Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gecko, Seth...brother of Richie! on June 28, 2009 at 9:42pm

Wow great response. Nothing I can add to that! Accept the addition of the rasta into the hippie culture. But again I think you can change clothes and musical styles and still find the foundation laid down by the Beats, or is it Jazz age folks. Wow how far back to trace our love of rebelling against strict, desert religion ( or all religious) influenced modes of social behavior.

Permalink Reply by Gecko, Seth...brother of Richie! on July 2, 2009 at 2:16pm

Allegra allow me a moment of condescension, for a young person you are fairly locked on!! :-)
If it wasn't for rebellious "movements" nothing would ever change!! That requires leaders and followers. Sometimes its end result is bad ( Soviet Union, Third Reich) sometime its good or better( US ). Most of us do not wish to be isolated, and marginalized hence the success of this site. So good job in your response.

Permalink Reply by John Q. Antichrist or Rosco on July 15, 2009 at 4:54pm

The yippies were about rebellion. Hippies have a more "who gives a shit" attitude.

Permalink Reply by Richard Goscicki on June 28, 2009 at 11:58pm

I was a hippie. Seeing Janic Joplin at the Filmore East on 2nd Avenue makes me a hippie. The smoke was so thick, people were getting a buzz waiting outside on line.

I used to go to WBAI parties with Abbie Hoffman at the old Ansonia Hotel on the Upper West Side. I still correspond with Paul Krassner, the founder of the Yippies.

I've smoked mj my whole life without any desire to escalate to hard drugs.

I had a hippie apartment on Junction Blve in Queens with another couple. We threw parties every weekend and had a blast. If you were down and out, you were welcome to stay with us a few days, 'til you got your head together—as long as you knew somebody in the clique.

The important thing about the movement was tolerance. We didn't care about race, gender, religion—the only we cared about is if you were a good person. By contrast, straight people called me, "I drug-fiend, nigga-lovin' commie.

Make love, not war. That sums it up.

Permalink Reply by Jeff on June 29, 2009 at 10:24am

Erstwhile hippies? I don't think so.

While it's surely true that living up to ones ideals in today's world is nearly impossible for most I think I've managed to come close. I retired at 50. I have no money to speak of and live through the kindness of a friend from high school. She's my girlfriend. I have no bank account. I grow most of my own food year 'round and own a couple of pair of pants, a few shirts and my Mac G5 computer. I haven't shaved or cut my hair since retiring and still have the same values that I had as a kid. I don't buy anything. I have no income. I don't belong to the club and don't buy into the false paradigm that everyone around me is living. If the kindness shown by my friend were to stop I would prefer to be homeless than work a 9 to 5 job to sustain a false paradigm. Maybe you bought into it but at 50 years old I realized something profound. We were all right about the world many years ago. Peace and Love are all that's necessary. And some pot when you can find it.

Permalink Reply by Angie Jackson on July 2, 2009 at 11:13am

I can't help but slightly feel that it is at the cost of your girlfriend's own ability to be a "true" hippie that you are permitted to do so. I cannot imagine myself agreeing to such an arrangement but I hope you are both happy in it.

Permalink Reply by Katie the Ninja on June 30, 2009 at 3:31pm

the wish to make the world a better place, the act of just going with the flow, being "hip". And to listen to music and justmake it your whole life, and realize that it doesn't matter if you wash your hair or bathe or pick up a sock, or something. It just matters if you live in peace in everything that you do.

Permalink Reply by Trance Gemini on June 30, 2009 at 10:07pm

What makes a hippie?

A person who has the confidence to assert who they are in this world without being ashamed or apologetic.

To whom ethics and morality, honesty and integrity, compassion and empathy, trump the material and superficial.

An independent and free thinker who doesn't follow the status quo.

A deep desire for social change as well activism to implement social change.

Those aspects of what it meant for me to be a hippy in my heyday ;-) haven't changed.

Hanging around Toronto's Yorkville, smoking "funny" cigarettes (and NOT inhaling ... yeah right lol), or attending the Easter Be-Ins in Vancouver's Stanley Park are sweet days gone by and belong in the past.

But they were great memories!

Permalink Reply by Kitty on July 1, 2009 at 3:48pm

Groovy comments; well thought out and articulated.

I know the old definition of Hippie is changed. Used to be you were homeless and jobless, so to speak. (Although your job was helping people and finding enough food, and your home was wherever you were.)

Living in a commune, working the fields and making artful useful household and garden items for sale at the flea market, I was living at peace. But that is not the only thing about being a hippie in my life.
Now I am among a community of people who have found one another who are invariably called "Hippies" by no just outsiders, but by ourselves.
We were brought together by music. We stay together because we are the societal misfits. We are kind. Yes, we have our own homes now. But we still gather in large and small festivals, for music and love and glorious mother nature. We still help people, and the circle is growing. Rather than our small group just doing one or two projects, we have spread out in our communities to add our talents and hearts for the betterment of humankind and our planet. Look at all the demonstrators when there's an atrocity... you'll see hippies in that crowd! (you may see me)

Hippie life is a mindset. It is a dedication. I say a hippie is not stuck to the definition of the past. Hippies today have evolved and, although derided by many in the mainstream, we still are a prevalent force. We are changing society, even by our very presence. Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out is no loner the criteria. Now we can Turn On, Tune In, and Speak Truth to Power!

Hippies are everywhere! Smile, Baby!

Permalink Reply by Steven Nunn on August 13, 2009 at 2:52am

It's been a while since anyone has posted on this site, I hope it's not postmortem.

I was young when the movement was in full bloom. Although I was probably more a (timid) free spirit than a hippy, I recall one of my favorite people who was.

My aunt Marge was a legitimate hippy, if such exist. She didn't even call herself so, she just lived it. Her entire life was spent living free and (mostly) anywhere she felt like. She was liberal as it gets and did everything at least once. Drugs? all of them, some often. Sex? She created a scandal sleeping nude in a local park with a black man in our WASP neighborhood. Lived off the land, in communes, tents, an old Quonset hut in the middle of the desert, an abandoned farm she found wandering the woods in Iowa, you name it, she did it. Yeah, and all the bell bottoms, tye dye, beads and hairstyles (including an Afro) that most people think when talking Hippy.

But I believe the essence that made her so was more than these things. Her quirky, rebellious spirit seemed magical, mystical and other worldly at times. Or silly playful at another moment. It was always a wild ride with her. But never mean or harsh, always a good soul. She would help and feed anyone. No one was ever turned away, man or beast.

I miss you Auntie, and will never forget you. XOXOX, Peace & Love

She would have liked this tribute done here.

Permalink Reply by Donna Darko on April 20, 2010 at 8:04am

Here's my take on what's a hippie. I was there when the "hippie" movement started, so I have a bit of experience to call upon. The "airy-fairy" spiritual attitude was a part of the hippie movement, but not for everyone and certainly not for me. Pot smoking was part, but I don't do that any more {sigh}. Yet, even after all these years, I still consider myself a hippie. That is because the heart of the hippie movement was simply two-fold: inhabiting the earth gently and respecting one another. This consisted of taking care of, or at least not harming, "mother" earth and the animals that inhabit her; eating whole, natural foods, and even growing some of them if you could; considering all people your brothers and sisters; settling disputes with words rather than force. In other words, the hippies' goal was to live their lives in harmony with the world and its inhabitants. I think the "locavore" and green movements are offshoots of the hippie movement.

I notice it's been a long time since anyone posted to this group, so I'm hoping it will revive like the resurrection ferns we have here in Florida. You will see a little black wad of vegetation on a tree limb in the winter and in the spring, when the rains start, that little black blob will open up into a beautiful little tree fern.

Permalink Reply by Luara on April 29, 2013 at 8:10pm

Our ancestors, the australopithecines, were hippies