As Telegraph crosses Dwight Way, it metamorphoses from an ordinary urban boulevard into a bustling bazaar crammed with old-style counterculture paraphernalia. The street turns into a narrow one-way strip whose broad sidewalks overflow with fresh-faced undergraduates, straggling tourists, and vendors hawking crystals, tie-dyed T-shirts, batik fabrics, incense, and hand-made jewelry. Chain stores give way to independent booksellers, record stores, cafés, tattoo parlors, vintage clothing outlets, and head shops.

Many of the strip's idiosyncratic businesses—founded in the '60s and '70s and still family owned— are as happening as ever. On one rich block between Dwight and Haste, you'll find the Continental Art Shop, a trove of religious icons from many cultures; the Reprint Mint, which offers printed images from Beaux-Arts classics to '60s rock and contemporary film posters; the Lhasa Karnak Herb Company, a fragrant emporium of vitamins, oils, and (of course) herbs; and famous bookstores Moe's and Cody's, which boast galaxies of new and vintage volumes. Newer places—Gilt, a bath- and beauty-product shop with a rubber-duck yellow interior, and Slurp, a hip Asian noodle shop—fit right in. Like their elders, they're distinctive and unpretentious. How cool is that?