Precursors bus decorated with hand-paintingA July 1967
Time magazine study on hippie philosophy credited the foundation of the hippie movement with historical precedent as far back as the
sadhu of India, the spiritual seekers who had renounced the world and materialistic pursuits by taking
Sannyasa. Even the counterculture of the Ancient Greeks, espoused by philosophers like
Diogenes of Sinope and the
cynics were also early forms of hippie culture. It also named as notable influences the religious and spiritual teachings of
Buddha,
Hillel the Elder,
Jesus,
St. Francis of Assisi,
Henry David Thoreau,
Gandhi and
J. R. R. Tolkien. Inspired by the works of
Goethe,
Friedrich Nietzsche, and
Hermann Hesse, Wandervogel attracted thousands of young Germans who rejected the rapid trend toward urbanization and yearned for the
pagan, back-to-nature spiritual life of their ancestors. During the first several decades of the 20th century, Germans settled around the United States, bringing the values of this German youth culture. Some opened the first
health food stores, and many moved to
southern California where they introduced an alternative lifestyle. One group, called the "Nature Boys", took to the California desert and raised organic food, espousing a back-to-nature lifestyle like the Wandervogel. In 1948, songwriter
eden ahbez wrote a hit song called "
Nature Boy" sang by
Nat King Cole and inspired by Robert Bootzin (
Gypsy Boots), who helped popularize health-consciousness,
yoga, and
organic food in the United States.
1958–1965: Origins , lyrics from "That's It for the Other One" During the late 1950s and early 1960s, novelist
Ken Kesey and the
Merry Pranksters lived communally first in
Oregon and after the 1962 success of his novel ''
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' in his San Francisco villa. Members included Beat Generation hero
Neal Cassady,
Ken Babbs,
Carolyn Adams (aka Mountain Girl/Carolyn Garcia),
Stewart Brand,
Del Close,
Paul Foster,
George Walker, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt and others. Their adventures were documented in
Tom Wolfe's book
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. With Cassady at the wheel of a school bus named
Furthur, the Merry Pranksters traveled across the United States to celebrate the publication of Kesey's novel
Sometimes a Great Notion and to visit the 1964
World's Fair in New York City. The Merry Pranksters were known for using
cannabis,
amphetamine, and
LSD, and during their journey they "turned on" many people to these
drugs. The Merry Pranksters filmed and audio-taped their bus trips, creating an immersive
multimedia experience that would later be presented to the public in the form of festivals and concerts. The
Grateful Dead wrote a song about the Merry Pranksters' bus trips called "That's It for the Other One". They and an expanding troupe of associates called themselves "freaks" or "freakers", and became well known in the area by about 1963 for their eccentric
free-form dancing in
Sunset Strip nightclubs, being described as "an acid-drenched extended family of brain-damaged cohabitants". Vito has been regarded as an early hippie, He would be retroactively described as "a man in his fifties who presided over a
harem of predominantly young female 'freakers'". Writing in 2003, writer
Barry Miles labeled Vito and his wife Szou as "the first hippies in Hollywood" and "perhaps the first hippies anywhere". During this period
Greenwich Village in New York City and
Berkeley, California anchored the American folk music circuit. Berkeley's two coffee houses, "the Cabale Creamery" and "the Jabberwock", sponsored performances by folk music artists in a beat setting. In April 1963, Chandler A. Laughlin III, co-founder of the Cabale Creamery, established a kind of tribal, family identity among approximately fifty people who attended a traditional, all-night Native American
peyote ceremony in a rural setting. This ceremony combined a
psychedelic experience with traditional
Native American spiritual values; these people went on to sponsor a unique genre of musical expression and performance at the "Red Dog Saloon" in the isolated, old-time mining town of
Virginia City, Nevada. He and his cohorts created at this very place what became known as "
The Red Dog Experience", featuring previously unknown musical acts—
Grateful Dead,
Jefferson Airplane,
Big Brother and the Holding Company,
Quicksilver Messenger Service,
the Charlatans, and others—who played in the completely refurbished, intimate setting of Nevada, Virginia City's "Red Dog Saloon". There was no clear delineation between "performers" and "audience" in "The Red Dog Experience", during which music, psychedelic experimentation, a unique sense of personal style, and Bill Ham's first primitive light shows combined to create a new sense of community. Laughlin and George Hunter of the Charlatans were true "proto-hippies", with their
long hair, boots, and outrageous clothing of 19th-century American (and Native American) heritage. When they returned to San Francisco, "Red Dog" participants Luria Castell, Ellen Harman and
Alton Kelley created a collective called "the Family Dog." Attended by approximately one thousand of the Bay Area's original "hippies", this was San Francisco's first
psychedelic rock performance, costumed dance and light show, featuring
Jefferson Airplane,
the Great Society and the Marbles. Two other events followed before year's end, one at "California Hall" and one at "the Matrix". On Saturday January 22, the
Grateful Dead and
Big Brother and the Holding Company came on stage, and six thousand people arrived to imbibe punch spiked with LSD and to witness one of the first fully developed light shows of the era. By February 1966, the "Family Dog" became "Family Dog Productions" under organizer
Chet Helms, promoting happenings at the
Avalon Ballroom and the
Fillmore Auditorium in initial cooperation with
Bill Graham. The Avalon Ballroom, the Fillmore Auditorium, and other venues provided settings where participants could partake of the full psychedelic music experience. Bill Ham, who had pioneered the original "Red Dog" light shows, perfected his art of
liquid light projection, which combined light shows and film projection and became
synonymous with the "San Francisco ballroom experience". The sense of style and costume that began at the "Red Dog Saloon" flourished when
San Francisco's Fox Theater went out of business and hippies bought up its costume stock, reveling in the freedom to dress up for weekly musical performances at their favorite ballrooms. As
San Francisco Chronicle music columnist
Ralph J. Gleason put it, "They danced all night long, orgiastic, spontaneous and completely free form." who became intrigued by the developing psychedelic hippie music scene. Young Americans around the country began moving to San Francisco, and by June 1966, around 15,000 hippies had moved into the Haight. On October 6, 1966, the state of California declared LSD a controlled substance, which made the drug illegal. In response to the criminalization of LSD, San Francisco hippies staged a gathering in the
Golden Gate Park panhandle, called the
Love Pageant Rally, As explained by Allan Cohen, co-founder of the
San Francisco Oracle, the purpose of the rally was twofold: to draw attention to the fact that LSD had just been made illegal—and to demonstrate that people who used LSD were not criminals, nor were they mentally ill. The Grateful Dead played, and some sources claim that LSD was consumed at the rally. According to Cohen, those who took LSD "were not guilty of using illegal substances...We were celebrating transcendental consciousness, the beauty of the universe, the beauty of being." In
West Hollywood,
California, the
Sunset Strip curfew riots, also known as the "hippie riots", were a series of early
counterculture-era clashes that took place between police and young people in 1966 and continuing on and off through the early 1970s. In 1966, annoyed residents and business owners in the district had encouraged the passage of strict (10:00 p.m.)
curfew and
loitering laws to reduce the traffic congestion resulting from crowds of young club patrons. This was perceived by young, local rock music fans as an infringement on their
civil rights, and on Saturday, November 12, 1966, fliers were distributed along the Strip inviting people to demonstrate later that day. Hours before the protest one of the rock 'n' roll radio stations in L.A. announced there would be a rally at
Pandora's Box, a club at the corner of
Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights, and cautioned people to tread carefully. The
Los Angeles Times reported that as many as 1,000 youthful demonstrators, including such celebrities as
Jack Nicholson and
Peter Fonda (who was afterward handcuffed by police), erupted in protest against the perceived repressive enforcement of these recently invoked curfew laws.
1967: Human Be-In, Summer of Love, and popularity surge On January 14, 1967, the outdoor
Human Be-In organized by
Michael Bowen helped to popularize hippie culture across the United States, with 20,000 to 30,000 hippies gathering in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. On March 26, 1967,
Lou Reed,
Edie Sedgwick and 10,000 hippies came together in
Manhattan for the
Central Park Be-In on
Easter Sunday. The KFRC
Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival from June 10–11, and the
Monterey Pop Festival from June 16–18, introduced the music of the counterculture - and the new concept of a rock festival - to a wide audience, and marked the start of the "Summer of Love".
Scott McKenzie's rendition of
John Phillips' song "
San Francisco" became a hit in the United States and Europe. The lyrics, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair", inspired thousands of young people from all over the world to travel to San Francisco, sometimes wearing flowers in their hair and distributing flowers to passersby, earning them the name "
Flower Children". Bands like the
Grateful Dead,
Big Brother and the Holding Company (with
Janis Joplin), and
Jefferson Airplane lived in the Haight. In June 1967,
Herb Caen was approached by "a distinguished magazine" On July 7, 1967
Time magazine featured a cover story entitled "The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture." The article described the guidelines of the hippie code: “It is estimated that around 100,000 people traveled to San Francisco in the summer of 1967. The media was right behind them, casting a spotlight on the Haight-Ashbury district and popularizing the ‘hippie’ label. With this increased attention, hippies found support for their ideals of love and peace but were also criticized for their anti‑work, pro‑drug, and permissive ethos. At this point,
the Beatles had released their groundbreaking album ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'', which was quickly embraced by the hippie movement with its colorful psychedelic sonic imagery. In 1967
Chet Helms brought the Haight Ashbury hippie and psychedelic scene to
Denver, when he opened
the Family Dog Denver, modeled on his
Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. The music venue created a nexus for the hippie movement in the western-minded Denver, which led to serious conflicts with city leaders, parents and the police, who saw the hippie movement as dangerous. The resulting legal actions and pressure caused Helms and Bob Cohen to close the venue at the end of that year. By the end of the summer, the Haight-Ashbury scene had deteriorated. The incessant media coverage led
the Diggers to declare the "death" of the hippie with a parade. According to poet Susan 'Stormi' Chambless, the hippies buried an effigy of a hippie in the
Panhandle to demonstrate the end of his/her reign. Haight-Ashbury could not accommodate the influx of crowds (mostly naive youngsters) with no place to live. Many took to living on the street, panhandling and drug-dealing. There were problems with malnourishment, disease, and drug addiction. Crime and violence skyrocketed. None of these trends reflected what the hippies had envisioned. By the end of 1967, many of the hippies and musicians who initiated the Summer of Love had moved on. Beatle
George Harrison had once visited Haight-Ashbury and found it to be just a haven for dropouts, inspiring him to give up LSD. Misgivings about the hippie culture, particularly with regard to substance use and lenient morality, fueled the
moral panics of the late 1960s.
1967–1970: Revolution and peak of influence , attending a
Yippie organized event, approximately five miles north of the
1968 Democratic National Convention. The band
MC5 can be seen playing. By 1968, hippie-influenced fashions were beginning to take off in the mainstream, especially for youths and younger adults of the populous
baby boomer generation, many of whom may have aspired to emulate the hardcore movements now living in tribalistic communes, but had no overt connections to them. This was noticed not only in terms of clothes and longer hair for men, but also in music, film, art and literature, not just in the United States, but around the world.
Eugene McCarthy's brief presidential campaign successfully persuaded a significant minority of young adults to "get clean for Gene" by shaving their beards or wearing longer skirts; however the "Clean Genes" had little impact on the popular image in the media spotlight, of the hirsute hippy adorned in beads, feathers, flowers and bells. A sign of this was the visibility that the hippie subculture gained in various mainstream and underground media.
Hippie exploitation films are 1960s
exploitation films about the hippie counterculture with stereotypical situations associated with the movement such as
cannabis and
LSD use, sex and wild psychedelic parties. Examples include
The Love-ins,
Psych-Out,
The Trip, and
Wild in the Streets. Other more serious and more critically acclaimed films about the hippie counterculture also appeared such as
Easy Rider and ''
Alice's Restaurant. (See also: List of films related to the hippie subculture.) Documentaries and television programs have also been produced until today as well as fiction and nonfiction books. The popular Broadway musical Hair'' was presented in 1967. People commonly label other cultural movements of that period as hippie, but there are differences. For example, hippies were often not directly engaged in politics, as contrasted with "Yippies" (Youth International Party), an activist organization. The
Yippies came to national attention during their celebration of the 1968 spring equinox, when some 3,000 of them took over
Grand Central Terminal in New York—eventually resulting in 61 arrests. Especially their leaders
Abbie Hoffman and
Jerry Rubin, the Yippies became notorious for their theatrics, such as trying to levitate the Pentagon at the October 1967 war protest, and such slogans as "Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball!" Their stated intention to protest the
1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, including nominating their own candidate, "
Lyndon Pigasus Pig" (an actual pig), was also widely publicized in the media at this time. In
Cambridge, Massachusetts hippies congregated each Sunday for a large "be-in" at Cambridge Common with swarms of drummers and those beginning the Women's Movement. In the United States, the Hippie movement started to be seen as part of the "
New Left", which was associated with anti-war college-campus protest movements. in contrast to earlier leftist or
Marxist movements that had taken a more
vanguardist approach to social justice and focused mostly on
labor unionization and questions of
social class. In April 1969, the building of
People's Park in Berkeley, California received international attention. The
University of California, Berkeley had demolished all the buildings on a parcel near campus, intending to use the land to build playing fields and a parking lot. After a long delay, during which the site became a dangerous eyesore, thousands of ordinary Berkeley citizens, merchants, students, and hippies took matters into their own hands, planting trees, shrubs, flowers and grass to convert the land into a park. A major confrontation ensued on May 15, 1969, when Governor
Ronald Reagan ordered the park destroyed, which led to a two-week occupation of the city of Berkeley by the
California National Guard.
Flower power came into its own during this occupation as hippies engaged in acts of
civil disobedience to plant flowers in empty lots all over Berkeley under the slogan "Let a Thousand Parks Bloom". giving the opening talk at the Woodstock Festival of 1969 In August 1969, the
Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place in
Bethel, New York, which for many, exemplified the best of hippie counterculture. Over 500,000 people arrived to hear some of the most notable musicians and bands of the era, among them
Canned Heat,
Richie Havens,
Joan Baez,
Janis Joplin,
Grateful Dead,
Creedence Clearwater Revival,
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,
Carlos Santana,
Sly and the Family Stone,
the Who,
Jefferson Airplane and
Jimi Hendrix.
Wavy Gravy's
Hog Farm provided security and attended to practical needs, and the hippie ideals of love and human fellowship seemed to have gained real-world expression. Similar rock festivals occurred in other parts of the country, which played a significant role in spreading hippie ideals throughout America. In December 1969, a rock festival took place in
Altamont, California, about 45 km (30 miles) east of San Francisco. Initially billed as "Woodstock West", its official name was the
Altamont Free Concert. About 300,000 people gathered to hear
the Rolling Stones;
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young;
Jefferson Airplane and other bands. The
Hells Angels provided security that proved far less benevolent than the security provided at the Woodstock event: 18-year-old
Meredith Hunter was stabbed and killed by one of the Hells Angels during the Rolling Stones' performance after he brandished a gun and waved it toward the stage.
1970–1973: Aftershocks and decline By the 1970s, the 1960s
zeitgeist that had spawned hippie culture seemed to be on the wane. The events at the
Altamont Free Concert shocked many Americans, including those who had strongly identified with hippie culture. Another shock came in the form of the
Sharon Tate and
Leno and Rosemary LaBianca murders committed in August 1969 by
Charles Manson and his "family" of followers. Nevertheless, the turbulent political atmosphere that featured the bombing of Cambodia and shootings by
National Guardsmen at
Jackson State University and
Kent State University still brought people together. These shootings inspired the May 1970 song by
Quicksilver Messenger Service "What About Me?", where they sang, "You keep adding to my numbers as you shoot my people down", as well as
Neil Young's "
Ohio", a song that protested the Kent State massacre, recorded by
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The anti-war movement reached its peak at the
1971 May Day Protests as over 12,000 protesters were arrested in Washington, D.C.; President Nixon himself actually ventured out of the White House and chatted with a group of the hippie protesters. The draft was ended soon thereafter, in January 1973.
1973–present: Absorption into the mainstream and new developments Much of hippie style had been integrated into mainstream American society by the early 1970s. Large rock concerts that originated with the 1967 KFRC
Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival and
Monterey Pop Festival and the British
Isle of Wight Festival in 1968 became the norm, evolving into
stadium rock in the process. During the mid-late 1970s, with the
end of the draft and the
Vietnam War, a renewal of
patriotic sentiment associated with the approach of the
United States Bicentennial, the decline in popularity of psychedelic rock, and the emergence of new genres such as
prog rock,
heavy metal,
disco, and
punk rock, the mainstream media lost interest in the hippie counterculture. At the same time there was
a revival of the
Mod subculture,
skinheads,
teddy boys and the emergence of new youth cultures, like the
punks,
goths (an arty offshoot of punk), and
football casuals; starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Britain, hippies had begun to come under attack by skinheads. , 1989 Many hippies would adapt and become members of the growing countercultural
New Age movement of the 1970s. While many hippies made a long-term commitment to the lifestyle, some people argue that hippies "sold out" during the 1980s and became part of the materialist, self-centered consumer
yuppie culture. Although not as visible as it once was, hippie culture has never died out completely: hippies and neo-hippies can still be found on college campuses, on communes, and at gatherings and festivals. Many embrace the hippie values of peace, love, and community, and hippies may still be found in
bohemian enclaves around the world. while in 1970, the hippie community of
Tawapa was founded in
New Mexico. It lasted until the 1990s, when the people were pushed off the land due to
housing developments. Around 1994, a new term, "
Zippie", was being used to describe hippies that had embraced
New Age beliefs, new technology, and a love for electronic music. ==Ethos and characteristics==