are you a hippie?

also, is soho's "hippychick" the best song ever?

The closest I come is appreciating that this ridiculous store exists in my town
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GQ4RyhHNREU/SHfGXwnmXlI/AAAAAAAAAWU/9oZJ6mXUn-k/s400/hippie_gypsy.jpg

Never self-identified (or heard of such a thing) as a noise-hippy, but I have to stake a claim to it, if only to ensure that such a fabulous social subgenre is actually extant by at least one member.

(A few months ago, some tween girls shouted "Hey hippy" from their SUV in the parking lot of the West Hills Pavillions - that's about the worst of my hair-borne social oppression these days.)

I once considered going w/my friend to a Rainbow Gathering in the hopes of getting free drugs but it was outweighed by my hatred of large groups of strangers, esp ones who seem like they're into touching other humans.

xp: headshops are amazing. the medical marijuana dispensaries in my town are too paranoid to do anything like that -- it's just a green cross and some cryptic name like "the healing compassion" (thc, geddit).

I do have a soft spot for headshops, esp the one in my hometown called DARK SHADDOWS (sic) which is Alice Cooper/juggalo-themed. THESE PIPES ARE FOR LEGAL HERBAL BLENDS ONLY

Sorry it is actually called SHADDOW DOMAIN (sic)
ALL PIPES ARE NOVELTIES ONLY 18+

now i'm sad it's not called DARK SHADDOWS

the kfc that got turned into a dispensary ("kind for cures"!):

http://la.curbed.com/uploads/kfc_pot.jpg

Guess it's better than check cashing/title loan places popping up in distinctively shaped abandoned fast food joints.

I am not a hippy.

I don't consider myself a hippy, though I do acknowledge a bit of inner hippyness.

I have long hair and smoke pot and like psych rock, so basically?

can you live in california and not be either a hippie or a douchebag i dunno

I have long hair and smoke pot and like psych rock, so basically?

so basically you're n3d

btw i use a plastic comb that has "get a haircut hippie" embossed on it

i'm not a hippie cause i don't show up whenever i need shit from you

I don't know. If you tend to define hippie solely by relation to drug culture, then no, I am not a hippie at all. I outgrew drugs (or drugs outgrew me.) But in terms of many other kinds of things (long hair, lack of fondness for washing, fondness for paisley clothes, organic cotton waistcoats made in Tibet by enslaved children, muesli, spending time in stone circles in Cornwall grooving on the ~vibe~, maaaaaan) yes, I'm a flaming fucken hippie.

If your idea of a hippie is Julian Cope, then yes, I'm a hippie. If your idea of a hippie is the Grateful Dead or Sufjan Stevens, fuck off, no, I am not a hippie.

there are a lot of different ways to define it I guess, but yeah I'd qualify for several of them tbh. have a really psychedelics-inspired outlook on things - for better or worse, used to even go to lots of Rainbow Gatherings and Dead shows (honestly the Dead are probably still one of my favorite bands ever, though I don't listen to 'em as much for the sake of other things, but I still tend to seek out a lot of music - noise/drone/psych/electronic/kraut/dub/house/techno/rave - for its transportive/ecstatic function), and have the politics more or less. haven't consumed much weed or psychedlics for a couple years now, but that's only because I did them so heavily for so long, I feel I absorbed whatever lessons/experience/perspective there were to get out of them.

I'm sort of a sales hippie.

i self-identify as some kind of special "noise hippie" and people just think i'm a pothead

hi dere

Yeah, noise hippie w esoteric tendencies. No real hippie clothes or hair tho. People don't think i'm a pothead but no one has ever not offered me weed in situations of weed.

Lol, no. I have never self-identified as a hippie and people would generally not think of me as one. There are some things that I am really "hippieish" about or so I've been told. It's mostly surrounding body stuff, women's health issues, childbirth/parenting, and some food stuff (vegetarian for 16 years try to eat a lot of unprocessed, organic, fair trade stuff). I also used to smoke a ton of weed but I don't really associate that with hippies anymore so idk.

Voted "i do not self-identify as a hippie, and no one would ever mistake me for one" although when I was a teenager there was no doubt about it and my personal i.d. is heavily informed by hippie activities and interests of my past. I don't live a very free-spirited lifestyle now though.

I was probably pretty uptight as a hippie back too, come to think of it, but then like, you know what? I need to get back to baltimore before classes start in two days and if you start setting off fireworks on mushrooms in the field next to this gas station you're going to get us all busted, you stupid fucks #phishtour

I've had that on my chest for 12 years.

/I have long hair and smoke pot and like psych rock, so basically?/

so basically you're n3d

Ahem. (Never have smoked pot, as was asked on the board I believe...)

I am a hippie like John Waters was a hippie.

Not a hippie, could never possibly be ID'd as one. Hippies and jam-band fans (the two are not 100% overlapping, though it's damn close) are the US cultural subgroup I would most happily see herded into camps and gassed. I'd live in an entire apartment building full of Juggalos before I'd spend a day with hippies. I had to put up with them for close to three years, when the magazine I was editing shared office space (and ownership) with Relix. At this point, years later, I can listen to the Grateful Dead (only 1969-70 Dead, mind you) without wanting to go on a killing spree, but Phish? The Disco Biscuits? Widespread Panic? All that music should count as war crimes, and the fans need a good stabbing.

Is there such a thing as a British hippie any more? A quintessential one that is, as opposed to a British hippie who kind of wishes they were American...?

Julian Cope.

(I kinda suspect Thom Yorke is a hippie at this point, too, but he might not count.)

xxpost Cos I don't think I could come up with a UK analogue for the type of person who listens to Phish, and those other bands mentioned upthread. Maybe those who go to all the festivals and dig lots of gypsy-punk and dubby-rock music...

Oh come one, Julian Cope's about 120 years old.

A lot of his hippie mates who post on the Modern Antiquarian aren't, though.

I had to put up with them for close to three years, when the magazine I was editing shared office space (and ownership) with Relix.

I did kinda wonder about that.

Seems like when I go to Brighton (or, specifically: Lewes) or Cornwall, British hippies completely still exist. Probably not in London any more, though.

^^ this is true.

I think the British hippie scene is more difficult to identify with music - there is a kind of trad indigenous hippy that's very folk-inflected, cropredy-goer maybe, but I suspect that strain is thinning out and it's more about new age/healing/energy than music genres. Strong throughout the south-west iirc, pockets elsewhere.

(ianah, not mistaken for one)

so basically you're n3d

i'm a ned like john waters is a ned

i self-identify as some kind of special "noise hippie" and people just think i'm a hipster

Not a hippie. Friends with lots of Deadheads and Phisheads and String Cheese Incidentheads and uggggghhh bleh.

As an aside, I love calling people hippies. In that old timey cantankerous 'outta my way hippy' way

And also, every time I read the Guardian, I think that UK hippie signifiers have become so mainstream as to not even attract notice.

But that depends on your definition of hippie. If it's "long hair, takes drugs, listens to jam bands" or if it's "beards, folk music, eats muesli, does yoga, reads George Monbiot columns" which used to be hippie but is now just, I dunno, upper middle class?

But yeah, not really a music-identified lifestyle.

x-posts

I mean, you want UK hippies, get all of Ed's friends gathered in one room for a barndance. HIPPIES.

It won't even be a room, it will be a self-knitted tent in an organic woodland glade somewhere on the upper Thames.

some of my earliest memories are of Dead concerts so my hippie lineage is pretty definite

also there is a fondness for smokables and certain new age sensibilities

Also wondering how much Thatcher-era and Criminal Justice Bill era clampdown on the new age traveller community changed the dynamics of who, in the UK, got to be "hippies" or who identified as such.

Sorry, I'm just interested in this. I am definitely the child of UK hippies.

I think that rebelling against the cretins I had to deal with on phish tour had the effect of steamrolling over a lot of the kinder, more spiritual parts of my nature that had led to me being attracted to hippies in the first place.

the cretins I had to deal with on phish tour

i believe the proper nomenclature is drainbows iirc

xxp

Yeah, that community - travellers, crusties, hunt sabs, etc - feel like the continuation of a certain sort of proper cpunter-cultural hippiness (but then also not, anarchopunk thing is anti-hippie?) . But post-1994 they're fewer in number I guess, and they're not talked about really, even though they're still having their festivals. (is that Jerusalem play that I missed relevant to this?) Agree, v interesting question, but I have to leave work.

Ah, I'm on the bus home so I can think about this.

Because I totally see crusties, new age travellers, squat punks as hippies continued.

But in the US - after the end of the Vietnam War, did US hippie culture have any political subtext at all?

Because stripped of the political content it just seems like some feelgood lifestyle thing, therefore was allowed to continue as essentially harmless. While UK hippies seemed to remain more politically motivated - and therefore the ones in VW buses going up and down the country following e.g. Hawkwind had to be ~stamped out~ in a way that Dead-followers really didn't?

I may be reading too much into this. Like many of the ideas went mainstream but the lifestyle had to be destroyed?

i'm "the hollywood hippie":

http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/responsible-living/stories/the-hippie-continuum-what-level-hippie-are-you

tuomas

nickalicious, hoos and ed

i thought the dairy heavy stuff was to Indian food as like orange chicken is to Chinese food but maybe i'm out of it

No way.

Plenty of Indian meat dishes too!

i like himalayan cuisine

have i told my sherpa joke?

http://www.himalayancuisineone.com/

i just assumed most people couldn't afford stuff like chicken makhani

realized i might be a hippie this morning -- eating granola w yogurt, listening to the dead (paris 74 -- my fave version of 'to lay me down'.) and smoking grass all at the same time.

sounds like heaven. i must be a vicarious hippie then.

Yeah last week i climbed up a mountain and then did yoga on the top while my friend meditated.

After going to Glastonbury this past weekend I have decided that actually I fucking hate hippies. ;_;

noise hippie/pothead

If your idea of a hippie is the Grateful Dead or Sufjan Stevens, fuck off, no, I am not a hippie.

Whose idea of a hippie is Sufjan Stevens??

I do not identify as a hippie. I have, at various points in my life, had long hair, smoked weed, eschewed meat, practiced yoga, and championed ultra-liberal causes. But I don't dress in typical hippie apparel, am far from a nature/outdoors buff, and in general am probably too much of a cynical urban intellectual to wholly get down with the hippie spirit.

so you're a self hating hippie

Basically.

I'm not white

i'm the los angeles version of the hippie. i dress like rachel zoe but am deeply shallow.

oh come on, you're only superficially shallow

"i am a deeply superficial person." - andy warhol

i think i'm just a pothead tbh

no one is white ... or black, or any color

we're all rainbows maaaaaan

we should have a vote for biggest hippie on ilx

when did ilx turn into woodstock btw

Been thinking about hippies a lot lately, lots of disorganized thoughts as below; reading the threads including this and this...

Hippies C or D

Bonus tracks on Linda Perhacs album with her speaking, she has the ultimate hippie voice.

Guy from Amon Duul II saying "I'm still a hippie".

Robert Plant in a documentary saying that old hippies keep their long hair because they are proud of what they were a part of. I never had considered him a hippie before.

Is Alan Moore the only famous hippie writer?

Saw a documentary about Glastonbury with travelling travelling hippies protesting against government in the 80s. Was surprised that most of them looked half hippie/half punk hybrids.

I saw The Enid last year and the bandleader Robert John Godfrey (not all that hippie seeming for an old prog rocker) said he felt the time was right for hippies to rise again, learn from their past mistakes and try to accomplish the dream again.

There was an amazing tumblr page devoted to hippie imagery, I really wish I knew the name of it. A lot of people have been saying how aesthetically disastrous hippies were but there was loads of great stuff (a lot of it very pagan looking), lots of amazing hippie huts and cool clothes.

Paul Rudd was an adorable hippie in Our Idiot Brother. After reading responses some people said he's like a younger Dude from Big Lebowski but I doubt Dude was ever that cheery.

I've barely ever seen real hippies in real life. Glasgow used to have deluded people in the streets handing out texts for their ridiculous new religions, I heard a lot of them were thieves; but they were replaced by charity people, some of whom look a bit hippyish.

I know that lots of hippies are naive, prone to conspiracy theories, nutty belief systems and hypocrisy but I've never understood why they are so violently loathed when there are so many worse types of people that are less likely to have their excellent individuals. Way more of them in America?

I'm interested in that idea that hippy ideas have been mostly absorbed into general liberal thought/ways. Is it possible that without 60s hippies we'd be living in a hellish 50s nightmare?
I think in Wire magazine there was someone saying that there were truly great hippies who did great things and should never be dismissed. Is there any books about what the hippies did for us? Should there be more appreciation of that era?

it all sounds great until someone smokes a baby

bob margolin talking about behind the scenes shit during the band's last waltz concert (http://bobmargolin.com/the-last-waltz/):

I’m told that there was a backstage cocaine room, with a glass table and a “sniff-sniff” tape playing, but I never saw it. I did, however, see through Rolling Stone Ron Wood’s nearly-transparent prominent proboscis in profile. In the “green room,” Neil Young passed me a joint, smiling, “We’re all old hippies here.” Though I was 27, something about “old hippies” resonated with me for the future. Young was older than me by a few years and even had a couple of gray hairs then

no one would mistake me for a hippie and i don't fully identify as one but i admire them and am glad they exist for the art, music, drugs, and vibes

for a horrible moment I thought that Michael Gove's Hippies vs Punks article was no longer available online, thankfully someone has transcribed it here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/uk.politics.misc/o7RknBfogUU

i didn't really understand that article. for the most part i've always identified more w/ hippies than w/ punks though

I have a great book called "What The Doormouse Said", which is about acid culture's influence on the birth of the personal computer. It's pretty fascinating, some research facilities even had their engineers design circuits while they were tripping. And on down the line, the hippie dreams of no private property and no countries is slowly but surely becoming a reality with the internet.

But hippies suck, mainly because they are convinced their shit doesn't stink. Everyone else's does though.

If a hippie does something wrong and you confront them, the conversation is instantly steered turns to your attitude. You are the one with the bad vibes, you just need to change your perspective. The hippie does not need to consider your feelings because they are bad. Essentially what the hippie does is right, because he is always right, because he leads such an enlightened life. This enables the hippie to avoid change and enjoy complete and total self-indulgence.

I am almost, but not quite, old enough to have been among the original hippies in 1967. I was handicapped by the fact I was only 13. There was a time during the 70s when I might possibly have been mistaken for one. I might even have mistaken myself for one, depending on just how disaffected I felt that day. Nowadays? Not even the remotest chance.

old/o.g. hippies can be cool, post-jamband era hippies are the worst tho

guess i see "hippie" as a bunch of different things, less so a specific group of people. i see it more as an ethos or way of life, they way some people view "punk." because i could easily caricature spiked hair ammunition-belted tight-jeans punks in the same way many people do hippies

i mean, both those groups are kind of assholes, a phish concert isn't really what i think of as hippies when i say i admire hippies

i more think of people like ina may watkins and the rest of the folks who started the farm, people who launched the organic food movement, the spiritual seekers who did a lot to bring yoga into the US. i see a contemporary hippie ethos in people like sandor ellix katz

a phish concert isn't really what i think of

and yet, this is one of the only groups of people who will self-identify as hippies (the other being old actual first-gen 60s hippies)

i more think of people like ina may watkins

ooooooooooops this should be ina may GASKIN. no idea where watkins came from

i think of "old hippies" as different from "hippies".

old hippies are rusticated die-hard libs prone to open-toed footwear. they live in the country with solar panels half built in the yard and watercolors/muffins for sale at the farmer's market. they seem pretty okay.

hippies are either college kids who smoke a lot of pot and wear hemp clothing or townies who smoke a lot of pot and wear whatever it is they wear. both unnerve me.

wonder what the ILX consensus on freaks is

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Freak_Brother_No_1.jpg

idk if anyone younger than 50 identifying as a hippie in 2014 is a ~real hippie~ in that it's mostly a group that's strongly linked with certain signifiers but without any real political or philosophical stance

I know people who definitely are hippie-ish but they're more back-to-earth types, interested in political causes and nonconformance to the status quo

without any real political or philosophical stance

when was this ever an actual requirement for being a hippie? it's a cultural label, all that's required are the signifiers.

re: Spectrum I am PRO-FREAK

Never found much talk about the death metal hippie but I've heard metaphysics saying it is a real thing.

Some of Athiest and Cynic. Cynic's "Sentiment" is gloriously hippyish.
http://www.elyrics.net/read/c/cynic-lyrics/sentiment-lyrics.html

<3 FFFB. Hippies are the commodified/trendy version of freaks imo.

Is FFFB good? A lot of underground comix are looking pretty dodgy to most eyes today. Sometimes "oh shit! It's the cops! Get the drugs and run!" was the whole joke, among other lame counter culture jokes and ideas.

yeah they're good

although yeah obviously the "oh shit! it's the cops! get the drugs and run!" joke plays a central role

I've read that Robert F Jones coined the term "hippie".

I haven't actually read much FFFB but I have a few cos Paul Mavrides was friends w a relative of mine so I ended up inherited a bunch of Rip Off Press and Subgenius stuff. My favorite is "Cover Up Lowdown", which is a great collection of JFK-era conspiracies. There is a bit of warning about the surveillance state and the things that have recently come out about the NSA are actually far scarier than the most paranoid delusions of underground comics artists.

http://marswillsendnomore.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/cover-up-the-lowdown-from-rip-off-press/

it's stoner humor. the joke on that cover is that the cops are inside the puff of smoke, so it's like they're high and paranoid about cops chasing after them after a deal. which is relateable if you've ever bought weed sold in a box labeled "DOPE" that you carry around with you in public.