Guide to Being A Hippie

I saw a lens of the day entitled "Authentic Homemade Hippie Costumes - What Hippies REALLY Wore!" by LindaJM.

For starters, costumes? Aren't you sick of people wearing "hippie costumes" for Halloween. How about Authentic Homemade Square Costumes?

Wore? Use of the past tense? Sounds like wishful thinking on their part. Wishing we were all dead. Never mind all that. Let's have some fun and dress up like squares!

Business suits? Heck, we hippies will put on a business suit if the business is important enough. We don't have to cut our hair. Malcolm Forbes' sons started working for their father and had very long hair despite wearing three piece Brooks Brothers suits to work.

Jeans? That used to be our casual wear but now everyone hippie and square wears blue jeans. And "Casual Friday" at many square workplaces is now more like casual all the time. The high-tech companies probably had something to do with that trend.

So you have to be extreme in dress to dress like a square. Maybe clothes from the Nineteen Fifties or dressing like SpongeBob SquarePants or like a high-tech nerd (white shirt, pocket protector, narrow tie, black slacks if you're a guy) or as a DEA agent or a riot cop or a Marine drill instructor or with your pants around your ankles and your naked buttocks completely exposed (like the hip hoppers) or dress like a retiree or wear a fat suit because squares are actually very round from packing on the weight from eating all that white sugar/starch or frankly I don't like making fun of squares because I know what it is like to be made fun of. And besides, it is depressing to see squares make the mistakes we used to make but you can't force people to change to healthier, wiser lifestyles. You can show by example and you can let the radicals try (futilely, in my opinion) but ultimately you have to change minds one by one until Earth is fit to live on again with clean air and clean water and clean soil for growing clean food.

I don't like this game any more. I sort of like Halloween but it brings out the worst in some people. Any fire department can tell you that a lot of fires get set on this night. And bad people try to give bad candy to little children.

Stay home. Forget the costumes. Or come up with some healthy alternative to the holday that has degenerated from the fun it used to be.

Wait a minute! This holiday was never good. Soaping windows? T.P.-ing trees? Throwing eggs? Turning over trash cans? Those were some of the milder tricks when you didn't get treats back in the day. This holiday always was a bad apple. Speaking of which. Bobbing for apples? All that infectious saliva in the water. School bazaar for the children and a costume party for the adults with nothing more than dancing. Maybe see a scary movie.

And you squares can meditate on the hatred unconsciously generated when you wear an "authentic homemade hippie costume" . We hippies never wore the stuff they sell in stores. We dressed with more taste than that.

(Okay, some of us did dress like that)

postscript -- you could dress like, well, Ronald Reagan, well.

I did not realize the squares had a union.

style for rich hippies

Hippies have been misinterpreted from the very beginning by squares and by pretty much everybody who insists on using hippies as a Rorschach inkblot test projecting their own drug problems onto hippies or their own ultraconservative reactionary politics onto hippies portraying them as radicals. For the record, hippies are quietists, the exact opposite of activists and radicals. Radicals are willing to use force.

Hippies reject force except in self-defense (and yes, hippies will shoot back with lethal force to protect their children, spouses and parents so be warned!!!). It is just that hippies prefer peace and nonviolence.

Easy Rider -- I personally did not like it because the hippies got killed by rednecks. A better ending would be if the redneck's gun jammed, blew up in his face, and the shrapnel put him in a hospital where he woke up to find they castrated him so he could not produce more little rednecks. Like the Black Sabbath song Fairies Wear Boots, these flower children are roses that have grown thorns and are fighting back.

The Trip (1967) -- Another Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper Film. This film brings you on a trip, but it is not the kind you pack a suitcase for. This film was made during the time of the "acid test" days of San Francisco. It takes us on an acid trip. It explores the good and the bad points of dropping acid. The psychedelic effects are the best they had for the day to give us a visual illusion of what one might experience if they were to take acid for themselves. It is a movie that will certainly bring back memories for some of you. If you want to go there again - safely, this movie is the one for you. Anytime you need to reminisce in your mind, watch this.

Billy Jack - all three Billy Jack films (Was there a fourth one? Actually there was where the character was in "Born Loser")

Omega Man- What's missing from Will Smith's remake of I AM Legend? Charlton Heston saving hippie kids from mutated, killer zombie/vampires.

Head (with the Monkees)

Joe - Peter Boyle as a redneck who discovers pot and free love. Down South lots of rednecks grew their hair long. The Allman Brothers with their boring music of course but, better yet, Jim "Dandy" Mangrum and Black Oak Arkansas and Ruby Starr's Grey Ghost. Off the tangent and on with the review: If you've ever wanted to watch a commune full of long hairs get brutally murdered, then brother, I've got a film for you. Joe, starring the late, great Peter Boyle, is the story of a blue-collar worker and a high powered ad-executive who unite over their shared hatred of hippies. Sure, in the end one of the characters accidentally kills his own daughter, but you can't make a dead-hippie omelet without breaking some eggs. Quote from the movie: "Forty-two percent of all liberals are queer, that's a fact." Now do you understand my survivalist attitude at the beginning with the Easy Rider review?

2001 A Space Odyssey -- absolutely NO! Watch it stone cold sober not stoned. If you drop acid to watch this, the greatest movie of all time, or if you watch it on a small screen, I hope they throw you in prison and throw away the key for sacrilege. Hey, some things in this life really are sacred and this is one of them.

Blow Up

Zabrieske Point -- named after a place in Death Valley

Hair - The AMerican Tribal Love Rock Musical

Breezy - a little film with William Holden and Kay Lenz

Godspell -- I personally like Jesus Christ Superstar better because the idea of God the Son as a jester or clown combined with the suspicion of many theologians that God the Father is a cosmic comedian with us humans as the butt of the joke is a bit much to take. However, if you don't over-analyze, then Godspell is fun on the level of the Muppets.

Go Ask Alice -- don't have to ask her, drugs are bad and besides, Alice is in the next three movies

Alice's Restaurant -- Arlo good, drugs bad

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) -- This movie stars Ellen Burstyn. This is a story of a young single mother trying to make it on her own with her son. This movie brings you back to the day with all the clothes and styles we use to love. It is a great story too. Alice packs up and heads cross country only to find her self stuck in a place she can't wait to get out of. It takes money to do this so she takes a job as a waitress. Where you ask? Mel's Dinner. Yes, this is the movie that was so well loved, they made a weekly series out of it. "Alice". Watch and see why it was a favorite back then. This is a -home on the couch with a cold one feel good movie.

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! -- Alice B. Toklas was also a recipe for baked goods with marijuana included as an ingredient

[Throw in an Alice Cooper movie and Alice in Wonderland -- the Johnny Depp version -- and you have an Alice Film Festival]

Butterflies are Free (1972) -- This movie stars Goldie Hawn and Edward Albert. The mode of dress in this picture will make you long for those styles. Goldie Hawn is a "hippie" and is a restless free spirit in this movie. She lives next door to a sheltered blind young man, who just moved away from his over protective mother. Goldie's character gets right to work on her new blind neighbors sheltered life. They both learn a lot along the way. The interaction between the mother, son, and Goldie's character, is quick to remind you of our parents way of thinking back in the day. You will love Goldie more than ever before. Good Saturday night movie.

The Baby Maker (1970) -- surrogates were a novelty back in those days

The Strawberry Statement - really more a radical movie than a hippie movie but I left it on the list. By the way, I have not done a module on hippie politics because hippies are nonpolitical (they leave politics to the radicals). But if there were such a thing as hippie political parties, then the Yippies and Zippies came closest. Nowadays, the Green Party and the Libertarian Party and perhaps the Natural Law Party. Actually pretty much any third party alternative to the Demopublicans and the Remocrats except obvious bastards like the Communists and the Nazis.. One would think that The Holocaust and Stalin's Gulags and Mao's Cultural Revolution (today's government there chops up dissidents for body parts straight out of a cyberpunk novel) and Pol Pot's Killing Fields and North Korea starving its people while wasting money on nukes all would convince people that Fascism and Communism and any totalitarianism is anti-people. This is why hippies have pretty much given up on politics and disengage from the whole process.

Woodstock

Yellow Submarine

Magical Mystery Tour

Pink Floyd's The Wall

Reefer Madness - intended to be anti-drug, probably the most pro-drug movie out there. Kids used to laugh their heads off behind their parents backs over this one.

Cheech and Chong -- Is it any wonder that squares think all hippies are potheads? And is it any wonder that squares think: "What the heck! All those Baby Boomers and hippies survived the Sixties so drug use can't be all that bad." Wrong. Even us hippies are amazed that so many of us survived Vietnam body bags, police brutality and drug abuse but when you stop and think about it, we avoided the draft, we let the radicals get their heads beaten in by the cops (and miraculously most of the activists survived places like The South despite what Easy Rider would have you think) and hippies were the first to stop using drugs and just say no. Oh right, supposed to be reviewing Cheech and Chong. Bigger splibs than Bob Marley used to puff.

Fantasia -- another movie I watched straight and enjoyed. Until some jerk suggested this movie I never thought of it as a hippie movie. Still don't.

The Doors -- ho hum more drugs but at least you get to listen to Doors music. Jim Morrison was definitely on a self-destructive trajectory as was Janis Joplin so I resent it when Jimi Hendrix gets lumped with them since he did not have the psych issues Jim and Janis had. Jimi died because an ambulance attendant sat him up and he choked on his own vomit. Having had EMT training, I can tell you about clear airways. Jimi should still be with us because I doubt if angels appreciate his music. Then again you never know. Jimi did name one of his companies Heaven Research. And since I got off on a tangent again might as well mention some Jimi flicks . . .

Jimi Hendrix (1973) - documentary

Experience (1968) -- Jimi Hendrix plays himself and Noel Redding as Himself (Bass) and Mitch Mitchell as Himself (Drums, Percussion).

Rainbow Bridge (1971) - a story loosely based on Jimi's last concert

Down on Us (1984) -- The story of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and 'Janis Joplin' (qv), and how their message for their generation made them targets of a US government plot.

Tommy - way over the top, almost a lecture on why you should avoid drugs but the music is okay, all star cast and easy to confuse with that other Who movie Lisztomania

Almost Famous

but was left behind when he got hooked on drugs. Once again children, drugs are bad. If he had stayed aboard Pink Floyd, then he might have been rich.

Arguably, this was a toss up between folk and rock in the Sixties. Nowadays, space music, alternative, and world music. You could add New Age but New Agers are often squares who will believe anything. [Example: pseudo-science such as astrology.] Jazz is definitely not hippie music because jazz was for beatniks who came before hippies and were more into heroin than acid. Country & Western is not hippie music because the people who listen to it make songs like Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" and other anti-hippie anthems and, more importantly, country music fans listen to C&W while they are beating up defenseless flower children. Or blacks. You don't see any blacks in country music. Charley Pride quit the scene because of death threats. On the other hand, Ray Charles and Lionel Ritchie have done country. And there are definitely country rock bands.

It should be acknowledged that art music (also known as classical music) used to be known as "long-hair music."

Okay that's enough musicology for now. Here is the list of groups and solo stars most hippies agree on:

Jimi Hendrix -- greatest guitarist who ever lived
The Jimi Hendrix Experience -- duh, an obvious choice
The Grateful Dead -- miss Jerry but the others are good too
The Doors
Santana
Jefferson Airplane -- but not Jefferson Starship
The Who
The Beatles - for numerous reasons, this group has decent hippie credentials
The Mamas and The Papas - but not the bands set up by their kids
Big Brother & The Holding Company with Janis Joplin - the woman could sing but her drugs of choice were heroin and alcohol not LSD (drugs are bad but if you got to use them . . . then use something mellow). And to further infuriate Janis fans, she was more at home in some bar than on a commune. That said, I still think the woman could sing the blues.
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Pink Floyd- both the Syd Barrett days and after

Joan Baez -- more an act for the radicals than the hippies but if you have to chose between her and Bob Dylan to represent folk music then she is head and shoulders above Dylan. She was present at all the big events in history. I don't care for her music personally but even I have to acknowlege her greatness. And I did like that song of hers in the movie Silent Running.

Jethro Tull
Crosby, Stills, and Nash -- "I can see by your coat my friend that you're from the other side. Can you tell me please. Who won the war?"
Ravi Shankar -- master of the sitar and classical Indian music
Cream

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In the decades after the Sixties, you can add:

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
Phish
Yes
Joni Mitchell
Lenny Kravitz
Led Zeppelin - amen to this choice, Robert Plant's vocal chords are gone and he has gone country but Bonzo's son and John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page (greatest living guitarist, though some would say Steve Howe of Yes is better) are planning a tour. These guys used to fill arenas that even the Beatles and the Stones could not fill but the press never reported this commercial success because the group did not bother with Top Ten AM radio or singles and so flew under the radar of the music press. They still do. Even an underground band like Pink Floyd became a household name but Led Zep? Not really. My grandparents have heard of Pink Floyd but despite the T-shirts, Zeppelin is the still the greatest open secret.

An opposite opinion of Led Zeppelin -- Alice Cooper and Led Zep are astutely credited with ushering in the death of the love generation (named by SF police chief Thomas Cahill that night after the Great Human Be-In!) and the era of the no-message, good-time arena rock that followed the earnest 60s.

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One has to acknowledge the one hit wonders:

"Let's Go To San Francisco" by The Flowerpot Men (1967) [In 1968, Nick Simper and Jon Lord became founding members of the hardrock band Deep Purple. This connection was later lampooned in the fake rock documentary, Spinal Tap, whose fictional first hit was called "(Listen to the) Flower People", a reference to "Let's Go to San Francisco".]

"Incense and Peppermints" by Strawberry Alarm Clock

"San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" is a song, written by John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, and sung by Scott McKenzie. It was written and released in 1967 to promote the Monterey Pop Festival

"A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum

"Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf

"In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly

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Finally, there are some small and/or local acts that never made it big but deserve mention:

Spirit: Spirit (1968)
Pentangle
Magic Music (featuring a young Chris Daniels was a Boulder, Colorado-based group)

Audio cassettes are still around but after repeated use, one side often bleeds through to the other side.

The eight track tape is also crappy technology. They do not age well.

Records also known as platters also known as vinyl also known as wax tracks also known as L.P.'s also known as music albums also known as big discs (as in Disc Jockey or discotheque or discography) have a whole culture built around them that some cannot fathom.

It is not commonly acknowledged that one of the appeals of LP music albums was not only the liner notes, and occasional freebies like booklets and posters, but the cover art. Some people held onto and still hold onto their album (s) in this post-CD era because the twelve inch by twelve inch flat square that protected the disc was often a piece of art worth putting in a frame. Many people liked the artwork so much that they would photographically blow up the image for a wall poster. And that is how the wall poster industry took off.

There is at least one rapper with talent: Rich Hil who has collaborated with Kid Cudi. I still laugh out loud though when musicians describe themselves as "recording artistes". If you have a record collection, hide it whenever someone who likes rap is in the house lest they scratch it up. Having said that, we should acknowledge that record plants that had stopped making vinyl discs started making LP's again due to the demand of DJ's, nostalgia buffs and folks like you interested in buying them. They also still make stereos and high fi systems. Despite the record industry's worst efforts to kill the LP, it refuses to die. LP appropriately stands for long playing record.

CD's are a rather durable medium but they can fade with age (carefully store your music no matter what the medium) . CD's skip though and require disk doctors. The whole idea of the CD came from reducing the original laser disc down a size. And laser discs were supposed to be an improvement on LP's, No needle dragging on grooves should mean that the disc does not wear out and no need to periodically replace the needle of a high fi system. My oldest CD is still functioning so I guess CD's are pretty dependable. However, my oldest LP is also functioning because I don't do stupid stuff like I've seen people do with CD's like using them for coasters, leaving them in hot or cold cars, scratching them, touching the surface with dirty or sticky fingers, or otherwise breaking them.

We are sticking to 2-D paintings, sketches and watercolors in this section. We will get around to sculpture and "art" broadly defined to include "the arts" in other future sections.

It is incorrect to say that all hippie art is psychedelic. However, it is true that psychedelia was the most prevalent style back in the Sixties and Seventies. As this section evolves, we will explore other hippie art styles.

If you are a collector, there are some must haves:
1. The posters for Fillmore West and Fillmore East were among the most notable of the time.
2. The art work for underground newspapers (front page and inserts) also is worth collecting. Particularly early issues of IT (London), the East Village Other (1965-1972 in NYC), the Berkeley Barb (1965-1969), and Atlanta's Great Speckled Bird (1968-1976).
3. The most famous hippie artist is Peter Max.
4. It is not commonly acknowledged that one of the appeals of LP music albums was not only the liner notes, and occasional freebies like booklets, but the cover art. Some people held onto and still hold onto their album (s) in this post-CD era because the twelve inch by twelve inch flat square that protected the disc was often a piece of art worth putting in a frame. Many people liked the artwork so much that they would photographically blow up the image for a wall poster. And that is how the wall poster industry took off. One of the best album cover artists was and is Roger Dean.
5. Vaughn Bode. Do not take my word for it. Do your own research into this artist. He was more than a contemporary of Robert Crumb.
6. The art work for underground magazines like Oz.

The art scene is not all back in the Sixties of course. There are good artists today. You may want to take a look at this young lady ==

7. Hopper, Cheryl A Sheldon
http://www.hoppersart.com/

Twenty of the Most Popular Books Among Hippies

1. Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
3. Dune by Frank Herbert
4. The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
5. The Bhagavad Gita
6. The Drifters by James Mitchener
7. Aquarius Revisited: Seven Who Created the Sixties Counterculture That Changed America (Citadel Underground Series) by Peter O. Whitmer, Bruce Van Wyngarden
8. Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown
9. The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth by J. E. Lovelock
10. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
11. On the Bus: The Complete Guide to the Legendary Trip of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the Birth of the Counterculture by Paul Perry
12. Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle by Peter Coyote
13. The Biosphere by V. I. Vernadskii, David B. Langmuir (translator)
14. Lonely Planet series of travel guides
15. Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman (don't steal this book)
16. The Kama Sutra
17. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
18. The Whole Earth Catalog
19. Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
20. Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead

Until today, I used to be afraid of Google gobbling up books and Amazon using books for kindling. It is not accidental that they call it that. Instead of cozying up to a fireplace with a good book, you instead throw the good book on the fire as kindling and instead read an easily censored e-book on your tablet.

It is probably just as well that today's generation thinks it strange to store anything - movies, music, or books on physical media such as VHS or paper. Shades of Bradbury's _ Fahrenheit 451 _ and Huxley's _ Brave New World _ ! With mp3 players and "the cloud," all that dubious creativity is digitized like V'ger did in Star Trek The Motion Picture to people and inanimate objects. Big Business and Big Government has the technology to reach into your tablet device and either change what's in it or censor it or even make it disappear. What will this do to privacy and intellectual freedom?

The dopers used to soak paper in lysergic acid. To this day, I hate licking stamps because of fear of getting some drug in my system. Thank God the Postal Service has self-adhesive stamps and the offfice superstores have peel and seal envelopes.

Mother Earth News - still very much with us and bigger than ever

The Healthy Hippie Magazine
http://healthyhippie.net/

http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1p0hi/HealthyHippieMagazin/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http://www.yudu.com/item/details/213203/Healthy-Hippie-Magazine--September-October-2010

http://www.healthyhippiemagazine.com/

Modern Hippie Mag
http://www.modernhippiemag.com/

a detour on your way to Modern Hippie Mag
http://smilinggreenmom.com/2010/06/modern-hippie-magazine-where-its-hip-to-be-plus-my-secret/

Oz
Amazing covers from late 1960s magazine OZ. With cover designs by: Jenny Kee, Jim Leon, Martin Sharp, Robert Crumb..etc
Researching this, I discovered that feminist Germaine Greer is a lot more fun person than I imagined. With articles like the Anarchist Cookbook and Weather Underground, no wonder the police harrassed them.

Hippie Television

Lonely Planet on the Travel Channel
Star Trek - it's fun to watch the fascists militarize space, any civilians in the future are invariably the villains
Dharma and Greg
The Monkees
The Smothers Brothers
American Experience - Summer of Love ~ David Ogden Stiers (DVD - 2007)

overdose on the Nineteen Sixties*
The Sixties - The Years That Shaped a Generation ~ Paul Herlinger (DVD - 2005)
The '60s - The complete miniseries starring Josh Hamilton, Julia Stiles, Jerry O'Connell, and Jeremy Sisto . (1999) This fictional story traces a family's experiences through the turbulent '60s.  Excellent combination of non-fictional archival footage and great music of the period brings home the messages of the decade. 
The Fabulous 60's, An Overview.  Peter Jennings reviews the 1960s with tons of archival footage and commentary.  This is part of a series that covers each year one video at a time.

*not to be confused with the 1860's naturally

If you watched the show, then you know that the couple behind Dharma and Greg (his best friend and her best friend) got married and later divorced but seemed to have more fun before they got married and after they got divorced.

Actually he never was a reporter, he was a musician.

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Mr. Natural, and Zap Comix. One name stands above the rest of the creators of these comix - Robert Crumb. Nowadays, we hippies may be embarrassed by the antics of stoners but it is a guilty pleasure to laugh at those antics in the form of comix first seen in underground newspapers of the alternative press and later in full-fledged form as comic books. Who needs Superman when you can have Mister Natural?

Trivia: The Simpsons started in the mind of Matt Groening and he continues to draw comix for syndication in alternative newspapers today.

Trivia: The life of Harvey Pekar was made into a movie. American Splendor (2003)

Here's a quote from Mike Flugennock's site about the Reagan years:

"Left activism and political cartooning, in this kind of environment, were getting to be a seemingly hopeless grind of years with no hope of results, and often backward progress. The Yipster Times/Overthrow outfit put out its last issue at or about 1986 or so, and outlets were becoming scarce already before that. Rather than give myself a nervous breakdown howling into the wind, I went back to doing what I enjoyed in art school: happy partying hippie comix, hippies happily outwitting cops comix, hippies trying to nab spare Dead tickets comix, at the Dead Relix fanzine, also out of New York. It didn't pay much more than weed money, but I already had a day job, and had an outlet to do entirely fun cartoons with no redeeming political commentary whatsofreakinever, at least for a few years."

link to Mike Flugennock's political cartoons http://sinkers.org/stage/?cat=6

Trivia: Political humor stops being funny when you stop laughing and realize that really evil people are in charge of all the world's governments. It is then you realize that you need a clean and sober and undrugged consciousness to cope and to survive and to flourish. And maybe get the heck off this planet before they poison it because they sure aren't listening to the environmentalists who are warning of eco-catastrophe.

False: Only guys read and write comix.
True: Only guys frequent comic book stores and conventions.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

"The underground comix movement did eventually attract female artists, being a venue that allowed more mature themes and personal work than the commercial newspaper and comic book industry of the time. A pioneer in this market was Trina Robbins, a driving force in the creation of the early all-female comix books It ain't me, babe and All Girl Thrills, and later founder of the anthology series Wimmen's Comix. Robbins has later moved on to a long career in comics, and has written several books about female cartoonists and their comics.
Another all-female comix book series was T*ts and Cl*ts Comix, founded by Lyn Chevely and Joyce Farmer, who were inspired by the honesty in the underground comix, but appalled by the frequent macho attitude. With the conviction that sex was political, the series was created with the focus of sex and sexuality from a female perspective.
Artists who grew out of this movement include Lee Marrs (Pudge Girl Blimp about an overweight self-obsessed wannabe hippie girl), Shary Flenniken (Trots and Bonnie about two precocious girls trying to make sense of their suburban life), Aline Kominsky (The Bunch, autobiographical depiction of her least flattering sides) and Dori Seda (autobiographical stories)."
List of female comics creators From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_comics_creators

Trivia: One insight is that conservatives hate hippie chicks because they won't do you-know-what with conservative guys and so, like all sexists, they immediately start calling the women whores and sluts. Boringly predictable. Rush you should be ashamed of your pedophile ways.

Let's see. We've bashed the radicals and the conservatives. Who's next? There is some decent skewering of liberals and moderates out there.

Trivia: Keep On Truckin' was not copyrighted and was like the hippie version of the smiley face.

Trivia: Eric "Big Daddy" Nord was a beatnik not a hippie.

Quoting from the Wiklpedia article on him:
"In the mid-1960s, Nord returned to Northern California, where, in Scotts Valley, he converted a barn into a psychedelic night club that catered to hippies and was the scene of some of Ken Kesey's happenings. In the early 1970s, he operated a "cultural center" in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury neighborhood. In 1972 Nord appeared as the character 'God' in a San Francisco underground photo-comic titled 'SuperJesus' now rated an underground comix classic. He moved to Los Gatos in 1975 and remained there until his death in 1989."

Trivia: Bad Acid Comix was formed in the summer of 1967 by Jerry M Garcia (not the Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead) on Los Angeles' east side.

Hippie Homes

Hippie décor can be as simple as hammocks, bean bag chairs, futons, day-glo posters, old cable spools for tables and book shelves made of boards and cinder blocks. Or you can do better by sharpening your woodworking and carpentry skills to make furniture. If you live near the sea, then make use of driftwood. Or if you prefer soft things more than hard wood, then learn about textile and fabric arts & crafts.

Hippie architecture has often being identified with Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes or with wild, freeform architecture commonly called handmade or Westcoast Vernacular. And of course, hippies were the first to adopt solar power because the sun is what powers flowers and flower power. Windows should be round and circular not square. Duh. Make sure you build a conversation pit.

Where to live?
Hippy Havens - This site needs updating and what's here is mostly doper communities.
Hippie Havens !!! - WildChild Magazine's is not a total overlap of the previous list. I would appreciate readers reviewing and comparing the lists for accuracy.
Hippy Havens A to Z - Another list by Skip Stone
Hippie haven - one haven, Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia.
Hippy Havens Around the Globe - This site from a Magazine advertises cannabis and I see no reason to aid and abet a crime since I have no sympathy for people who need drugs to get high. So I'm not telling you the URL or name of the magazine. The point of this is that a sizable group of people think it is okay to use drugs anyplace hippies congregate. Obviously drug lords want a captive drug culture population just like the coffee and cola merchants want caffeine addicts. Obviously the solution is a new list of drug-free zones. I want THAT list.

Drug-Free Zones - actually these are quite commonplace, places with stiff penalties for illegal drug sales, possession and paraphernalia. They are called black urban neighborhoods. The same crimes in the drug-drenched white suburbs with Desperate Housewives go unnoticed.

Hippie Hollow Homes - real estate agents in Austin, Texas

The Farm - originally a commune in Summertown, Tennessee but now you should read the High Times article. Yes, you know how anti-drug I am but read the article anyway.

Hog Farm - Today, the Hog Farm is still in existence, with various locations including a headquarters in Berkeley, California, and a 200+ acre farm in Laytonville, California, known as Black Oak Ranch

Big Sur - a point near Esalen in California

Arcosanti - a community for architects. Arcosanti is located 65 miles north of Phoenix, just off I-17, exit 262 (Cordes Junction)

a hippie house - like in that magazine Better Homes and Gardens. Or maybe not.

an intentional community - this is a list of hippie communes now forming. Or trying to form or, in some cases, did not form and the Fellowship for Intentional Community has not removed them from the website yet.

ashrams and cults - really bad idea unless you place a low value on your freedom.

monasteries and convents - this means giving up sex, freedom, and wealth (vows of poverty, chastity and obedience). You're thinking that this sounds like the cults but there are deep differences between a cult and a Catholic or Zen Buddhist monastery or convent. For one thing, they are not into mind control or drugs but you will be getting up very early every morning. Quite a few of them offer retreats for non-Catholics and non-Buddhists with few strings attached: You have to be there for spiritual purposes, be quiet, and be respectful. Other than that, they leave you in peace. Extended stays (over a year), you probably have to join their order.

naked parks - there is no such thing as a nudist colony. What exists are membership clubs for nudists and membership societies for naturists. The difference is that nudists have private gated communities that can be inexpensive where you rent bungalows or cabins. Naturists in the USA liberte free beaches and skinnydip or go naked in public places such as downtown or in national parks and forests. Nudists go naked in private or in privately-owned places (the law can't do anything) while naturists insist on going naked in public. And they are not streakers, they walk and take their own sweet time. There are actually other categories of people who sometimes go naked such as the Rajneeshis (cult) and the Raelians (cult). Jains are not a cult but a major religion in India but only men are allowed to strip. Seems sexist somehow. There are some feminists who go topless for political reasons: topless equality. Men go topless without getting arrested but women get busted. But I digress. The last category is for the ultra-rich who can afford to live long-term at a clothing-optional resort. The Sixties hippies simply enjoyed the freedom.

Findhorn, Scotland - bring a Geiger counter and if it is safe, then consider taking up residence.

Assuming that you can keep your children and your recovering addict friends away from pushers, how do you keep your house well like in Good Housekeeping?

Contrary to what squares believe, hippie housewives and househusbands do NOT like squalor. Drug addicts and schizophrenics like squalor. When the hippie culture began back during the Summner of Love, Haight-Ashbury was overrun by runaway kids who had either never learned hygiene or were rebelling against an oversanitized Establishment life or were too poor to afford soap. We have all seen square kids who are unacquainted with soap. The Great Unwashed. As for poverty, Haight-Ashbury opened a free store and a free clinic to supply the kids with soap and crash pads offered showers. Let's not forget that these runaways were squares who wanted to be flower children. It took a while to wash off the old ways. They often arrived in Haight-Ashbury with only the clothes on their back. If the Esltablishment was so great (sex abuse, beatings, boring music, boring schools, The Draft, etc.), then why did the square kids abandon it in droves? With pill-popping, chain-smoking , coffee-guzzling, alcoholic parents as role models, why are we surprised that we are all still trying to kick the habit? Kick the habit? Kick the habit? But all that was then. What about now?

Almost every cleaning product contains triclosan or another anti-bacterial. No surprise then that we are breeding super-germs resistant to them and to anti-biotics because we over-use anti-biotics too. I once remember hearing a Hare Krishna cult member responsible for house cleaning around the temple complaining about Shaklee products. Having once hawked these products I know how eco-friendly they are. Some cleaning products smell good enough to eat or drink. That was the problem. Germs loved them too. So you have to strike some balance between cleaning products that can kill germs and can kill an elephant too and cleaning products that are so non-toxic as to be ineffective. It is my judgment to err on the side of safety and eco-friendliness. The human body can live with certain germs (yogurt and yeast for example) and can do without germs like Ebola and Hanta.

Plain old white Ivory soap and lye soap and glyverin soap are better than dosing your gut with triclosan. When the super-germs arrive you don't want to have used up your trump cards (anti-biotics and triclosan).

Next subject: smells. The square approach is spray room deodorizer and dump the disinfectants in the sink and the toilet. You could be destroying your sense of smell with certain chemicals and still not kill the germs that are causing the stink. Find the source (rotting food in the fridge, dead rat, mold, places not cleaned in years, etc.) and the smell will go away. Kick Fido out. We all know how dogs scratch an itchy butt. Not just on the carpet but on your bed and your favorite chair. They drink out of toilets, lick up vomit, eat out of the kitchen trash basket, lick their privates, sniff the butts of other dogs and having accomplished these wonders -- they make a beeline for your face to lick it. Some people not only kiss their dogs but swap spit with open mouths. And then they go to their doctors with complaints about weird diseases, Kick Fido out. Wash him more often. Let him sleep in the doghouse or on the porch. Pets do not belong inside. Heck, some humans don't belong inside. So why admit animals who will never learn hygiene?

Live where the air is clean. Half the dust in your home comes from air pollution. The other half comes from dead skin, dandruff and hair. Wash your hair as often as you shower and bathe. That is, at least once a day. But don't become a victim of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. You kicked out Fido. You also need to kick out the other critters. Rats and mices leave droppings. Roaches walk on your counters and where you have food. Spiders leave webs that trap dust. Kill'em all. Let God sort them out. If your animal rights and PETA friends whine, then send them your brown recluse, your scorpions, your skunks, your centipedes and millipedes, and your snakes. They will enjoy them most when they are sleeping.

Once you have kicked out the critters not paying rent, seal the moldings, the space around pipes, and other entrances so that the monsters can't get back in. Upgrafe your ventilation so that carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and radon do not build up in your sanctuary from the nasty side of Nature. You might consider piping air through a greenhouse or air scruibbers to get oxygen back into the air of your sick house.

Taste: If it tastes bad, then it may be food poisoning. Food should be fresh. Chemicals destroy your sense of smell that you need to protect yourself and your family. Sugar and almost all sweeteners and alcoholic beverages destroy your taste buds and, therefore. your ability to detect poison at low enough dose to spit it out before it kills you or a loved one.

Sight: Do not hoard junk mail, boxes, papers, bric a brac, broken items. and other useless items. Get a professional organizer if you have to and clean house. Then get a maid if you have to. Hippies with maids? You might be a rich hippie or you might be poor but providing employment for somebody even poorer. In many third world countries, a woman with a large family and household often will get a neighbor looking to earn a few pesos or pennies to help her. A child who is old enough can help also. But however you do it, clean house. The papers can be scanned and saved in the cloud or on CD or flash drive. If the papers are that important, then they ought to be in a safety deposit box anyway not home where they will burn up in a fire. All other papers, shred and throw out. Your goal ought to be Spartan rooms like the Zen monks if you are not into materialsim. Take off your shoes at the door instead of tracking the world into your sancuary.

Clean out the garage and replace the smokey infernal combustion car with a clean all-electric.

Hippie Housewife links:
The Hippie Housewife
The Hippie Housewife on Facebook
Green and Natural Parenting for Eco-Friendly Families
Insteading, SafeMama, Hippie Housewife, Midwifery Today, & Medscape
The Hippie Housewife - a compilation of chaos
Hippy Housewives Need To Eat, Too!
The Hippie Housewife - "Love should be allowed, now that I have a pretty good idea what it is."
Here's How, An Autobiography, Part II - List of books from the Rather Press includes Household Hints for Hippie Housewives.
Hippie Housewife leaving the mainstream behind.

does not look like Jenna Elfman

okay, maybe a little

Hippie newspapers belonged to the Underground Press Syndicate and got news through the Alternative News Service. When I get time, I will list links for the ones from the Sixties that are still around and also for new hippie newspapers that have started in the 21st century.

Obviously many hippie newspapers went out of business. The community alternative newspapers (like Creative Loafing) are really put out by squares but they do carry comix like those done by Matt Groening of The Simpsons fame and rock concert listings. Craigslist however is competiting with them as far as really wild classified ads with little censorship.

In the photo is an image of a vintage edition of The Oracle.

Can you tell me which thing is not like the other?

Before I finish my song . . .

1. cop -- (yes cop) in a town that has community policing, request to be assigned to a hippie neighborhood, live in the neighborhood that you patrol, and if you are in a truly enlightened town then maybe you can do the Sheriff Andy Taylor thing and not have to carry a gun. Remember you are here to protect and serve not to kill or to help drug sellers and drug buyers break the law. Those who know their hippie counterculture history have heard of the Psychedelic Rangers of Haight-Ashbury and of the volunteer law enforcers at Woodstock.

2. park ranger -- They actually pay you to be around the best looking nature on the planet! Or cool monuments and historic places!

3. forest ranger -- Not as fun as National Park Ranger because the evil logging companies are allowed in to clear-cut the National Forests. So maybe you would like the next job better . . .

4. a job where they pay you to be an environmentalist -- such as river keeper or wildlife biologist with a state or federal government agency or an EPA employee or an environmental lobbyist in DC or environmental law attorney or paid employee of a major environmentalist group (the minor ones are poor and cannot pay their volunteers) or

5. start a new environmental group specifically designed to gut the climate change deniers or EPA haters or pro-pollution advocates or nut cases who think overpopulation is a myth -- please pick this career path because you are badly needed !

6. other green job - such as installing solar panels or putting up windmills or selling electric cars

7. organic farmer

8. health food grocer

9. salesperson in a hippie store -- personally I think all head shops should be closed because they encourage drug use but there are hippie stores besides head shops such as stores that sell hippie clothes and hippie furniture

10. professional catering to a hippie clientele -- holistic MD, holistic dentist (there are many outside the USA, few inside), green architect, civil law attorney who has a lot a hippie clients, and hippie accountant are some examples

11. hippie travel agent -- God knows we hippies travel a lot so why not cash in ? There are resorts that cater to rich hippies and even some that cater to poor hippies. There are spas that cater to hippies. Growth centers (such as Esalen) are pretty much only for hippies. Retreats are available to even the poorest. Hippies are welcome at Club Med and nudist resorts. There are ocean cruises where nearly everyone on board is a hippie if you are looking to meet people. And don't forget Burning Man and The Rainbow Family of Living Light. Then there are rock festivals trying to recreate Woodstock (good luck with that). Goa, India. Kathmandu, the list is endless. But if you really want to travel . . .

12. space entrepreneur -- Sir Richard Branson is a billionaire hippie who used to be a millionaire hippie (and before that just a poor hippie with ambition) and you should have heard that his company (Virgin Group) is promoting space tourism. What you may not know is that the whole field of space entrepreneurship is rife with hippie types. Not the Star Wars SDI types of traditional aerospace (defense avionics and military contractors) but the more laid back atmosphere of people who want space to be peaceful and are putting their brainpower and money into making it happen. Branson is simply the most high profile hippie on the high frontier. The high here is altitude. You use drugs in space and you will die. Paul Allen may or may not be a hippie but as the third richest dude on the planet he backed the people who built the X-Prize winner. You look around Redwood City and Mojave Spaceport and it is not hard to find hippies who are really into space engineering and astronautics.

13. astronomer -- These people are more into looking at space than going there but no one in astronomy departments at universities cares about how you dress or your attitude toward the Establishment as long as you can do quality science research.

14. letter carrier or mail man (or female woman) -- The US Postal Service is a big employer of hippies which is the reason why Congress is always attacking them and giving them a hard time. The US Postal Service has one of the bigger fleets of electric vehicles which is why the oil industry hates them.

15. use your imagination

The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University
Evergreen State College graduate studies
Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling
University of California-Santa Cruz - Division of Graduate Studies

I did not post links to Muslim hippie sites like The Search for Fuel and Cheezburger because I got paranoid that I would end up on a terrorist watch list and since I am painfully law-abiding, I decided to not get insomnia unable to sleep at night worried sick. I apologize to everyone but I am only human. On a happier note, let's talk about the destruction of Black Africa by Arabization and oil exploration.

Of all the major world religions, Islam probably has the least number of hippies. Sure, the original Assassins were high on hashish (and the dope fiends who have destroyed Somalia with guns and piracy are high on khat) but as I constantly remind you: drugs are bad and real hippies don't use drugs despite the lies that pushers tell.

And yes, if the neighbors next door had a meth lab, I, a card-carrying hippie and member in good standing of the United States of Haight-Ashbury, would call the police. Man, meth labs have been known to explode. I don't want my family killed or my house burned in the explosion. Squares have got to be crazy to fool with meth and hillbilly heroin. But back to religion. What Marx called the opiate of the masses.

Some hippies and squares fall into cults which are not affiliated with any old established religion. You don't need me to tell you that religions that hold people prisoner, religions that want all your money, religions that urge you to kill Jews (or Christians), religions whose members are all mentally ill, religions that condone terrorism, religions that see nothing wrong with slavery (and even want the return of the institution of slavery), religions that abuse women (or men for that matter), and religions that muzzle a free press (I could go on to 70 more items) are dangerous and should be avoided. Oh . . . I don't know. Maybe you do need me to tell you what I consider obvious.

Turning from cults to occult, there are such things as Paganism, Wicca and Satanism. Some Paganism is harmless. Gasp! Some of my Christian friends can't believe I said that. I think one might be a little daft if you worship the Earth or Mother Nature. I certainly respect the Earth and consider myself an environmentalist [I'd like to see those in government who have decided that environmentalist = terrorist thrown in prison and throw away the key since even the most extreme environmentalists have bent over backwards to prevent loss of human life] but I don't worship things. I hold the Earth to be sacred but I don't worship it. Some Paganism is the official religion of the Nazi Party. That's a fact. Some Wicca is white magic, meaning it is only for white people (sorry I had to inject some inappropriate humor at an inappropriate moment) and white magic is harmless enough. You get high on some herbs and think that you are flying or communing with elementals and dance naked around a fire. No harm done. Some Wicca is black magic and is not harmless. If Christianity ever apologizes to witches for the Salem Witch Trials the way it has apologized to Jews for anti-Semitism, then that apology will only be to the white witchcraft Wiccans not the gray or black. Which may sound like racism but we are not talking about race. Necessarily.

Speaking of Grays and Nords, UFO religions like the Raelians and the New Agers who believe in "Space Brothers" (Those African-Americans really get around. Parliament-Funkadelic and Sun Ra really did take off in flying saucers after their concerts!) also seem harmless and enjoy taking off their clothes. But after reading Whitley Strieber, these aliens ought to be shot at the border - of space. They abduct people if the reports can be believed and our military instead spends its time fighting with other countries and other humans. One group I cannot make fun of are the people who claim to have been abducted and have formed their own denomination to aid victims of abduction deal with the emotional damage. I have crossed paths with self-described abductees and they really are damaged. They deserve medical and psychological help. I don't know what harmed them but I do know that they are damaged.

Lastly, are the Satanists. The First Church of Satan has had members who seem to be contributing members of society. But I plan to do a Guide to Evil to explore those devil worshipers who are less benign. I seldom advise people what religion to choose for themselves. I make an exception here. Being a hippie may be seen as rebelling against society. What happens when we hippies are the majority?. It's going to happen sooner or later. What happens when we are 100% of the population say some place like a large hippie commune or even a whole planet colonized by hippies? You can't rebel in a civilization of rebels. I've heard old hippies remark that they had this very discussion at the outset of the hippie movement. Therefore, as romantic as rebellion might seem, rebellion is not the core of what it means to be a hippie. Rebel against God? That's what Satanism is. It is excusable in atheists since they don't believe God exists. It is inexplicable in agnostics since they aren't sure and to rebel against God implies that they really believe God exists. And then we come to Satanists. My apologies to atheists and agnostics for mentioning you in the same breath as Satanists. Satanists really do believe God exists. Most people have no problem believing that evil exists - read any headline -- and even believing that a real personal devil exists. So if you believe that evil exists, then why do you have a problem believing God exists? I'll answer that. It is hard to believe in good because we see so little of it. And this is precisely where hippies come in. We're trying to create more good in an evil world. We are trying to wrest back the world and the flesh from the devil. If someone wants to shake their fist at God and cuss God out like Forrest Gump's lieutenant in that movie, then we can understand that. God doesn't talk a lot and that stonewalling gets to you. On the other hand, the world is full of politicians and preachers who talk too much. Perhaps God takes the attitude that one picture is worth a thousand words. You look up at the night sky or pictures from the Hubble Telescope and (if you have a soul) that just shuts you up. Pure. Absolute. Beauty.

So now you understand why I let some of these knuckleheads have it. I don't need UFO cultists talking about imaginary galactic federations and distracting people when I am trying to encourage real science so that we can get out there among the galaxies. I want to get out there to get away from terrorists and polluters and warmongers. That US Air Force poem "High Flight" has the right idea:

High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941

Where is the best place to meet hippies?

Annual Rainbow Gathering of Living Light - a good place because the organizers are obviously too well organized to all be potheads

Burning Man Festival - best place to meet techno-hippies and hippies into technology

Haight Ashbury in San Francisco - the birthplace of the hippie counterculture but no longer a good place to meet hippies. It was taken over by gays after the Summer of Love. As an historical note, before hippies were in the neighborhood it was a place of immigrants (such as Italians) and beatniks.

a commune - the best place assuming it is a hippie commune because there are other kinds of communes

Glastonbury UK - at any time of the year except the Summer Solstice when the Festival is going on because that brings out the thugs and drug dealers. Despite mud deep enough to lose small children (three feet deep), entire families attend. By the way, local New Agers claim that the WiFi network there is damaging the "ley lines". They moved to the village several years ago because they believe in its powerful healing abilities. The age range of hippies in Glastonbury ranges from white haired old people all the way down to babies. Also Druids come to practice their religion at nearby Stonehenge. Again to repeat, hippies live in the area but have not attended the festival for almost three decades.

Furthur Festival - is a tour of musicians not a place. You can come and watch Deadheads being arrested. That said, at least it has Grateful Dead alumni. You might even have fun. I would go for the music but I would not expect to meet drug free hippies.

Earthdance - Earthdance is the world's largest synchronized music and dance festival for peace. Taking place annually in over 300 locations and 60 countries, Earthdance joins participants worldwide in a synchronized Prayer for Peace. It supports such charities as: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Sierra Club, Salvation Army, Orphanage in Kijaszkowo, Natural Resources Defense Council, Amnesty International, Aboriginal Health Center, Aqua for All, Circle of Life, Citizens for Peace, Friends of the Mississippi River, Jerusalem Peace Makers, and the Oshkosh Rhythm Institute. Okay, you right wing nuts are saying that this sounds like a gathering of radicals. No. Hippies may be quiet but they keep busy. None of these organizations is interested in blowing things up. Quite the opposite. They want peace. Moreover, Wavy Gravy, a bona fide hippie, has been a speaker at Earthdance events. While the focus on not on hippies or hippie culture per se, it does do things that hippies care about - like caring about the Earth. So going to one of their events you would definitely meet hippies. As well as drug using squares. Regrettably, cannabis is one of their causes.

a cannabis rally - worst place because all you will find are drug addicts and pushers and narcs and the DEA. Why do you think they call it dope? Why would anyone want to "get stupid" when there are smarter ways to have fun? By the way, remember when they used to say that LSD damaged your chromosomes? It turns out that marijuana causes more genetic damage than LSD.

an anti war protest - A futile gesture against the war machine more for radicals than pacifists. You will also have your photo taken and be put in the terrorist database of Homeland Security. Unfair I know but that is how f-cked up America is. Hippies avoid politics and protest. Hippies are quietists not activists.

an ashram -- no (probably a cult)

Phish concert - you'll certainly find fans of the band Phish but not every fan of Phish is a hippie

this website - yes

that other website (the one that can't spell the word hippie) - no. It's a front for pushers who cynically view hippies as a captive audience of gullible customers.

a hippie dating service - the usual advice: BE CAREFUL!!! It might be skinheads or haters who want to dose you with a date rape drug or simply want to beat you to death.

a love in -- these don't happen any more

a be in -- these don't happen any more as far as I know

a teach in -- environmentalists may still hold these

any of the places on a list of "Hippie Havens" -- no. These are communities of stoners and other drug addicts and tend to be places of squalor, poverty and disease.

vegetarian restaurants - yes. These tend to be welcoming places but don't order meat. It's not on the menu for a reason. They're vegans.

Goa, India - a lot of burnt out drug addicts but oddly enough, even today you will find world traveling hippies here

Bonitas, CA - a good place but fortunately it is not on maps and CA could be either California or Canada. The citizens of this town go out of their way to avoid being found because, frankly, they regard people like you and me as poseurs with bad vibes who are more interested in overrunning nice places and commercializing them and destroying them than in living somewhere and putting down family roots. They are fairly affluent and so waving money at them to sell out won't work. They are not much into growing pot so you druggies should go elsewhere. Among the town's people are some individuals with connections (translate: political muscle) and they are quite willing to call the state/provincial police to haul off skinheads and other violent types.

Kathmandu - no

Byron Bay, New South Wales - maybe

Nimbin, Australia -- no

The Netherlands -- no. Unsafe for your children and there are violent neo Nazis and violent Muslim Fundamentalists.

Mexico - no. You might get caught in the crossfire or kidnapped. This is a country being destroyed by drugs and drug lords. The attitude south of the border used to be: "Look the other way when drugs are headed north. Who cares if the Norteamericano gringos have a drug addiction?" The chickens have come home to roost. The places where drugs originate are going straight to hell. In Latin America, they have even threatened justices of a supreme court and assassinated high police officials.

Spanish Steps, Rome - yes

Marrakech, Morocco -- no

raves -- no

Disney World -- yes. They don't hire obvious hippies (they discriminate against us) but they welcome us as guests in their very clean amusement park.

Salt Lake City, Utah -- maybe. Latter Day Saints are as clean living as they come and make great neighbors. At least, that's my experience. Utah also statistically ranks as the happiest state. I know what you're thinking: I have turned into a square. Have you read my other stuff? Then you should know better than to think that. Let the squares have the marijuana and LSD and alcohol and other drugs. We hippies don't need drugs. And we hippies don't need brainwashing that says we have to have drugs.

The Farm, Summertown Tennessee -- yes

your own home --- invite over like minded people

the Paris, France hippie Meetup - I did not know Meetup dot com was international before coming across one link

If you are a careful reader, then you will have noticed in the social and dating sections above that hippies are advised by some links to find other hippies at green dating sites or environmental meetings. Watch out! Saving the Earth is just too damn (pardon my language) important to equate environmentalism with being a hippie. The squares might decide that such an equation is the truth and pull out of the drive to clean up the planet.

We cannot afford to politicize ecology or socialize ecology or inject our culture into ecology. Yes, we hippies are committed to a clean environment but not in the activist way of radicals. And we acknowledge that there are activist squares too,

Besides, I imagine that behind our backs at green dating sites some guy or gal is reviewing their date with a hippie dude or chick and saying: "Never again."

Stick to hippie dating sites unless you are the Dharma & Greg type who is not fazed by marrying out of your counter-culture. Somewhere I have a link to a person who says we hippies are an ethnic group.

Think twice before you name your kid Dharma or god (lower case) or Moon Unit or Dweezil.

I mean, is John or Mary or something ordinary really all that bad?

new department

I am still researching this but I can't add anything because it is too late at night and I have to get up in the morning.

Is being a hippie bad?
Yes, if you are a square. No, if you are a hippie. The answer to this question depends on who you ask. Do I feel bad being a hippie? No, I feel good. I also try to do good. I don't bother other people and I will help other people when they ask me or if it is obvious that they need help. For instance, someone slips and falls near me. I am going to help them up or call for medical help -- depending upon whether it is safe to move them. With spinal injuries, it is best to not move them and wait for the paramedics because jostling them could leave them a cripple for life.

Why the obsession for hippie era?
Since today is the hippie era and tomorrow is the hippie era, I could pretend that I don't understand you. You probably mean The Sixties. All squares (and even a few hippies) reference that decade. Actually some reference The Seventies as the hippie decade so opinions vary. Anyway, back when the hippie movement was morphing into a permanent counterculture, the world was simpler than it is today. Today we still have all the problems of The Sixties plus a whole list of new problems like nuclear terrorism, biological terrorism, The Patriot Act, climate change and few other problems too depressing to mention. Some people just miss the fashions. The short skirts on women and the laid back style of men before disco made laid back a joke and exaggerated clothes to the point of falling off platform shoes and breaking your ankles. Short skirts are still around but most square women dress like men in pants. Some people miss the thrill of change in the air. The idea that you could make your voice heard. Now no politician listens to you. They just want your donations so that they can get re-elected and ignore you for another two, four or six years. The Supreme Court can ignore you altogether because they are appointed for life. Some people, believe it or not, miss the fight with the authorities. The police riot squads back then might beat your head until you bled all over the street, they might cripple you, and they might even kill you like at Kent State or Orangeburg. But at least your friends would hound the police until you were released from jail or they released your body to your family to give a proper burial. Now our government is the terrorist. The police can make you disappear into places like Gitmo and worse. The world has become even meaner than during Jim Crow. The American South like the Urban North is jailing all black boys in order to give them a criminal record so that they cannot vote. This is a premeditated Republican policy. Lest whites think: "There but for the grace of God go I," they should recall that once upon a time only blacks were routinely felt up by police. Now all white people get felt up at airports. Every thing that happens to blacks will happen to whites. Quickly. The police ignored the drug epidemic in black communities and now drugs are rampant in white communities. Chemical toxins are dumped in black residential areas and now groundwater is poisoned for everyone regardless of skin color. What happens to blacks happens to whites is no longer some sort of karma. It is fact. We are all in this together. Like it or not. Why the obsession for the hippie era? They saw it all first. They parted ways with the radicals because the radicals got frustrated at the lack of change and turned violent. Hippies reject violence. The pacifists and ecologists call for peace and clean environment and reversing climate change. Hippies live peace and green. Hippies were the first to grow organic food and first to dodge the draft rather than kill Vietnamese at My Lai. Over and over and over hippies are proved to be prophetic about so much. That is yet another reason for the obsession with the hippie era. Whatever your reason, I hope and I wish that you find beauty, goodness and truth. Keep the faith.

How to become a hippie in 10 minutes?
Go over to my lens Guide to Becoming a Hippie at
http://www.squidoo.com/becomingahippie
I have to ask though . . . What's the hurry? It kind of defeats the whole point of a relaxed lifestyle to be in such a hurry to adopt it. Stop, look and listen before you leap. You might not be able to handle bigotry against hippies. Those signs "hippie use side door" or back door were put up in the Sixties and started coming down in the Seventies. Hippies had to go through this Jim Crow-like era that African-Americans went through in the American South from 1876 to 1965. Some say that it is no coincidence that as Jim Crow ended, ultraconservative reactionaries looked around for someone else to pick on and hippies fit the bill. That is, until rednecks started growing their hair long and listening to the Allman Brothers and Black Oak Arkansas.

How did hippies afford to live?
Same as you. Got jobs or started Mom and Pop businesses. There is a section here on occupations popular among hippies.

Why do hippies have pretty skin?
They don't clog their pores with junk food. What goes in you does not always come out your end. Very often your skin excretes toxins and other stuff the body is trying to get rid of. Also, hippies prefer soap that is not full of chemicals. Homemade soap for example.

And thank you very much for the implied compliment !

Actually, this is probably a scene from Hair.

Who says we hippies don't have a sense of humor?

An historical note -- Back before the news media and the rest of America discovered Haight-Ashbury, it was a quiet little community of hippies who were emerging from their predecessor culture the beatniks. After it was splashed all over TV and magazines and after a couple of songs said to go to San Francisco, every teen unhappy with their home life ran away from home and headed for San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury. As any parent knows, teens are not experts on hygiene. These destitute flower children pooled whatever money they could panhandle and crowded into crash pads. This is how hippies got the undeserved reputation of "dirty hippies." Thanks for nothing Saint Francis of Assisi.

Older hippies took pity on them and the Hog Farm organized food kitchens, the Thiel Brothers and Diggers organized The Free Stores, Dr. David Smith founded the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, and others organized free schools and free universities to teach the kids to use soap.

After a while, all the bikers (Hell's Angel's for example) and drug pushers (Owsley for example) and mentally ill (drugs make you crazy and this was when the mental institutions were throwing inmates out) and criminals (Charles Manson for example) and parents hunting for children and military police looking for draft dodgers and anthropologists looking to study hippies (and finding instead all this) and cults (ISKCON, International Society for Krishna Consciousness or Hare Krishna for example) and radicals (who quickly learned that Berkeley was a better place to recruit) and narcotics cops and preachers (the start of the Jesus freaks and Christian hippies) and reporters became too much and the older hippies and the more together flower children abandoned San Francisco and bought land way out in places like Taos and Tennessee and hundreds of other places in rural areas and started communes. The right wing -- ever ready to brand everything social (social workers, sociology, the social Gospel, the social contract) socialism and everything communal (community, the public commons) communism -- instantly condemned communes. Fortunately, no one listened.

I still think this illustration is funny but now you know the history and context behind it.

four bucks a bar

for serious dirt in the house use a shovel