Hippies
The hippie movement emerged in the mid-1960s in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, attracting a diverse group of students, artists, and individuals seeking an alternative to mainstream American culture. Characterized by a rejection of conventional authority and materialism, hippies embraced countercultural values such as peace, love, and communal living, often expressing these ideals through vibrant clothing, long hair, and the use of psychedelic drugs. The movement reached its zenith during the 1967 Summer of Love, when thousands flocked to Haight-Ashbury, leading to a widespread adoption of hippie lifestyles across the U.S. Despite its initial popularity, the movement faced challenges, including resource strain and rising crime, which contributed to its decline by the early 1970s. Many former hippies transitioned into various social and political movements while others returned to mainstream life, though some continued to celebrate their ideals through events like the Rainbow Family Peace Gatherings. The legacy of the hippie movement remains influential, symbolizing a significant cultural shift and ongoing exploration of alternative lifestyles.
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Hippies
A group of young people who rejected mainstream culture in favor of an alternative lifestyle. This optimistic, easy-going group favored love, peace, and mind-altering drugs.
Origins and History
The hippie movement was born in 1965 in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California. Students, artists, and dropouts had streamed into this area, attracted by the cheap rents and bohemian way of life that offered an alternative to the middle-class lifestyle of mainstream America. By mid-1966, boutiques, head shops (shops selling drug paraphernalia, incense, and psychedelic posters and pins), and coffeehouses with colorful names such as I/Thou, Blushing Peony, and In Gear crammed the Haight-Ashbury district.
Haight-Ashbury’s hippie community consisted largely of teenagers and young people who were rebelling against their conservative middle-class backgrounds. According to scholars who have studied the hippie movement, its members were alienated and distrustful of social and political institutions. The hippies rejected authority and the status quo and believed their best chance of changing society was to drop out of the competitive, materialistic world of their parents. They were peace loving, nonmaterialistic, and noncomformist. They believed in free love and hoped to expand and open their minds to new possibilities by using psychedelic drugs.
The hippies adopted their own look: long, often scraggly hair, bowler hats, love beads, bells, colorfully designed clothing, bell-bottoms pants, and Victorian shawls, for starters. Typically, they wore flowers in their hair, painted their bodies in Day-Glo bright colors, and took drugs, especially LSD, calling themselves “acid heads.” To survive, many sold marijuana and LSD or panhandled on the street for spare change. To celebrate their growing sense of community, the hippies held happenings, be-ins, acid tests (parties where LSD was distributed, often featuring music), and concerts featuring acid rock played by groups such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. In Haight-Ashbury, the hippie lifestyle reached a peak during the much publicized 1967 Summer of Love, when thousands of young people went to San Francisco seeking to live the countercultural lifestyle.
Because of the national media attention given to these new residents of Haight-Ashbury, hundreds of thousands of youth across the country duplicated the hippie lifestyle. It became fashionable to quit school, smoke marijuana, enjoy free love, wear loud clothes, and grow long hair. Many Americans disapproved of the lifestyle these young people led. Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, defined a hippie as someone “who looked like Tarzan, walked like Jane, and smelled like Cheetah.”
By 1967, Haight-Ashbury and its hippie residents had become internationally known, but soon after, the scene deteriorated. The sheer numbers of young people pouring into the area strained its resources. Drug arrests and rapes increased as criminals moved in to take advantage of the young people gathered there. The hippie lifestyle became increasingly commercialized as advertisers and marketers picked up on its images and colors. Some hippies sought enlightenment through meditation and took trips to India in search of spiritual truth; others turned to rural communes to practice their lifestyle and live close to nature.
Impact
By the early 1970’s, the hippie movement began to decline, as most of its members came to realize it was difficult to reform society by “dropping out.” Many became involved in various movements political, environmental, and religious. Others left the hippie period of their lives behind them, while retaining the ideals and principles that once motivated them. Most of them either returned to school or joined the labor force. They cut their hair, gave up free love and drugs, and married, slowly adopting mainstream lifestyles. Many of those who had joined communes left them.
However, each year since 1971, an informal network of hippies and self-styled anarchists have used computers and word of mouth to organize the Rainbow Family Peace Gatherings, multiday festivals that bring together craftspeople, artists, and others who enjoy the hippie lifestyle.
Additional Information
For more information on the hippies and their lifestyle, see Sixties People (1990), by Jane and Michael Stern.