The Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park

There were 18,000 to 20,000 musicloving, feather-and-bead-draped, flowerholding Summer of Love veterans and hippie-wannabes gathered in the hollow in front of the Conservatory of Flowers during the first summer night of the year, Wednesday, June 21, according to estimates by Rec and Park staffers.

The Surrealistic Summer Solstice concert started in the early evening and ended — with an “All You Need Is Love” sing-along — after the 9:15 p.m. light show was projected on the Conservatory, a formal wedding cake of a building that took on a multicolored psychedelic pattern as though she were a Victorian bride boozily wrapping herself in Janis Joplin velvet.

In the VIP pavilion, Charlotte Shultz recalled that her husband, the late Jack Mailliard, was president of the Police Commission when the hippies and the police were sparring. That was unpleasant, “but life went on. There were Opera openings, Symphony openings . ... People would read the paper and say, ‘Oh dear. Well, let’s go to the Opera.’ ”

Former Mayor Willie Brown, who’d taken a lead role in raising funds for the lighting (co-produced by Obscura Digital), relished the civic moment, and also joked from the podium about “poorly dressed” Rec and Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg, who was thereupon defended (“don’t insult Phil”) by Shultz, who not only recalled a certain yellow plaid suit worn by Brown (“bad, bad, bad”) but also mentioned “that hairdo you had. I can see that it’s gone away.” Upon which Brown mentioned Ginsburg’s parents and noted that he “was trained to be a lawyer, and here he is, a gardener.” Then, in introducing Ben Davis (also behind the Bay Lights), who spearheaded the whole lighting project, Brown said that when he’d first heard of him, he’d thought, “There’s no such thing as a white guy named Ben Davis.”

Referring to the start of the light show a few minutes away, Brown said, “When that switch is flipped, you will know we have made the next step. And all those homeless people out there will enjoy it.” The pavilion atmosphere was unstuffy — and there had been a generous amount of time for liquid refreshment before the speeches — but the laughs that it drew sounded wary.

San Francisco Rec and Park Commissioner Mark Buell said that he had been in San Francisco 50 years ago, as had Shultz and Dede Wilsey, and the difference between then and now, since today’s revelers aren’t legally allowed to smoke in the park, is that there are no visible puffs. This observation, made from the top of the steps, wasn’t shared by Christina Orth, who was in the middle of the crowd listening to the music and said she “got a contact high as the smoke billowed around.” Proudly decked out for the occasion in much-admired 1975 Mickey McGowan boots (like the ones in the de Young Museum show, and much admired by passing fashionistas), she reports that the biggest sing-along in her area was “White Rabbit,” and there were boos when Mayor Ed Lee was introduced.

Masters of ceremonies for the concert were rock writer Joel Selvin, former Grateful Dead roadie Steve Parish and man-about-town-andmusic Ben Fong-Torres. “There was no program schedule, we sort of played it by ear ... working off a list of songs,” said Fong-Torres.

Musicians included members of Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Chambers Brothers, Country Joe & the Fish and It’s a Beautiful Day — all backed by Moonalice. “I think young and old kind of caught the spirit of what these festivals used to be,” Fong-Torres added. “People were interested in time traveling, going back to the days of freewheeling dancing ... old hipsters reliving their pasts through the music that got all this stuff going.”

Concert producer Dawn Holliday (behind the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass free festival at Golden Gate Park) said that from her vantage point on John F. Kennedy Drive, she looked “down in the beautiful valley in front of the Conservatory, (where) people were dancing and spinning, and it just looked so peaceful. It gave you hope.”

The concert came together in three weeks, she added. The musicians — and staging, security and part of the cleanup — were paid for by an anonymous donor.

In front of the Conservatory near the end of the light show, I stood with others in parallel position — arms up as if in religious trance — wielding cell phones in an attempt to capture the vibrancy of the sight. Music fans’ silhouettes made inky shapes in front of the lacy Day-Glo images on the building. By that time, it was dark, and so it was impossible to make out faces. So everyone looked young.