The Summer of Love

Where the idealists of 1967 went wrong – and the positive things they left behind

What began as a social experiment in free love quickly descended into chaos as up to 500,000 naive kids poured into San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in the summer of 1967.

This second and concluding part of the exploration of the far-reaching impact of the Summer of Love looks at the dark side of the counterculture.

The death of the hippie, the birth of the yippie and a militant new left followed.

They lost political arguments, but the cultural influence of hippies can still be felt today in the rise of feminism, not-for-profit enterprises and the development of the internet, with global, collaborative ideals the hippies would recognise.