Free Summer of Love concert canceled by city
In a blistering three-page letter citing “numerous misrepresentations of material fact,” the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department denied a permit for a free Summer of Love 50th anniversary concert to be held June 4 at the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park.
Event promoter Boots Hughston was sent a rejection letter Tuesday, less than two weeks after he had made a public announcement about the concert, telling The Chronicle that the city department had given him the date and go-ahead for the event, with a permit all but assured.
In her letter, Diane Rea, manager of permits and reservations for Rec and Park, stated that after nine months of work, Hughston had still failed to supply adequate information about how security and crowd control would be handled.
“This is a character assassination on me all the way down the line,” said Hughston, 68, who claims a long history of putting on peaceful free tribute concerts in Golden Gate Park.
The golden anniversary concert was to have been a major focal point of a Summer of Love celebration that involves all the major museums and cultural institutions in San Francisco and Berkeley.
Hughston said he’d lined up Eric Burdon and War, the original rhythm section of the Santana Blues Band, and Country Joe McDonald, as well as remnants of the Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Moby Grape, Sons of Champlin and the Youngbloods.
The Summer of Love was a cultural event that changed the world,” Hughston said, “so for them to want to stop it blows my mind.
Outside Lands, the mega music festival produced by Another Planet Entertainment and Superfly Productions, paid the city more than $3 million for its music festival in the park last year, according to Rec and Park.
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a free festival, paid $176,000 — but it does not use the Polo Field, an athletic field that requires extra care.