On a beautiful sunny morning in San Francisco, Stacey Griffith and her daughter, Ariana, are pointing an iPhone skyward to take a picture of the pole on which the Haight and Ashbury street signs intersect. They are visiting from Chicago on a 15th birthday trip for Ariana. “The Haight Ashbury is just such an iconic place for American and world history,” says Griffith. “I wanted her to see it and be part of the area where it all began.”
The word hippie came from hipster and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into New York City’s Greenwich Village and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district.