Hippies and the 60’s
By Morgan D.

Many people have different ideas of what hippies are and what they did in their life. They played a very important role in the 60’s because a lot of people in the 60’s were a hippie. They changed the way the world thought about teenagers.

Most people think of hippies as longhaired, psychedelic people. They are right in a way. Usually hippies had long hair. They wore different colored denim pants, flowered shirts, Mexican serapes, Navajo headbands, and luminous body paints. Even though they were like other groups in the 60’s, some other groups wore black, and the hippies wore all different colors, feathers, flowers, and beads. They bought some of their clothes from a psychedelic shop. It sold beads, bells, incense, feathers, books about drugs, and records of both rock and sitar music. Some hippies wore huge, floppy sunhats, pointed, wizard- style hats, artsy berets, decadent top hats, and peaked caps; anything went. If they weren’t barefoot, they were wearing sandals with two buckles on them. Their looks defined the 1960’s

In a hippie’s daily life they didn’t do many different activities. Most hippies smoked marijuana, pot, and acid. Some listened to the hard beat of acid-rock music and hard rock. Often when performers were performing, they and their fans were high on drugs at the concerts. The concerts I’m sure were located many places. Some hippies could also play the guitar.

Hippies were totally against war, especially the Vietnam War. They felt that the world should live in peace and violence was unnecessary. They didn’t really bother with Establishment controversies, but if they did bother with them, they did so in a gentle manner. They mostly cared about the Vietnam War and in taking an approach to end the war. They stood for peace and love. They pretty much proved it because some of their slogans were "peace" and "love".

Many hippies went to The Haight-Ashbury district located where most hippies lived. They went there by the thousands seeking a hassle-free place to buy drugs and search for values they couldn’t find at home or anywhere else such as stores.

The hippies celebrated a few things such as the three-day 1966 Trips Festival, which had LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethyl amide), the Grateful Dead, strobe lights, and an Olympic trampolinist jumping from a balcony. Another celebration was the "Be-in". It was first held in San Francisco on Saturday, January 14, 1967. It celebrated life, a day of drugs, poetry, rock music, and love. The publicity surrounding the "be-in" enticed more kids to San Francisco.

Many people have different ideas of how hippies came to be. A counterculture party swept America as many young people from middle and upper class came. They turned it on to peace, love, and personal freedom. In 1967 it was the summer of love. It was when one hundred thousand flower children walked around the Haight. Some people might think that just one person started wearing funky clothes and other people copied that one person.

There were many views from many other people, some people thought that they had temper and quality, gentleness, quietness, and interest. Others thought they were a red warning light for the American Way. One person said that, "God knows many of them are fools, but he knows that they are a better generation than we were." California’s governor defined a hippie as a person who "dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheetah."

People think of hippies as just regular humans, but really they are a culture. Some people think they are bad people, but actually they just do many different things than us and judge things differently.

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