Hippy times are here again
Nirvana - at a price
The summer solstice on June 21 marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Summer of Love. Mid-1967, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco was teeming with close to 100,000 marijuana-smoking, acid-dropping, flower powerful baby boomers. Did you miss out on the ’60s? You could buy a piece of it at Ł150-per-ticket Glastonbury this year. Stella McCartney is selling Beatles-style tie-dye t-shirts in aid of Oxfam.
At the first Glasto in 1971 tickets were Ł1 and milk was distributed free. How times have changed.
As Mark Morford said in the SF Chronicle recently, much of America’s reluctant turn toward environmental health is nothing to do with philosophy.
” It’s taking the threat of global meltdown combined with the notion of really, really expensive ski tickets to slap the nation’s incredibly obese butt into gear and force consumers to wake up to the gluttony and wastefulness of American culture.”
“Oh my God, what’s going to happen to swimming pools and NASCAR and free shipping from Amazon?” asks Morford satirically.
Back in the spring of 1967, along San Francisco’s Haight Street, a group calling themselves The Diggers opened several free stores to clothe the influx of flower children drawn to the neighborhood for the Summer of Love. No cash needed, just take what you need and leave the rest. The phrase “Dig it” came from then.
Diggers cooked up huge stockpots of stew and baked bread in old coffee cans to feed the new arrivals in Golden Gate Park.
They took their name from a short-lived 17th century movement in the English countryside which temporarily reclaimed land for the commoners, spurning all forms of buying and selling.
For those looking to recapture the era, The Hippie Handbook (Chronicle, $12.95, 2004) offers lots of (what else?) demonstrations. The practical advice comes in an entertaining style via an author who doesn’t take it all too seriously.
Chelsea Cain — who spent her early childhood on an Iowa hippie commune– has milked a goat and made tempeh in her bathtub. Her name was chosen by a mother who was listening to Judy Collins sing Chelsea Morning while nursing her newborn. “We ate what we grew in the garden and served millet casserole because it was cheap and fed plenty,” writes Cain in her introduction. “For years we didn’t have a telephone or a TV or flushing toilets. But we played music on the porch for fun, and I got to wear whatever I wanted and run free in the cornfields, and help the adults plan The Dream at night. …
“My parents and their friends believed in living outside the war machine, off the grid, out of the box. We made candles and clothes and hanging-plant holders, not because these things weren’t available but because not buying stuff was a radical act of social resistance.”
In Cain’s hands-on guide, readers will learn how to build a compost pile, start a commune, hitchhike, meditate, organize a protest, tie-dye a shirt, macrame and recognize an undercover cop.
Of course, there’s a glossary of terms: “bread,” “dig,” “old lady.” There’s a list of essential books including The Prophet, The Moosewood Cookbook and The Lord of the Rings. Hippie movies, too: Billy Jack, Easy Rider, Monterey Pop.
You’ll even learn how to join the Peace Corps and get a copy of your file from the FBI.
without the ’60s groundwork, without all the radical ideas and seeds of change planted nearly five decades ago, what we’d be turning to in our time of need would be a great deal more hopeless.
