Haight-Ashbury Tutors Come To You

Haight-Ashbury is an infamous district in San Francisco, California. Known for its influence on and the location of the hippie counterculture explosion, Haight-Ashbury was immortalized through the songs written and lives lived by psychedelic rock performers/groups of the time. Famed musicians such as Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin all lived nearby and would come to be associated with the hippie movement, the “Summer of Love” and represent the movement happening within The Haight district.

Mainstream media covered the goings-on of Haight-Ashbury daily with the neighborhood reaching acclaim with a feature in The New York Times Magazine. The popularity of the hippies’ social experiment, as well as the musical acts that embodied the lifestyle, continued to rise and become a part of popular culture; therefore, the neighborhood began to see a rapid influx of people. Unsurprisingly, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood scene quickly deteriorated due to overcrowding, homelessness, and crime. The young, hopeful migrants that had abandoned their white picket fences, suburbia, and ivy league educations, in search of the utopia Haight-Ashbury personified, either returned to college or simply moved away.

The neighborhood continued to spiral until the 1970s, which brought a renewal. In 1977, Sami Sunchild acquired the Victorian home—which had a long, storied past. She painted it red, named it the Red Victorian, and it is still standing and operational today. The Red Victorian is one of the last remaining vestiges of the Haight-Ashbury’s Summer of Love era. Sami wanted the Red Victorian to embody the ideas of the area—peace, environmental responsibility, social justice, and cooperative community.

The Haight-Ashbury district would continue to see revitalization when, in the 1980s, a new scene was born: the San Francisco Comedy Scene. A small coffee shop called The Other Cafe became a full-time comedy club and would go on to launch the careers of some of the world’s funniest, such as Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, and Whoopi Goldberg. Like the rebound of The Haight, students, too, can move onward and upward with the help of Haight tutors.

For the next thirty years, the Haight district would continue to improve and thrive, like students who have participated with Haight tutoring. Since 2014, the Red Victorian has new ownership and a new mission than Sami Sunchild’s. The new manager, Jessy Kate Schingler, has established the Red Victorian, LLC, and operates the home as an experiment with co-living and urban community development. Though it has changed hands again and represents a new generation’s ideals, the Red Victorian continues to shine like a beacon of hope, peace, and love.