Long, Hot Summer

"The Summer of Love is one of those irresistible anniversary hooks that news editors can’t resist, and the coverage has been particularly heavy over the past couple of weeks because June 1 was the day in 1967 that the Beatles released their Sgt. Pepper’s album. Much of the coverage, though, has been distinctly starry-eyed–all about the youthful idealism of the hippy movement, its bright colors and cutting-edge musical sensibilities, and almost entirely devoid of the more obvious parallels with the present day. To put it in crude Californian terms, the focus has been all San Francisco and not nearly enough L.A.–too much of the Grateful Dead getting stoned in Haight-Ashbury, and not enough of the Doors pronouncing that 'the music’s over' and looking for the next whiskey bar."

Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles CityBeat recalls the summer 1967 Century City anti-LBJ protest.

Michael Walker in The New York Times argues that the music of Los Angeles not San Francisco was the true soundtrack to the Summer of Love.

In the Los Angeles Times, Geoff Boucher looks at Los Angeles in 1967 and August Brown explores Laurel Canyon with author Michael Walker.

And Find a favorite singer's grave or the location of the Fillmore Ballroom at the Rock and Roll Roadmap for both Los Angeles and San Francisco.