By Kevin V. Nguyen :sfstandard – excerpt
With apologies to the Tanner family, this was actually once the fullest house in San Francisco
In David Talbot’s celebrated “Season of the Witch”—which tracks how San Francisco’s Summer of Love gave way to two decades of “discontent”—an aspiring hippie named Robert McCarthy arrived in the Haight fresh off of serving a tour in the Vietnam War, in search of good vibes.
But by 1969, the neighborhood had slid into a den of boarded-up storefronts, panhandling and open-air drug dealing, with speed and heroin taking over as the preferred choice of users…
In that despair, McCarthy found a beacon of light—and a place to live—in a three-story Victorian located at 1915 Oak Street, which served as the headquarters for the Good Earth Commune, a loose collective of hippies that historians and longtime residents credit with helping save the neighborhood via its philanthropic work in the community…(more)
In contrast, our Beaux Arts Coffee Shop lasted for decades and numerous iterations, moving at least three or four times. Tom keep it alive and his follower/fans are still spreading the creative spirit that he embraced. Some of that history is documented here: https://beauxartsbook.com/wp/
Beaux Artists 