Kids who ran away to 1960s San Francisco

I have a great uncle that moved to Haight Ashbury to chase the whole spiritual open your mind idea. He said it was nothing like the media or nostalgia portrayed it. Lots of homeless drugged out kids who were completely lost. No jobs, panhandling for food and money, no direction, just spaced out druggies. Said it was fairly sad and he left within a year. He is an old hippy type as well, it was not what I was expecting to hear. I remember seeing an interview of George Harrison saying something similar.

When was this? It's changed a lot (in both directions) over the years. For example, after Prop 64 legalized weed, the field in GGP by Haight and Stanyan that was previously staffed 24/7 by a morass of weed salespeople and their groupies (maybe 50-300 at any given time) emptied out overnight.

Then there's the fact that even the 18-20yo "Hippie Pilgrim" demo, which has held up pretty well for generations, is secretly stratified by the socioeconomic status of the parents. One's take on it depends on the specific cliques they're exposed to.