Grateful Dead House — 710 Ashbury Street, San Francisco

The Victorian house at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district was the communal home of the Grateful Dead from 1966 to 1968 — the period in which the band developed from a local acid rock act into the defining ensemble of the psychedelic counterculture. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and other band members and associates lived and rehearsed here, and the house became a magnet for the musicians, writers, poets, and seekers who were transforming the neighbourhood into the epicentre of the Summer of Love. When police raided the house in October 1967 and arrested several band members for marijuana, the Dead held a press conference on the front steps, turning the bust into a statement.

The Dead's residency at 710 Ashbury coincided with some of the most extraordinary free concerts in American music history — shows at Golden Gate Park, the Human Be-In at the Polo Fields, and the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. Their approach to performance — long improvisations, heavy psychedelic sound systems designed by Owsley Stanley, a relationship with the audience that erased the usual performer/fan hierarchy — was being developed in this period. The house was both a home and a laboratory.

The house is now a private residence and is one of the most photographed addresses in San Francisco. A small plaque marks its significance. The surrounding Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood, while substantially gentrified, retains enough of its Victorian architecture and counterculture businesses to give a sense of what the neighbourhood looked like in 1967. Visitors make the pilgrimage daily.