In a brief four year span in the late 1960s, in a quaint San Francisco neighborhood less than a mile square, a creative movement emerged that would forever change a musical genre. What would come to be coined "The San Francisco Sound" served as the basis for a counter-culture revolution that would forever challenge the perception of the American ideal. This movement climaxed in a single California season known as the Summer of Love. The Beat of a Generation is a two hour documentary revealing as never before told the parallel stories of this magical "summer" that brought us the ground-breaking music known as the San Francisco Sound and the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that provided the canvas for this artistic burst of imagination. The documentary unfolds through extensive archival footage and interviews with those who lived in the Haight during the Summer of Love, as well as those who live there now.