Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, 1981

The fourth annual Haight-Ashbury Street Fair took place on May 31, 1981.
Haight Street was a nice place, home to hippies, punks, gays, straights, families, and, of course, the "orange people". This was just a few weeks before signs went up at 18th and Castro advising gay men to see their doctors if they had purple lesions on their skin, the first wave of what was to become the AIDS epidemic.

This was taken on an 8mm camera. My friend Kyra is manning my tie-dye booth. You can see that other booths had much more professional and beautiful tie-dyes. My booth was not too far from the corner of Haight and Cole, on the north side, where you can see a crater in the ground where the Straight Theatre once stood and is now home to a Goodwill thrift shop. You also see a booth with the words "New Moral Minority", a swat at the newly formed Moral Majority that ushered in the unfortunate presidency of Ronald Reagan.

There's a hippie on stilts with tie-dye pants, Nixon dressed in a ballerina costume, and you can see the backs of a few nuns, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of gay men dressed in nun garb who sold indulgences.

The final shot looks east on Haight Street, a familiar shot to the one on the inside cover of the Grateful Dead album, Live/Dead. And yes, the musical background is Dark Star by the Grateful Dead.

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[goldentomcat]

81???? isn't this the 60?

[haj890]

1981 do u mean 1967

[Headies08]

jerry of course the song is called dark star sir

[Hannah Galvin]

This vid is awesome

I love it

What song/guitar solo is playing?

[CamboMaka]

Excellent footage & sweet soundtrack. DarkStar, baby :)

[hashburysp]

I am glad you liked the footage. It was a really fine day in the Haight. I moved back to New York about 2 months later. It's all a distant memory now. But still, this footage brings lots of it back for me.

You live in the Haight? Where?

[daveparsons52]

george bush should chill out here.

[guccichic18]

My dad's district, exactly 5 years before my birth.

<3