Ride the Magic Bus: A 1960s-Era San Francisco Tour

On this fun-filled historical city tour, hop aboard the Magic Bus that will transport you to 1960s San Francisco. Become a part of the Beatnik generation, see Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love and visit San Francisco’s Chinatown, from which eastern philosophy spread in the 1960s. Discover the iconic neighborhoods as they are now with your own eyes, and see the past come alive with retractable projection screens that cover the windows, giving you a look back in time.

Board the brightly colored Magic Bus in central San Francisco and begin your journey through time as you are transported from Union Square to Chinatown, a culturally vibrant pocket of San Francisco that is home to the largest population of Chinese in America. Chinatown was a significant part of America’s exposure to Eastern philosophies in the 1960s and beyond.

Next, visit North Beach, where you will see the City Lights bookstore. City Lights was the epicenter of profound social change in San Francisco, where many famous Beat-generation poems were published and Beatniks like Jack Kerouac hung out.

Continue your Magic Ride and watch modern San Francisco blend with the past as you travel through the Financial District and up central Market Street en route to the crossroads of Haight and Ashbury streets – the home of the Summer of Love.

After you’ve experienced the famous Haight-Ashbury district through the bus’s windows of time-altered perception, your next destination is the lush gardens of Golden Gate Park, where you’ll stop at the Conservatory of Flowers. Hear how America’s largest urban park hosted the Human Be-In event in 1967 and the first Earth Day in 1970. If the weather is nice, you may join a drum circle!

The ’60s-era video, music and costumed staff of the Magic Bus will have you feeling present in the past as you are immersed in one of the United States’ most memorable cultural movements. It’s not just a sightseeing tour – it’s a trip!