Post some memories about hippies and radicals, and those counterculture times.

Interesting topic. As an older millenial that has watched a ton of documentaries on this era, I'm more curious what became of them all? How did we end up with Bush as president? With Trump as president? Where did all of that impassioned energy go?

By the way, I revere the Freedom Fighters far more than the hippies.

[quote] I'm more curious what became of them all? How did we end up with Bush as president? With Trump as president? Where did all of that impassioned energy go?

That whole era was a flash in the pan.

THIS is what real life is like.

I'm the last person on the face of the earth who remembers the Haight's Magnolia Thunderpussy and their wonderful Pineapple Pussies.

Still kicking too R3.

My family was a poor one. For many years, the hippie house people down the street brought us a turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They also started local food drives and a community garden. My neighbors called us 'those people' while they always treated us lovingly and called us 'brother' or 'sister.' I will always love them for that.

Anyone march in the 1971 anti-Vietnam war march in San Francisco from downtown down Geary to Speedway Meadows in GG Park? 150,000 people marched. Big Brother and the Holding Company entertained. I'm somewhere in that mob in the video.

My memories are far less than fond of growing up with Christian hippies. However, I try not to let it color my viewpoint of an entire movement based upon things that happened to me as a child.

My town hired young people to spend the summer days in city parks animating activities and generally looking out a bit for kids. I guess it was after 67 or 68 that they were all hippies. Mostly girl hippies but that was cool because their boyfriends would come and hang out. One year it was a beautiful young man hippie and I fell in love with him. Definitely one of my first crushes on a "man" but I bet he was all of 18 or 19.

There was a deferment for several years for college boys who went to teachers college. A number of my male teachers in elementary and junior HS were lefty - hippy types. Anti-establishment. I bet there weren't as many male teachers in elementary school before, and I bet there are less now, too.

Christian hippies? What is that - like Up with People?

My catholic church got kind of hippy by 1970. There were "folk masses" and there were hippie-nuns in sunday school.

R9

Children of God. Circa late very late 60s to mid 70s.

I grew up in a white suburb of Detroit during the post-riot period of coalescing black political power within the city. I had a healthy respect for black people, not just out of compassion for what they were up against but with the knowledge that they would beat the shit out of me if I tried to pull anything on them. I thought crackers who said the n word and thought they were superior were the lowest of the low, and still do.

You pups are so funny. You talk like you're discussing alien life. For the most part and for most people it was just a progression and evolution of culture and society. For others - a distinct and loud minority usually a bit look-at-me types - it was an obsession, a craze.

The first thing that pops into my mind when I see OP's picture of which of these trust find kids was gifted that nice looking house. These people are now living in lovely homes in Connecticut.

Their predecessors - the beatniks of the 1950s - were far more interesting.

Actually, R13, that's where I took my fashion cues from. I hated most of the hippie attire and continue to drench my body in black and other 1950s cool. LOL!

Not sure if the beats were more interesting. Just different. There was a whiff of narcissism about both.

The Beats had style and poetry. The Hippies had peace signs and body odor.

[quote] I bet there are less now, too.

FEWER, NOT LESS

We did the big vacation to California when I was 12 during the Summer of Love, and my parents drove us through Haight Ashbury. They made us roll up the windows and lock the doors, but at least they took us there. Fortunately my big brothers were 15 and 17 and as soon as my parents were in their hotel room for the night they took me back with him. It mostly to buy my silence, but to their credit they did take me.

Other than the pornographic comic books (which were a real revelation to me) my memories revolve around how dirty and unkept everyone was, especially the ones camped out in the park. Long greasy hair, all the guys wearing those black rimmed Buddy Holly glasses, acne, and everyone wearing filthy army surplus. This was not the way LIFE had shown it. It was also apparent even to a 12 year old that it was very commercial. The same 50 buttons and 20 T-shirts for sale in every shop.

To be fair, my brother was looking at the draft in less than a year, and I think he got more out of it than I did, but to me it was obvious that it was a tourist trap, not that much different in its own way than Wall Drug or South of the Border.

Believe it or not, Greenwich Village was a hippie hangout before it was gay. The East Village was hippie too, and became punk in the late 70s/early 80s.

There were tons of head shops to buy rolling paper, posters, tee shirts. My sister had a porky pig tee shirt and porky had a little American flag in his hand. This was considered outrageous. Nobody was supposed to wear the American flag. It was considered sacrilegious. That it was a pug holding the flag was even more outre.

I had an American flag tee shirt but I had to wear a jacket over it and only open the jacket when among friends. If I went to a diner, e.g., with friends and took off my jacket I would get nasty remarks from old people. Goddamn hippies.

Lots of hippies turned into Jesus freaks. After awhile the whole hippie culture became a culture of panhandling homeless people. Communes and evangelical churches would pick up starving homeless hippies, give them a meal and convince them to stay. If you look at megachurches, they use the same tactics as rock concerts. Multi screens on stage, light shows, music, chanting ("Is everybody happy? Yay! Does everybody love Jesus?" took the place of, "Hello Cleveland! Are you ready to rock?")

The rock opera Tommy predicted it.

Here's the adorable Sally Field as a teenaged hippie runaway

All beatniks looked like this.

[quote] For the most part and for most people it was just a progression and evolution of culture and society. For others - a distinct and loud minority usually a bit look-at-me types - it was an obsession, a craze.

It was a lot more than that given the time and what was happening in the country. The hippie culture was all new then. Now everything is a meaningless rehash of the movement, more like what you've described.

[quote] R1: By the way, I revere the Freedom Fighters far more than the hippies.

Which “Freedom Fighters”, young dear?

As a former hippy and commune resident, I think I can speak for all and write, we seek not reverence! Mostly we just wanted to be left alone to be ourselves. I’ll post some pics later.

I wasn't a hippy. I was a suburban white kid in 1968 but just their existence opened up so many other people's lives and changed the numbing conformity that was SOP back then.

I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Chicago. Born in 1964. My mom was walking me home from kindergarten (1969) and we walked past a little park with a small group of teenagers. My mom pointed at them and said, “those are hippies. Stay away from them or they’ll make you do drugs.” I still laugh about it because they were just some over privileged kids with long hair. It wasn’t exactly Haight Asbury.

The hippies arrived in my backwoods mountain town in the early 70's. To my 10yo eyes they were glamorous and a hint of life in the world outside. My parents were old school union/socialists and were friendly with them to begin with. A few of them became lifelong friends (the ones who could function as parents and worked). But there were others they came to despise...The vapid vegan who fed her listless, pale, undersized toddler nut milk while extolling the virtues of an animal product free life (she ended up being charged with manslaughter for starving another child to death on her wonder diet). The Old Parsonage crowd who couldn't be bothered paying their water bill and had a bunch of their kids come down with Hep A from contaminated well water. Then there was the guy the locals mockingly called The Guru, who had all these crackpot theories about drugs and freedom and got a bunch of local teens hooked on heroin. It's not like the locals didn't have their dark side as well, lots of alcoholism, domestic violence and incest. You could do a great Stephen King novel based in that town in the 70's.

Anyways the hippies where like a tide that rolled in and out over a ten year period. They left behind some good people, new ideas and a bit more tolerance.

We had a kind of guru/religious fanatic named Brother Julius with the long hair, headband, and flowing white robes who came to town about 1968 or 1969 and got a lot of impressionable kids to follow him and his merry band, but pretty soon it became clear he was in it for the underage sex and the drugs. Before he got run out of town a lot of kids were into it to a greater or lesser degree, but the ones who were serious were pretty unstable to start with, so it was kind of off-limits for most people. A few of them went off the deep end and a couple of 'em still live there, fairly marginally. One, a really cute football player in high school who ended up working for the town on the garbage truck, once "gave witness" by walking naked downtown one day while he was tripping. I'm not sure if it got him more dates or less because he had a pretty small peen, but it did get him a couple of days in jail.

Brother Julius was allegedly financed, at least in part, by Les Paul of guitar fame. No one ever knew why, though, so maybe it wasn't true.

Growing up in the 70s, there were a few leftover hippies. It was a good thing for America. But also fed a violent backlash in the 80s - I think by all the people who “lived by the rules”. Very similar to the Trump movement, things seemed to be moving so far left, the average person wants to stand up and say “I’m important and the way I live is better” . Unfortunately, my teen years occurred during the backlash. However, college was all about the new-hippie movement in the late 80s/early 90s. Grateful Dead, beginning of Phish, Edie Brickell. We all wished we were around for the Summer of Love. But fortunately we had learned that a lot of drugs were really dangerous - like heroin.