Well, I enjoyed visiting SF when I was at Stanford in the 60's. At that time is was a very conservative financial center with a night life. Haight Ashbury was an attraction among many others. It is hard to fathom the stories we hear today, expecially if one follows the real estate prices. Though, after a history conference one collegue quipped that their were too many fruits and nuts for him.
I have a vivid memory of SF when I was 8; we drove cross-country on vacation (Virginia to California). This was in 1968. We visited the city on a cold foggy July day (which recalls Mark Twain's remark that summer in SF was the coldest winter he'd ever experienced). I remember the trolleys and the Victorian houses. My parents were kind enough to drive us into the Haight somewhere to find my 3rd grade teacher, who had moved to California, presumably "with a flower in her hair" (as the old song went). Alas, we didn't find her. But we did see psychedelia decorating the hallway of her apartment building, very exotic to an 8-year-old.