California hitchhikers of the 70s

So Doug Biggert liked rough trade?

Half of those people - hell no. Several looked like trouble. A few looked like male hustlers.

My ex (older than me) said he used to hitchhike to high school in the 70s. Hitchhikers were common as I recall.

And that VW bug was a rusted out piece of shit - I wouldn't have got into that car!

California was wild in the 1970s.

There were multiple serial killers named the Freeway Killer operating at the same time yet people were still hitchiking up and down the state.

Yeah. I expected that story to conclude with that none of those photographed were never seen alive again.

[quote]none of those photographed were never seen alive again.

Oh dear, r3.

Uhhh...

No.

R2 - people hitchhiked all over the US in the 1970s - not just California.

This brings back memories for me. I started hitchhiking pretty young, around 13 or 14. I was so into it that in my late teens and twenties the desire to hitchhike almost cast a spell on me. I continued hitching into my thirties, but gradually less so.

I miss much of how the world was at that time. Not all. But much.

R8 - I think you dodged a bullet with Doug Biggert's run down rust-trap VW bug. AM only. No AC.

But yeah - I feel like innocence and a type of life and mentality was lost in the 80s. Then it became $$$, consumerism, people hating other groups, battles between Dems and Republicans.

Not that everything in the 70s was great and everyone was cool - but it feels like it.

The one dude who looks like he shat his pants from the FRONT ...

I hitchhiked around the country in the late 80s and Northern California, Oregon and Washington were the easiest areas to get rides. Some of the 60s 70s culture was still around.

How many of them were uncut? Hmmmm???

Not many, R12, after they crossed paths with me.

The guy with the sweet-looking yellow dog could be John Cazale's brother.

Ha, that dude @R5 is DEFINITELY tripping. Hard.

Teenage Julie Thurston has no wheels, so she hitchhikes to get around. Unfortunately, a psychopath is roaming the highways, picking up young girls and raping them.

I think the person with the soiled pants MIGHT be a woman in very shapeless clothes. Half of the people look as though they escaped from a mental institution. The skinny boy with the leather vest - definitely gay, maybe trying to hitchhike to SF to try to meet a sugar daddy. My older siblings all hitchhiked, but it scared the living' bejeesus out of me. My dad would pick up hitchhikers in Montana, but there, the odds of picking up an ax murdered were somewhat lower.

To be fair - he was driving a rusty beat-up VW bug. So the people willing to go in his car may have thrown off the averages.

California in the 1970s…❤️😎👌🤘✌🏼🧔‍♀️🌴🌝🌈

I love these old slices of Americana. For you white Elders, life just seemed more bliss and less chaotic.

I remember this America as a child. Gritty but still better than today. The majority servile chubby comfort critters of today are pathetic.

I can't believe I hitched as much as I did back in the NE in the late 70s.

Great memories.

Now I can't leave the house without a cell phone.

Same here, R22. All over New England and New York in the 1970s and lived to tell the tale.

So strange to think that hitchhiking was so common. If a young woman were hitchhiking on the side of the road today people would be terrified for her safety and calling the cops.

I remember hitching around England as a college student with a friend. A rich couple picked us up, served us lunch and said they were sorry they were too busy to take us to Calais in their yacht. They were totally harmless and just nice. Those were the days.

Ass, grass or gas

I would not want to ride in that car.

Sounds like a great update to fuck, marry, kill r26!

Don't they really arrest parents now for letting their kids walk up the street in the daytime? Times have really changed.

oh, honey.

Creepy. “From the files of William Bonin “

As a teenager who hitchhiked AND went home with guys I met at cruising spots, it is truly a miracle I survived those years.

R32 - or the media overplayed the risks for ratings.

Not saying there wasn't potential danger, but there were a lot of things overplayed in the 70s and 80s. Remember about all the razors and poison in Halloween candy that was never found? I remember getting our Halloween candy x-rayed - seriously.

As I recall, the more positive experiences you had hitchhiking, the more you wanted to do it.

My gay curiosity must have been part of it. I remember once being picked up by a middle aged man who was signaling he wanted some action...but he didn't push it. I remember being dropped off at a rest stop in CT, at what must have been a major gay cruising area, but I didn't have a clue such places existed.....I put it together later.

That first pic looks like a child.

I remember seeing hitchhikers a lot as a kid but they are all gone now.