Ben Marks

Golden Gate Park was nature in the city, right? And so you could kind of get outside and away from the concrete and everything and be under trees and be on grass.

And I think it was the epicenter of people figuring out what intellectual freedom could look like, what living a life of choice could look like.

It was a place where people congregated just naturally.

The neighborhoods were close to Golden Gate Park.

You know, the airplane house was right off the park.

The Haight-Ashbury itself is right off the panhandle, which is sort of like the avenue that gets you to the rest of the park.

It was just a very obvious place where people would end up congregating a lot.

And there were a lot of concerts.

There were a lot of events that, you know, the be-in and, you know, there were protests.

I remember being a little kid.

We would go to protests, march in the polo fields.