Before the Summer of Love, There Was the Winter of Mass-Produced LSD and Hundreds of Turkey Dinners in 1967

When we think of the apex of the hippie movement in the late 1960s, we often conjure images of a bright, sunshine-filled Haight-Ashbury district during the famously mild San Francisco summers. But without this “big bang” moment months earlier, the Summer of Love might not have panned out in the same way.

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We might also never have had the sketch comedy show Laugh-In.

The Human Be-In Predated the Summer of Love by Several Months

The Summer of Love is considered the pinnacle of the counterculture movement. This social phenomenon saw hundreds of thousands of young people moving to the West Coast. This influx created a tidal wave of hippies, beatniks, and sociopolitical activists across San Francisco. Significant musical events, like the nearby Monterey Pop Festival, helped provide a soundtrack to this period with cuts from Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, the band that provided Janis Joplin her first major stage.

But before this counterculture movement could fully bloom, the seeds needed to be planted. That crucial step happened several months earlier on January 14, 1967. On this day, artist Michael Bowen hosted a “Gathering of Tribes” in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The tribes to which Bowen referred were different factions within the same counterculture movement. Peace-loving hippies and their more aggressive, anti-war contemporaries were beginning to diverge from one another. Bowen wanted these groups to reconvene and recalibrate.

Artists, poets, authors, and musicians provided works and performances for the event. All of the aforementioned rock bands played sets at what Bowen dubbed the “Human Be-In.” The name was a reference to sit-ins and teach-ins that had begun popping up across the country. In turn, the Human Be-In helped inspire other similarly titled events and programs, such as the NBC sketch comedy program Laugh-In. It also spurred the Human Fly-In, a social and musical event organized by American radio pioneer Bob Fass.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, and Grab Some Turkey

In addition to Michael Bowen’s goal of reuniting separating factions of the counterculture movement, the Human Be-In was a demonstrative protest against the California State Legislature for banning LSD the previous year. And in true “counter to the culture” fashion, Human Be-In attendees, organizers, and drug dealers pushed back against this ruling by doing even more LSD. Ahead of the January 1967 event, over ten thousand tabs of white-lightning LSD were distributed in the Haight-Ashbury district. The LSD was provided by Augustus Owsley Stanley III. He was known as Bear, a part-time chemist and part-time sound engineer for The Grateful Dead.

Also on the menu were over 70 twenty-five-pound turkeys, distributed free to Human Be-In attendees. Final headcounts vary. But the consensus is that between 20,000 and 30,000 people attended the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park. Many attendees would go on to be a part of the phenomenon we now call the Summer of Love. Though it’s unclear how many turkey dinners were provided at subsequent events.

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