Francisco. James/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 3 of5 “I’m mostly playing my own stuff, but I play a few covers,” he said. The musician, 62, has been playing in the Haight Ashbury community for six years. Brandy while he plays piano inside his live-in van at the corner of Haight and Cole in San Francisco. Pedestrians pass by a performer known as Mr. Salgu Wissmath / The Chronicle Show More Show Less 2 of5 Businesses, like Love on Haight, in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood say this summer has felt more like a return to the pre-pandemic with more customers and tourists visiting. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |