What a fun, psychedelic trip this is
FEED YOUR HEAD: VW tours send tourists back to summer of ’67
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — The bus came by and we got on, that’s when it all began.
A half-century ago, Gray Line buses ran a ‘Hippieland’ sightseeing tour, of which Hunter S. Thompson wrote at the time, “It was billed as ‘the only foreign tour within the continental limits of the United States’ and was an immediate hit with tourists who thought the Haight-Ashbury was a human zoo.”
Now here we were, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love on a bus tour of the Haight, only in a vehicle that came to symbolize the counter-culture.
Hopping aboard a San Francisco Love Tour VW bus proved an ideal way to be transported back in time — and to learn things about the city that even natives might not know.
SF Love Tours is the brainchild of Allan Graves. The plan was to buy an old Volkswagen bus, fix it up and use it to give tours of the city he knew so well as a resident for 25 years.
That was three years ago, and that original bus has been joined by two more on the two-hour and private tours offered by the company.
Of the three VW Westfalias in the fleet, two are ’72s and one is a ’76. The US$48 tour — like most in this city — starts at Fisherman’s Wharf.
Allan’s younger brother John was our guide. It was evident right away this wasn’t going to be a tour focused primarily on the Sixties. The first of the 15 districts we went through was the upscale Marine District.
“Locals call that Safeway there ‘Dateway’ because of all the single, fit people who go there,” John noted.
Next up was the Presidio area. In this former military base we had our first taste of hippie-lore. John told of a young man sent here to military school by his mother after crashing her car on a joyride. ‘That boy?” John asked the busload. “Jerry Garcia.”
John stopped the bus at a great Golden Gate Bridge photo op, and we climbed out to take the requisite pictures of the iconic span. Then it was on to the Richmond District, through Golden Gate Park and on to Haight Street. John pointed out the former crash pads of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead.
We headed through the Hayes Valley district past the original Levi’s factory and Carlos Santana’s high school, the Civic Centre, the Tenderloin, Union Square, China Town and Little Italy.
For more information visit sanfranciscolovetours.com