For What It’s Worth: Buffalo Springfield’s Song Isn’t About Vietnam

The Sunset Strip

As Stills was heading towards Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, he stumbled upon a rally, in which hundreds, even thousands, of young people were protesting a new curfew and the looming closing of a club called Pandora’s Box. By the mid-‘60s, the Strip was dominated by young hippies of the rock and roll counterculture movement.

A crowd of young people protesting and holding signs

The Sunset Strip curfew riots 1966. Source: Los Angeles Times

But, as it typically went with hippies, there were both good and bad things. While they brought many artistic initiatives to the area, they also brought with them alcohol and drug abuse, as well as the disturbance of traffic. In 1966, the city came up with a way to limit the growing nuisance.