Summer Of Love Shakeup

The Bay Area promoter who vowed to reapply for a permit to host a free Summer of Love 50th anniversary concert after the city turned him down twice has decided to step back a bit from the task.

Eric Risberg/AP – Hopeful
A man flashes a peace sign during a rally for a Summer of Love anniversary concert outside City Hall in San Francisco.

Mill Valley promoter Boots Hughston, who has said he’d pay as much as $700,000 out of pocket for the event and was in talks with interested musicians, has decided someone else should handle the application process.

“Bottom line is, I think we should resubmit, but resubmit without me,” he said. “The best I can do is withdraw,” Hughston told the San Francisco Examiner. “I will support the concert 100 percent. The thing is already together – lights, sound, totally booked – so there’s really no loose ends.”

San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Commission ruled after a nearly three-hour public hearing to uphold the Feb. 7 decision by its permit department to deny Hughston’s application for the concert.

The officials said they denied the request because the promoter had made “numerous misrepresentations” about security and crowd control, leaving officials concerned about public safety.

Handling the permit situation now is business owner Sunshine Powers from local group The Consul of Light, the Examiner reported. The group, made up of San Franciscans with ties to the original Human Be-In, will pursue permits for a Summer of Love party on Haight Street in June and a September music festival.

The “Summer of Love 50th Anniversary Concert” was to be a focal point of citywide cultural events to mark the 1960s counterculture movement that was centered in San Francisco.

Hughston previously said he’d already lined up about two dozen performers for the concert at Golden Gate Park’s Polo Field including members of Jefferson Airplane and its off-shoot Jefferson Starship, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Santana Blues Band.