A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in UK English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City’s Greenwich Village, San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago’s Old Town community. The term hippie was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier.
The origins of the terms hip and hep are uncertain. By the 1940s, both had become part of African American jive slang and meant “sophisticated; currently fashionable; fully up-to-date”. The Beats adopted the term hip, and early hippies inherited the language and countercultural values of the Beat Generation. Hippies created their own communities, listened to psychedelic music, embraced the sexual revolution, and many used drugs such as marijuana and LSD to explore altered states of consciousness.
In 1967, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, and Monterey Pop Festival popularized hippie culture, leading to the Summer of Love on the West Coast of the United States, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast. Hippies in Mexico, known as jipitecas, formed La Onda and gathered at Avándaro, while in New Zealand, nomadic housetruckers practiced alternative lifestyles and promoted sustainable energy at Nambassa. In the United Kingdom in 1970, many gathered at the gigantic third Isle of Wight Festival with a crowd of around 400,000 people. In later years, mobile “peace convoys” of New Age travellers made summer pilgrimages to free music festivals at Stonehenge and elsewhere. In Australia, hippies gathered at Nimbin for the 1973 Aquarius Festival and the annual Cannabis Law Reform Rally or MardiGrass. “Piedra Roja Festival”, a major hippie event in Chile, was held in 1970. Hippie and psychedelic culture influenced 1960s and early 1970s youth culture in Iron Curtain countries in Eastern Europe.
Hippie fashion and values had a major effect on culture, influencing popular music, television, film, literature, and the arts. Since the 1960s, mainstream society has assimilated many aspects of hippie culture. The religious and cultural diversity the hippies espoused has gained widespread acceptance, and their pop versions of Eastern philosophy and Asian spiritual concepts have reached a larger group.
The vast majority of people who had participated in the golden age of the hippie movement were those born during the 1940s as well as the early 1950s. These included the oldest of the Baby Boomers as well as the youngest of the Silent Generation; the latter who were the actual leaders of the movement as well as the pioneers of Rock music. (Wikipedia)
The Merry Pranksters — author Ken Kesey’s collective of LSD disciples — atop their bus, Further, getting ready to take LSD across America. Date and location unspecified.Hippies dance during a “love-in” in Los Angeles on Sept. 22, 1968.At Woodstock, a man eats lunch on the hood of the school bus. 1969.The Merry Pranksters arrive at Woodstock with a school bus full of LSD. 1969.Ken Kesey poses for a photo with a young flower child. La Honda, California. 1971.A Merry Prankster called “The Hermit” touches up the paint on the magic bus, Further. San Francisco, California. 1966.Merry Prankster and author Stewart Brand sets up instruments on top of the group’s magic bus. San Francisco, California. 1966.A couple waits for the start of the Monterey Pop Festival in California. 1967.Altamont Free Concert. 1969.Hippie family living in a painted bus. Date unspecified.A young hippie sits cross-legged in a New York City park. 1969.Hippies passing a joint at a commune. Date unspecified.Music fans gather in Hyde Park to see the Rolling Stones in concert. 1969.A Hells Angel relaxes on the scaffolding during the Isle of Wight music festival. 1970.Hippies relaxing on the beach. Date unspecified.A female dancer, decorated in fluorescent body paint and with feathers in her hair, attends an event at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom. 1967.Hippies gathered around a large tree at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Date unspecified.Ron “Pigpen” McKernan of The Grateful Dead. Date unspecified.Concert-goers lend a helping hand to push a stalled VW microbus at the Ozark Music Festival in Sedalia, Missouri. 1974.Woodstock. 1969.An anti-war demonstrator at the University of California, Berkeley throws a tear gas canister at police. 1970.A hippie couple looks out to sea along the beachfront. California. 1967.Young people on their way to Woodstock. 1969.Woodstock attendees hug each other. 1969.Woodstock attendees sit at their camp site on the festival grounds. 1969.Hippie couple stands together at Woodstock. 1969.Hippies together at Woodstock. 1969.View of life inside “Drop City,” an experimental, countercultural community based around cheaply constructed geodesic dome structures. Trinidad, Colorado. 1967.A gathering of hippies at Stonehenge to mark the summer solstice. Date unspecified.American political and social activists Abbie Hoffman and Anita Kushner sit cross-legged on either side of Linn House (center), a “Boo-Hoo” leader of the Neo-American Church, devoted to the use of psychedelic drugs. He performed their wedding ceremony in Central Park, New York. 1967.A nude woman stands before a crowd at a concert in London’s Hyde Park. 1970.A female demonstrator offers a flower to a military policeman during an anti-war protest at the Pentagon. 1967.A Washington, D.C. policeman arrests a demonstrator during a protest against the Vietnam War. 1971.James Edward Baker, known as Father Yod, was the leader of Los Angeles’ Source Family commune. Date unspecified.Members of the Source Family form a human chain. Date unspecified.Ecstatic fans give in to the music at the Isle of Wight festival. 1969.Hippies dancing at East Afton Farm, near Freshwater, during the Isle of Wight festival. 1970.Attendees of the Isle of Wight festival. 1970.A group of dancing hippies. Location unspecified. Circa 1970.Hippie couple in San Francisco, 1967
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