Saturday, January 14, 1967: 'Human Be-In'

SAN FRANCISCO -- Anybody who was nobody was there.

     And if there were any anybodys, nobody knew.

     It was the city's biggest social event of the season but it failed to make the society pages.

     It was a happening.

     It took place Saturday at the polo field in Golden Gate Park. They were all there -- the hippy denizens of the Haight-Asbury District and outlying regions, the activists from Berkeley, the Hells Angles, students, beatniks, toddlers. Thirteen thousand of them under a sunny sky.

     And about 2,000 spectators, some of them bemused, some completely dumbfounded. The police also sent a delegation, mainly to ticket dozens of illegally parked cars.

     Word of the event began circulating earlier this month in the Haight-Asbury, home for many of the city's far-out types. It was billed as a "human Be-In" and a "Gathering of the Tribes," a get-together for political activists and hippies. The public was also invited and asked to bring "costumes, blankets, bells, flags, symbols, drums, beads, feathers and flowers."

     -- Story by United Press International

     -- Photo by Ted Streshinsky

* "Reliving the Human Be-In 50 Years Later" (San Francisco Chronicle, January 2017): @

* Summary from California Historical Society: @

* Description from Peter Coyote: @

* "Human Be-In in San Francisco 1967" (The Allen Ginsberg Project, July 2011): @

* "The Human Be-In" (Helen Perry, 1970): @

* "The Beginning is the Human Be-In" (Berkeley Barb, January 6, 1967): @
* "What Happened at the Hippening" (Berkeley Barb, January 20, 1967): @
* Footage: @ and @

* Photos by Larry Kennan: @

* Poster (Oakland Museum of California): @ 

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