There are few crossroads with the name recognition of the San Francisco intersection of Haight and Ashbury. A seemingly enchanted place, the Haight-Ashbury district begins at the top of a rise that gradually makes its way west to the beach. The fog drifts up past Golden Gate Park with ritual regularity, settling over the gingerbread Victorians and the Monterey Pines. In the space of a little under five years, the Haight traced an arc from a quaint if somewhat dilapidated working-class neighborhood to the Mecca of the psychedelic counter-culture and back again. By the early 1970s, there was no longer any indication that the street had once hosted a vibrant alternative society. It had collapsed utterly under the weight of its own inner contradictions.

Comprised of a nine-block stretch of Haight Street ending at Golden Gate Park to the west, Haight-Ashbury, or The Hashbury as it was affectionately...