The Fillmore was a dance hall operating under various names and managements - The Get Acquainted Society, Ambassador Dance Hall - through the 1930s, and a roller rink through the 1940s. In 1952, local entrepreneur Charles Sullivan began to book some of the biggest names in black music into The Fillmore. Sullivan booked West Coast tours for performers including James Brown, Bobby "Blue" Bland and Ike & Tina Turner. During the 1950s and 1960s, San Francisco gained a reputation as the preeminent Bohemian community in the United States. This reputation was never more deserved than during the mid-sixties, when the hipster of the Beat movement grew into the hippie of a more mainstream counter-culture. By the 1950s, the literary North Beach scene had given way to the emerging Haight-Ashbury, and radical politics had a niche across the Bay at the University of California at Berkeley. The line between culture and politics is easily blurred by young people in search of adventure.
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