The most famous (and infamous) houses of Haight-Ashbury

Haight-Ashbury in the late '60s wasn't all love, flowers and tambourines. Almost as soon as the fabled Summer of Love began in 1967, dark forces crept into the bright Victorians and steep side streets around the Haight. While the world was celebrating the counterculture movement in San Francisco, violent crime, sex work, a sexual health epidemic and countless drug deaths riddled the neighborhood. 

This tumultuous side of the hippie dream was maybe exemplified best in the violence of the Hell's Angels, who moved in across the street from the Grateful Dead, and later killed a man in front of Mick Jagger at Altamont, or in Joan Didion's grim portrayal of an encounter with a child given LSD by her parents in the neighborhood in "Slouching Toward Bethlehem."

These famous Haight-Ashbury addresses from that era are where well-known figures — counterculture heroes and criminals alike — called home. We mapped the most iconic, celebrated spots alongside the troubled corners of the street. 

737 Buena Vista West — Jack London and Danny Glover

There aren't many ways to get from Jack London to Danny Glover in the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but they did both live at the same address. 

London wrote "White Fang" at the old Spreckels Mansion on Buena Vista West in 1906, before moving to his doomed castle on Sonoma Mountain after the earthquake.

In the 1960s, the ballroom on the top floor of the home was converted into “Buena Vista Studios,” a space where the Grateful Dead recorded their first demos.

Actor and San Francisco native Danny Glover bought the home in 1990, though records show the mansion was granted to Glover’s ex-wife in 2003.

(You actually only need two degrees of Bacon: Jack London wrote "Call of the Wild," recently made into a movie starring Harrison Ford. Ford and Glover starred together in the 1985 crime drama, "Witness.")

731 Buena Vista West — Graham Nash and Bobby McFerrin

Two doors up the hill from that house is another Haight home once owned by two famous figures. Graham Nash, of the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, lived at 731 Buena Vista West before selling the place to "Don't Worry, Be Happy" singer Bobby McFerrin.

The house is notable for its strange, ornate gate in the entranceway, though it's not clear if it was installed by either of its famous residents. 

710 Ashbury St. — Jerry Garcia

The Grateful Dead house is maybe the most famous residence of the '60s. San Francisco native Jerry Garcia and his bandmates lived here during the Summer of Love at the peak of their powers.

Though Garcia wasn't at home Oct. 2, 1967, when 11 residents, including Bob Weir and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, were arrested by the San Francisco Police Department for drug use. (He was reportedly hiding out in the Hell's Angels house across the street, see below.)

The home is still a mecca for Deadheads old and young, and the tree outside is currently carved with teddy bears, lightning bolts and a drawing of guitarist Bob Weir’s face.

32 Delmar St. — Sid Vicious

The Sex Pistols' last concert (before their regretful reunion in 1996) happened at the long-gone ice rink turned music venue, Winterland Ballroom, at 2000 Post Street in 1978. At the time, Sid Vicious briefly lived at 32 Delmar and is said to have suffered a nonfatal drug overdose there. He would die of an overdose in New York a year later. 

2400 Fulton St. — Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane

"White Rabbit" singer Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane bought up the vast 17-room mansion just north of Golden Gate Park in 1968 and turned it into a famed destination for musicians in the neighborhood. The band painted the entire exterior black and gold, threw wild gatherings and even named an album after the address.

It's hard to imagine the amount of hallucinogens consumed behind the 1904-built house's towering walls. 

Go ask Alice, I think she'll know.

122 Lyon St. — Janis Joplin

The woman with one of the greatest voices of all time hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco in 1963 "just to get away."

There she became a legend before her tragic death by heroin overdose at 27. 

When in San Francisco, she lived with her boyfriend Country Joe McDonald of psychedelic rock outfit Country Joe and the Fish in apartment 3 at 122 Lyon Street just off the Panhandle, as shown in her driver's license. 

1524A Haight St. — Jimi Hendrix

The man the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music" lived in the Haight in the late '60s, like so many of his peers. His supposed former apartment, just a few doors down from the Haight-Ashbury intersection, is now forever painted red in honor of Hendrix and his song "Red House."

 (A 2023 investigation by SFGATE’s Alex Shultz concluded that Hendrix likely never lived at 1524 Haight St.)

By 1970, the drug problem that had taken over Haight-Ashbury had followed the culture around the world. Sixteen days before Janis Joplin died of a drug overdose at 27 in LA, Jimi Hendrix suffered the exact same fate in London. 

636 Cole St. — Charles Manson

One unassuming home a block south of Haight St. allegedly has a dark underbelly. Charles Manson was said to live at 636 Cole in 1967, where he sought to recruit runaway hippies into his gang. 

There were too many cults in town to compete with at the time, so Mansion moved his members to Southern California, where they would soon gain infamy.

1090 Page St. — Big Brother and the Holding Company

Janis Joplin's psychedelic band Big Brother and the Holding Company held Wednesday night jam sessions in the full-sized basement ballroom in their huge Victorian mansion on the corner of Page and Broderick.

The home was constructed in the 1880s and was unique in many ways for the time, featuring speaking tubes and gas lamps that provided energy during power outages. Unfortunately, the house was razed in a fire in the late 1970s and was replaced with the condos that stand there today. 

715 Ashbury St. — The Hell’s Angels

The Hell's Angels had a love-hate relationship with the hippies and musicians in the Haight in the late '60s. While they respected the anarchy that Jerry Garcia brought to the culture and they befriended Allen Ginsberg, the relationship soon went south.

Hunter S. Thompson, who once worked the door at the notorious O'Farrell Theatre strip club in S.F., rode with the group for more than a year. That relationship ended with a violent beatdown of the writer after he confronted a member who he saw abusing women.

The final straw came at the Rolling Stones infamous Altamont concert in 1969 where an Angel, working "security" for the band, stabbed concertgoer Meredith Hunter to death in front of Mick Jagger, depicted in the brilliant but chilling 1970 documentary, "Gimme Shelter."

Before the darkness set in, the Hell's Angels called 715 Ashbury St. home, right across the street from the Grateful Dead house.

The homes mentioned in this story are now all private residences, and are not accessible to the public.