Over this period , San Francisco became a magnet for America 's counterculture . Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s . Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s , reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love . In 1974 , the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead . In the 1970s , the city became a center of the gay rights movement , with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village , the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors , and his assassination , along with that of Mayor George Moscone , in 1978
assassination
Moscone–Milk assassinations
San Francisco