Two miles west of downtown San Francisco, the HAIGHT-ASHBURY neighborhood lent its name to an era, giving it a fame that far outstrips its size. Small and dense, “The Haight” spans no more than eight blocks of attractive Edwardian and Victorian buildings, centered around the junction of Haight and Ashbury streets. Since it emerged in the 1960s as the focus of the countercultural scene, it has gone slightly upmarket but still remains one of San Francisco’s most racially and culturally mixed neighborhoods, with radical bookstores, laid-back cafés, record stores, and secondhand clothing boutiques recalling its days of international celebrity.

Today, nostalgia for a long dormant counterculture draws most visitors here – transforming the neighborhood into something of an alternative culture shopping mall, complete with numerous places to get pierced or buy a bong. Consequently, the district has one of the highest concentrations of oddball characters per square foot of any neighborhood in the country. On a darker note, the street’s long association with drugs has kept the number of people seeking, selling, and using them here alarmingly high; the hippie mystique continues to draw numerous youths, many of them ending up hooked and homeless. You’ll also have to contend with persistent, if harmless panhandlers.

The best way to see the neighborhood is to simply walk west up Haight Street, beginning on the east end at Buena Vista Park – a thickly wooded hillside patch of nature surrounded by rows of extravagantly turreted mansions – heading towards Golden Gate Park. While the park’s grassy lower stretch is sometimes home to sunbathers (on those rare days when there’s sun in the often-foggy Haight), its dark, overgrown upper reaches can be pretty spooky and are also a popular gay cruising spot. Don’t be fooled by the name: the trees block any chance of a view of the city.

Just across Haight from the park at 112 Lyon St is an impressive Victorian, once the home of the larger-than-life rock diva Janis Joplin, who got evicted for, of all things, owning a dog. A bit further west at 710 Ashbury St, the Grateful Dead house draws numerous pilgrims, many of whom still tape notes to the front porch long after Jerry Garcia’s death. The location was made famous by photos of the band taken here around the time of the band’s notorious 1967 drug bust.

Another worthy 1960s hangover is the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic at 558 Clayton St. By American standards, it’s quite a phenomenon, providing free health care since the 1960s when drug-related illnesses became a big problem in the Haight. It survives – barely – on contributions and continues to treat drug casualties and the poor, both disproportionately large groups in this part of the city. A block further west, at 636 Cole St, is the former home of Charles Manson; it was while staying at this nondescript blue building that Manson recruited most of the members of his murderous cult. Near Cole, at 1775 Haight St, is the home that once belonged to the Diggers, a short-lived anarchist art group with an anonymous leadership that took a break from writing Dadaist manifestos to give free food and shelter to the increasing numbers of homeless filling the neighborhood. To this day, the sidewalk in front of the building is a popular gathering spot for local wanderers.

North of Haight Street, you hit the Panhandle, the finger-slim strip of greenery that eventually leads to Golden Gate Park but is generally considered to be part of the Haight. The Panhandle was landscaped before the rest of the park back in the 1870s, and for a while was the focus of high-society carriage rides, where the well-dressed would go to show off. In post-quake 1906, it became a refuge for fleeing families, with some thirty thousand living in tents. During the 1960s, it was the scene for outdoor rock concerts by the likes of Jimi Hendrix that caused considerable wear and tear on the delicate landscape. Today it’s rather seedy: home to vagrants and the few guitar-strumming hippies that remain, though its bike paths and playgrounds also ensure steady use by neighborhood residents.

Back in the opposite direction, a few blocks south of Haight Street, at 130 Delmar near Frederick, is the site of the Jefferson Airplane house. Though there’s not a lot to see at this modest abode, Grace Slick’s legendary rock band rose to such psychedelic superstardom here in the late 1960s with the alternative lifestyle anthems White Rabbit and Somebody to Love, that many fans still make the pilgrimage. Still further south, just below the southeast corner of Golden Gate Park, lies Hunter S. Thompson’s former house at 318 Parnassus St near Willard. Again, there’s not much to see, but while at work on his book Hell’s Angels, the legendary “gonzo journalist” routinely held wild parties here, some of them not ending until somebody shot out the lights.