James A. Gantz of The Telegraph describes the unique time in which Arthur Tress found himself in San Francisco:
It was a presidential election year rife with political partisanship, especially within the ranks of the Republican Party. 1964 also saw the ratification of a sweeping Civil Rights Act, the Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and the birth of the Free Speech Movement on college campuses. On a lighter note, the Beatles' appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and the launch of their first North American tour fuelled a national epidemic of Beatlemania.
Photographer Arthur Tress arrived in the city at the beginning of April. Here he rented a small front room in a boarding house located in the heart of North Beach, not far from City Lights Books, Café Trieste, and numerous nightclubs offering everything from jazz and flamenco to stand-up and strippers. –James A. Gantz
From The Telegraph online posting from 30 October 2015.