Hippie also spelled 'hippy' is a
member of a counterculture group that began in the United
States during the Vietnam
War, just
after the British
Invasion in 1960s. Hippie, Flower
Child or
Contemporary Hipster are synonyms for a Hippy. Hippies are people whose
behavior, dress, worldviews, use of psychedelic drugs,
tastes in art, music etc. imply a rejection of
conventional Middle
Class
values. Origins of hippies can be traced back to European
freedom movement groups and Bohemians, American 1940s Hipsters and 1950s Beats.
During the 1950s, aspects of the Beat
movement
metamorphosed into the sixties counterculture,
accompanied by a shift in terminology from
"beatnik" to "hippie" [Read more]. Hence, hippies came from
the Beats. The leading writers known as the
"beats" were Allen
Ginsberg, Jack
Kerouac, William
Burroughs
and Gregory
Corso. Their
followers were called "beatniks", and the word
"beatnik" came from the word
"beatific", which means "bestowing bliss,
blessings, happiness, blissful, saintly” [Def. from:
Dictionary.com].
The most obvious differences between beatniks and hippies
were their tastes in dress and music. Beatniks preferred
Jazz music, abstract art and fashions from Paris, France.
Hippies preferred Folk-Rock music, psychedelic art and
fashions from London (Mod) and San Francisco (jeans,
bandanas, Hippie Look).
The name of The
Beatles, a
1960s English band that started the British
Invasion was
a play of words in the spelling of the words "beat"
+ "beetle = "Beatle".
That play in spelling identified The Beatles with the
Beats and with Hippies. The spelling was a stoke of
genius that came to John Lennon in a dream. On July 6,
1961, John
Lennon was
asked by a reporter from Mersey
Beat (Vol.1
No. 1) how did the name Beatles arrive? He replied
"It came in a vision - a man appeared on a flaming
pie and said 'From this day on you are Beatles, spelled
with an A'. Thank you Mister Man, they said, thanking
him."
To know where we’re going, we
have to understand where we’ve been. In that spirit
this website was built. At first, it was made for folks
the author had met in his travels abroad, who didn't
understand the influence 1960s and hippies had on our
modern culture. The site has also become a source of
first hand information about 1960-70s hippies and the author's personal
experiences, among other things.
Some reasons for the creation of the site
because many websites on the subject were made by people
that were too young in the 1960s to understand what was
going on, weren't born yet or were not hippies
themselves,
because the media portrays of the 1960s is often an image
created to serve conservative corporate propaganda
interests,
because the author's experiences were different from
those of others,
to
prevent destortion of facts about hippies and 1960s Peace
movement,
to
contribute to the global community,
to
create a personal home site on the Web,
to
tell about the author's experiences,
to
preserve the spirit and ideas that are dear to hippies,
and
for other reasons.
I was there, drank the wine, smoked the weed, passed the
acid test, got initiated and was given a hippie name: The
Polish Hippy. So, if you won't expect too much from my
writing skills and find the time to go through some stuff
posted on the site, perhaps you'll learn a bit more about
the 1960-70s and how and why they changed the world so
much. But most of all, this will be a biography of a
1960s Chicago hippy rather then a research type work on
the subject.
In my transatlantic travels and the mentoring work I've
done in Europe, I've met many folks that didn't
understand America; especially the 1960s and hippies. So,
instead of writing a book on the subject, caring photo
albums and scrap books with me and retelling the same
story to everyone I've come across, I've built this site
instead. You'll find lots of information, related links,
photos, my music, etc. here. And the site was built by
me. Thus, the site is an online work of art, and blog
style literature.
My experiences were different from other 1960s hippies. I
lived in Chicago and traveled to Europe. When I started
building this site in about 2000, there were just a few
hippies on the Web. Perhaps that was because many old
hippies were not computer literate; though hippies and
psychedelics did play a major role in the development of
computers, informatics and the World Wide Web, read
this. Web 2.0 technology and services that
made blogs, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace etc. possible
wheren't available then. Web 2.0 made it easy to build
websites without programming skills and opened the World
Wide Web for the masses.
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