SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Counterculture tourists hoping to catch a whiff of Flower Power still make their way to the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets, where the spirits of Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead rock on in stores offering T-shirts, posters and pot-smoking paraphernalia.

While other businesses in the cradle of hippie culture are folding, head shops dealing in roach clips, rolling papers and hand-blown glass water pipes have proliferated on Haight Street – so much so that a San Francisco politician has proposed a law to prevent any more from opening in the neighborhood.

Ross Mirkarimi, a member of the city Board of Supervisors who represents the Haight, has asked his colleagues to adopt a three-year moratorium on new joints that sell smoking equipment.

With at least a dozen such shops already operating in a six-block area, Haight Street has too many places where tourists can go to feed their heads, and too few where locals can buy groceries or rent DVDs, Mirkarimi said.

Some San Franciscans find the proposal mind-blowing.

Under the headline “What’s He Smoking,” a local blogger mused that the supervisor’s intervention might “kill Haight-Ashbury’s flavor – yes, that sweet, sweet flavor.” The blogger observed that it “seems a little outlandish that he’d want to ban head shops in the place that practically invented them.”

The head shop moratorium could be considered by the Board of Supervisors next month.

San Francisco residents historically have embraced zoning restrictions as a way to preserve neighborhood character. There’s not a single Target within the city’s 49 square miles, and big store chains are discouraged from doing business here.

Marwan Zeidan, 41, owns Ashbury Tobacco Center, one of three head shots on a single block of Haight Street. Zeidan, who opened his store in 1994, recalled neighbors objecting when he started up. They wanted him to promise not to sell hand-held pipes that could be used for smoking crack or scales that could be used for weighing illegal drugs.

Yet Zeidan endorsed Mirkarimi’s proposed moratorium. Between all the competition and the slumping economy, sales at his shop are down 25 to 30 percent, he said. Plus, Zeidan said some of his competitors display pipes in their windows.

“It does not look really good for the neighborhood,” he said. “Not every parent is OK with their kids being exposed to water pipes.”