years later , he would maintain that the great sixties revolution in consciousness had benefited every person in the nation - that the renovation of old houses , the creation of gorgeous public buildings with flower-filled plazas and parks , the erection even of the modern shopping malls with marble floors , fountains , and flower beds - all this directly stemmed from those crucial years when the hippies of the haight ashbury had hung ferns in the windows of their flats and draped their junk furniture with brilliantly colored indian bedspreads , when the girls had fixed the proverbial flowers in their free-flowing tresses , and the men had discarded their drab clothes for shirts of bright colors and had let their hair grow full and long .