The Panhandle - Free Food and Free Concerts
Photo: Chris Hunkeler from Carlsbad, California, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.
Two blocks north of Haight Street, the long strip of trees called the Panhandle was laid out in the 1870s as the grand carriage entrance to Golden Gate Park. In the 1960s it became the Haight's backyard.
In 1966 a group of radical actors and activists called the Diggers began serving free meals here every afternoon, often stew made from donated or salvaged food, to anyone who showed up. They also ran free stores where people could take what they needed. A society without money, not just a free lunch, was the point.
Bands that lived in the neighborhood, including the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, played free concerts here, and crowds gathered on the grass. Look at the big old trees around you: the Panhandle was among the first parts of the park to be planted.
More on Wikipedia: Panhandle · Diggers · Grateful Dead
Stops on this tour
- Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
- Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
- Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
- North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
- Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
- Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
- The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
- Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
- Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
- Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
- The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
- The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
- Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
- South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom