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It's January 14th, 1967, and a warm winter's day in San Francisco.

Tens of thousands of people have gathered in Golden Gate Park to attend an event called the Human BeIn, part music festival, part spiritual gathering.

The B-In was organized by the city's artistic community as a celebration of values that are

integral to 1960s counterculture. Among them, human togetherness, religious pluralism, and the

liberal consumption of illegal drugs. A 24-year-old woman, a college dropout from Texas, slowly makes her way through the crowd.

She arrived in San Francisco four years earlier and quickly established herself in the vibrant local music scene.

Janice Joplin is one of the many future rock and roll legends in the crowd today.

Others include Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors, and Jerry Garcia of the many future rock and roll legends in the crowd today. Others include Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors,

and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

Joplin approaches the stages where she sees a bearded, bespectacled man

dressed in flowing white robes leading a chant.

Alan Ginsberg is a famous poet and member of the Beat Generation, a literary movement which sprang up in New York City in the 50s.

But by 67, Ginsburg and many of his fellow beats have grown their hair out and moved from Greenwich Village to San Francisco.

In the dive bars and tenements of the hate Ashbury neighborhood, a movement is being born, one that

rejects the establishment and instead embraces flower power. And it's not just the beats who have

flocked to this countercultural mecca. Throughout the 1960s, young creative types from all over

the country have been gravitating here to San Francisco. To outsiders, these long-haired, bleary-eyed dropouts

are little more than drug addicts and slackers,

...