“All the good times are past and gone…all the good times are o’er.”---Traditional
Ella Thompson is a feisty young reporter for the Florida Alligator introduced to The Flying Pie editors via email by both Jeff and Marty Jourard at the same time. She’s writing an article about hippies in the Wonder Years, partly because she wants to be one herself. “I missed the boat….or maybe it was the VW van,” says Ella. “I believe I was totally born in the wrong era. Where can I get some real psychedelic posters? How do I find honestogod body paint or one of those gauzy angel dresses? If you tell me there’s a Summer of Love revival in Golden Gate park, I’m leavin’ on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again.” Where have you gone Wavy Gravy-O, the New Wave lifts its hopeful eyes to you?
Ella Thompson is not the only tie-dyed pilgrim. As the world drifts further and further from the ideals of hippiedom and American youth sinks precariously deep into its beloved hypnotic cell phones, a smattering of voices cry out in the wilderness, pleading for succor. “Where have all the hippies gone, long time passing?” they’d like to know. Did any true communes make it through The Great Drought? Did Jerry Garcia fake death to take up painting oils on the Left Bank and has he finally grown bored? Is there still life in Girdwood? Is Haight Street that great street, they just wanna know. Good questions, all. The Flying Pie, always a fan of lysergic acid diethylamide matters, takes up the gauntlet.
Wherefore Art Thou, Saffron?
Eugene, Oregon has replaced San Francisco as Hippie Capital of the Western United States, a sizeable but cozy nest of old-timers and newbies feasting on the city’s Bohemian bent and supportive cultural and artistic mien. The locals even argue that Eugene is the hippie capital of the entire United States, if not the world. “Hippie is an attitude,” says local pothead Ed Perkins. “I have that ‘tude and so do so many people here. Before grass was even known about by most people, you could find it on the green streets of Eugene. The city is art-friendly with a lively music scene and no hassles from The Man.”
All of which could probably be dittoed by the citizens of Manhattan or Austin or Gainesville, Florida. So what is it that makes Eugene number one? Ryan Nickum of the website Estately.com, which delivered the ratings, says this: “To determine the overall ranking we included some measurables like marijuana legality and use, number of stores selling hemp products and number of tie-dye products for sale from local Etsy stores. Then we added factors like progressive government, local hippie icons, intensity of protests and popular hippie festivals. This helped us separate similar cities on our list, but we knew all along that Eugene would win. All you have to do to realize this is to go there. It just is.”
Nickum’s group also ran an informal poll on Facebook and the overwhelming response was that Eugene was number one. “You can’t even argue it,” he says. “San Francisco has really changed, Berkeley’s hippie culture is watered down, it’s no contest. You can even buy tie-dyed underwear in Eugene.” Estately.com put Olympia, Washington at number 2 and Portland, Oregon number 3. Lewis & Clarke would be proud.
If you’re going to old Missoula, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. This Montana playground is Big Sky Country’s magnet for artists, musicians, hippies and river surfers, “a taste of Austin in the mountains,” as one local puts it. The primo place to go for counterculture types is the Hip Strip, a section of Higgins Avenue that was uptown back in the day. The strip consists of several blocks of unique and quirky shops and restaurants south of Bear Tracks Bridge. The new KettleHouse Amphitheater on the banks of the Blackfoot River near town is a state-of-the-art structure with bombastic sound and, of course, the requisite brewery on-site. The city even has a spectacular carousel if you’re not spinning enough already.
If it looks like all the hippies have followed Horace Greeley’s instructions to go west, not so. Estately.com advises the state with the most hippies is the rural paradise of Vermont. In the summer of 1970, about 300 kids living in collectives throughout that state gathered at Earthworks, a commune less than three miles from the Canadian border in the town of Franklin, inspired by anti-establishment militancy and the vision of an artistic eden where creative pursuits could flourish in a back-to-the-land atmosphere. Any differences they had proved less important than shared objectives and they agreed on goals such as a cooperative system of buying food and establishing a clinic to provide free healthcare. This movement was called Free Vermont.
“We talked about our dreams,” recalls Barbara Nolfi, one of the original members. “We wanted to make a better life for everyone, make things accessible without bureaucracy, profits and distortion.” Within a year, some of those dreams were realized. Free Vermonters formed buying clubs, which morphed into Burlington’s Onion River Co-op by 1973. Today, it encompasses the bustling downtown City Market. The People’s Free Clinic, established in August of 1971 by the idealistic communers as a seat-of-the-pants operation in August of 1971 in the Old North End, is now the comprehensive Community Health Center on Riverside Avenue. Barbara Nolfi, then a midwifery student, helped launch the Vermont Women’s Health Center, which merged with Planned Parenthood in 2001.
The alternative path was challenging but also rather idyllic, according to Earthworks alumnus Bruce Taub. “The communards often try to describe the choices we are making as “walking in beauty,” and that mantra guides us on our mission. While most Vermont hippie communes were not explicitly political, Earthworks was, attempting both to return to the land and to have a political impact.”
Joey Klein was a New Jerseyite drawn to the agricultural lifestyle. He went to Vermont in 1968 to attend Marlboro College, studying soil and plant science and earned a master’s degree in social ecology from Goddard College, along the way joining protests against the Vietnam War. “For me, being a hippie is about peace, love and understanding, trying to communicate honestly, finding a right livelihood and not wrecking the planet, and I’m sticking to my non-guns.”
Long after the hippie era waned, a hippie mystique survives in the Green Mountain State. Kids wearing tie-dye copied the old free-form mode while dancing to bands like Phish. Maria Moulton, the CEO at Main Street Landing, a socially-conscious redevelopment company on the Burlington waterfront, vows never to forget the enlightened values that forged the movement of the sixties and seventies. “I’m proud of being a hippie,” she smiles, “Those are my roots and that’s what drove me to do what I have done. It drives me to still fight for the issues that we fought for fifty years ago. There are a lot of likeminded people in these Vermont hills.”
Alternatives
Across the Canadian border in British Columbia, the city of Nelson is hippified and happy about it. If you happen to find yourself in Hawaii, zip over to Pa’ia in Maui County and catch some waves of varying types. Joshua Tree in California is an enchanted land full of music, psychedelic art and trees straight out of your last acid trip. You won’t believe this but even Arkansas has a hippie depot called Eureka Springs in the Ozarks and New Jersey has another in Lambertville, right next door to the better-known New Hope, Pa.
Boulder, Colorado has been there, done that in the old days of hippie legend and a lot of the painted Old Guard never left. The motto of the town is “Hip since 1859,” but better make it a short visit, the city has a cost of living 42% above the national average. You can do what many Colorado hippies have done, however, and move 17 miles west to bustling Nederland, which sits in a valley created by glaciers thousands of years ago and was once home to registered hippie Danny Levine. The town hosts numerous music and arts festivals, including Nedfest and the infamous Frozen Dead Guy Days. Last time we looked, the little town had almost as many marijuana stores as people, so you’ll never be without.
Freak Street Kathmandu was at one time the final destination on the hippie trail from Europe to Nepal. It still exists but is no longer called by its old name, but rather Jhochhen Tole, and it exits the south side of the Kathmandu Durbar Square. Hippies originally went for the dope but stayed for the Himalayan culture, spiritual vibes, temple bells, chanting monks and exotic mountain mystery the remote kingdom offered. All are available still, including the hashish.
About Those Communes….
Despite the purist intents of most of the original residents of hippie communes who envisioned edens where everyone participated in the work force equally and all enjoyed the benefits, many communes soon devolved into a striking resemblance of normal society where bums lived off the efforts of others and the best laid plans of mice and men often went awry. Even worse, several were mere vehicles driven by dirty old men (and some young ones) attempting to collect a harem of addled and submissive women. But there were successes, too, most of which you never heard of. “When the communities stopped being preoccupied with sex and drugs,” said Lois Arkin of the Los Angeles Eco-Village, “the media stopped being obsessed with them.”
For most of the people who began communities like The Farm in Tennessee, it wasn’t about sex and drugs: It was all about changing the world. It still is. The word “commune” may be out of date, but according to people who still live in them, the ideals behind those back-to-the-earth efforts are not, and they feel they’re making a difference in many ways. There are numberless contemporary communes---now called “intentional communities”—stretching across the country from rural Tennessee, Missouri and Oregon to downtown L.A. and New York City. They’re organized on various different principles, whether it be the environment, shared political views, religious beliefs or some other set of ideals.
The definition of the arrangements is rather broad, according to Laird Schaub, executive secretary of the Fellowship for International Community, an umbrella organization of some 3000 such communities worldwide and a longtime resident of Sandhill Farm in Rutledge, Missouri. By the FIC’s definition, an IC is a group of people who “share property on the basis of explicit common values,” which can be ecological, religious, social, political or psychological. Many of the member communities are eco-villages focused on environmental issues while others are followers of the co-housing movement which began in Denmark. The only firm requirements for membership in the FIC are that groups be “upfront and honest about their views, don’t advocate violence and don’t hold people against their will.”
Self-described “leftover hippie” and author Connie Moore says, “I didn’t know people were still becoming hippies, but I do know there are many thousands of us left over from the sixties, even if we no longer wear tie-dye and run around barefoot on acid. Good luck to the intentional communes. There’s surely a place for them. Our hearts are still open to the possibilities that unity brings”
Oh, and good news for budding journalist and would-be hippie Ella Thompson. They’re looking for a promising Scribe at the Hog Farm in Berkeley, California. It’s 2789 miles by thumb, but you’ll get there in a hurry if you remember to wear your Mr. Natural shirt. Good luck, Ella, God bless and don’t forget to write. Here’s a box of Zig Zags, they’ll help you get through the gate.
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| Ella with umbrella. Or maybe it's Mary Poppins, you pick. |
That’s all, folks….
