How did you make the transition to hippie?

both, slow & fast..guess u could say instantly was what i was, just took years to realize it..

copy? isnt that like more a conformist thing then a hippie thing? cant say i coppied any1

dunno if i had1 oh perhaps yes perhaps, well when i was 18 i was seeing a girl a few years younger, & her parents , her family was pretty much like my family, & very much the new age hippie family, & they actualy took me to my 1st gathering which was like a huge milestone on the path.. but over the years id met or spent time with others like leary hoffman & ram dass..all certainly influential ..unfortunately, i think my hippie mentors are lil more yuppy then hippir these days but they still seem to keep the spirit alive

actualy the 1st time i'd seen hippies i was like hmm 4? & i was like mom look at those colorfull happy people..& she was like ohh those are hippies dont make eye contact or they'll rob you for drugs (something like that) & so i was lil scared, a few days later i was out ridding my bike (maybe i was 6? i diunno) & got lost, found a park id never seen before & there were the same hippies just hanging out..i was hopelessly lost so i took a chance to talk to them..& they were the nicest ppl i ever met, helped me fnd my way home laughed when i told em what my mom ghad said & were just so fun to be around..& i realized that in genral they were far better ppl then the ppl trying to make them seem badf were..& i think at that momment i decided to be the best me i could be regardless of how much that makes me look like a bad person or loser in others eyes..it was about feeling good about the self, not trying to impress others..

parents..mom especialy.. too worried about how it would make her look to the neighbours or some crap..lol
other then that..noone

 

When a butterfly kicked me in the head.

 

Thou soarest high, soaringeagle.

 

Hm...Well, I've always been a '60s kid, thanks to my parents. I grew up on '60s music, TV shows, movies, etc.

I have only been completely enthralled with the '60s for about three years or so, and I've only just recently become what one could maybe call a "hippie."

It's been a very gradual thing for me.

 

i made the transition recently, my mom is totally with it seeing as she grew up a flower child, she tells me stories about laguna beach and what not, the mountains, but yea, my dad, he kind of gets it, but doesn't really accept it, my friends just shrug it off as me being drunk or whatever, so yeah...i like the hippie ways, and people who are hippie just see how naive normal/programmed people are, and i like that..lol

 

"Hippy is an establishment label for a profound, invisible, underground, evolutionary process. For every visible hippy, barefoot, beflowered, beaded, there are a thousand invisible members of the turned-on underground. Persons whose lives are tuned in to their inner vision, who are dropping out of the TV comedy of American Life."
-Timothy Leary

Change is gradual. With each new experience, each person you meet, every conversation you have, you alter you belief system and, ultimately, your consciousness. I do believe that most "true" hippies wouldn't label themselves hippies at all simply because they are just livin' life the best way they have found for themselves. One reason why people may shy away from the "hippie" title is simply because they do not feel the need to be categorized by outside forces. The straight community has many stereotypical ideas of what it means to be a hippie but the point of being a part of the counterculture is that you resist the pressure to conform. Personally, however, I embrace the term because I cherish the history and all those who came before us that enlightened the world.

 

I think I've secretly always been a peace loving flower child. There really was no transition.

 

I used to wish I was old enough to go to these things I had heard about called music festivals where people could actually buy brownies that had weed in them! I was 14 then. I started going to shows at 16 and have been hooked ever since, to me it's about the music and the people, the community of us who have a common vibe. I just love going to a camping festival and knowing that I can walk up to anyone there, even if it's 80,000 people, and end up with a new friend. If it's in you, it's in you!

 

LSD 25 + Red Hot Chili Peppers one night ... credit to all 4 of them equally, even though John was the one throwing my head all around + quite literally


this is the truth quitely

 

In school in the 60's people would ask you what you were,

A greaser ? A frat? A sosh ? A hippie?

Well first I was a frat ( a conformer of sorts.), wore madras shirts and tried to fit in to the school clique, clubs and activities,(wasn't my thing), and then my sister ( rebellious tough girl) decided it would be advantageous to dress me up as a "greaser" or a "hood" with all black clothes, and ratted my hair with lots of hairspray, applied thick dark makeup, taught me to smoke cigarettes, and brought me to the local movie theatre to meet boys, and be cool. This is where I had my first kiss.( OH my!) All I got from all that was unhealthy hair, eye infections, and a hickey.

After that I think I found myself attracted to guys and gals with long hair and met some nice alternatives or hippies on my school bus. I also had a friend who had a sister who was in college, and she smoked cannabis, and introduced me to that and the hippie dress style. I have been a hippie ever since, and am so glad that somehow I was attracted to the lifestyle, even though no one else in my family was, and am now reaping the benefits of being "hip" on a continual basis for over 40 years now. Peace !

 

The first hippie I saw was in about 1965 in Santa Cruz. Me and my cousins were walking behind this dude with a cowboy hat and hair down to his shoulders. We thought he was scuzzy. Jump ahead two years to my high school library, looking at pictures in Newsweek of the Summer of Love. Interesting, I thought. I had all the Beatles albums by then. Next shot, 1970, me, long haired, riding slowly down a deserted road with a couple friends smoking opiated hash. I was sitting in the back leaning over the front seat wondering why my friends were high and I wasn't. Then suddenly the driver slamed on the brakes for no reason. I went head-first under the dashboard, the blood rushed to my head and everything seemed to be happening in the past. I screamed "Shit, I'm stoned!" over and over again because I'd never gotten off before and every time I said it I realized how stoned I was. The next day we tripped in a college dorm room. We lay down on the floor in the dark, locked arms and listened to the Moody Blues. After that the war had a lot to do with it. Lennon, Steve Gaskin, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, my stoner frat brothers, playing guitar and learning Beatles and Dylan and John Prine songs, discovering the food co-op and health food, moving to the country. In 1985 I cut my hair and went back to college. I hated it. We skeedaddled out of town and lived on the edge of the Gila National Wilderness with other 30-something hippies in the neighborhood. After that I just never could get straight again and now, what's the point?

 

Hey Beatnik !


One of the transitions to hippie came after reading The Farm book by Stephen Gaskin. I left Washington State (1975), and traveled by bus to Summertown Tennessee to check out the community of 1300 people living together there. I stayed for a few months and it had a profound effect on the lifestyle I chose after I left there. I continued to live communally and grow in the hippie lifestyle. I also birthed five daughters naturally (first born daughter was born there), and starting making soy foods from their cookbook. I became a vegeterian, and it was all good.

 

Right on sister! Yes that book made me want to drop it all and hightail it down to the Farm. Tried to get there a couple times and had some friends in it but it didn't happen for me. Probably a good thing in the end as I am kinda independent(Uranus conjunct Sun and Mercury). Didya ever read Voices from the Farm? Great stories from the old days.

 

I never really made any "transition". I've just always been myself, and been called a hippie. And in the stereotypical sense, i guess i would call myself one as well.

 

Through music e.g. Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.

 

im prolly slightly more Martian than hippy, prolly more of a musician than a hippy too ... hippiedom used to be my religion, but transposed to Buddha in the end

titles mean shit, words mean nothing, & reputations are an illusion

 

I don't know...
In one moment I made a decision...
I was really pissed off about all crimes, war crimes...

I'm a humanist so...
Here I am...

 

i think i always had it in me, past lives and such

my dad always listened to the music and one day, i think it was 7th grade, i was just like ew, i dont like this music (rap, pop etc.) i'll just listen to my dads music instead. that started a loooooooong chain of events and then i met this kid who i really like who is also a hippie and hes influenced a lot of what i do as much as i hate to admit it. and here i am today.

 

For me it was just the feeling that I felt comfortable with anything that had to do with the Sixties. Still not sure if I believe in past lives or anything. But with the 60s, clothes, movies, music, etc. I felt most connect with it. I was definitely influenced by these things as well as reading about it and just wishing I could travel back time. It just became the person I am today I guess. =)

 

Growing up in the 60's I first encountered hippies where most people in Cambridge,MA did .. Harvard square. I was awed and amazed and a tad too young to fully join in the culture.. after all, I was born in '59. My high school years were more often surrounded by the disco culture of the 70's but I still felt that tug back to what I had seen earlier. Growing up in a VERY liberal area (the People's Republic of Cambridge) where diversity, multiculturalism and tolerance ruled, the core of hippiedom lingered long after the popular movements faded from national consciousness. I was a geek growing up and due to an interest in computers (owned a TRS-80 and an Apple II back in the mid/late 70's) and slowly turned away from my early hippie-like routes towards yuppiedom by the mid 80's. I spent 10 years in the corporate data processing role and was coated by a veneer of yuppie trappings (vacations in the Caribbean, fine restaurants etc..) until in the mid 90's I decided to chuck it all, live a simpler live and leave an area of the country (New England) that I loved, but which had become too expensive and too corporate. Now, as an MIS consultant living in West Virginia and telecommuting I'm far more likely to be wearing tie dye/dashiki's and sandals/barefoot and reading Tao or Buddhist literature rather than the WSJ. It's been quite a ride through the looking glass and although my wife and I get stares by the right wing fundies here in WV, I'm glad for the journey ... back to my inner hippie roots. Now as I approach my 48th birthday I admit I am still re-discovering myself and sometimes feel I've lived two different lives as two different people. The mistakes I've made along the way make me grateful for the choices I've ultimately made and a return to hippie roots has been a large part of that. So it has been a slow transition for me I suppose. Returning to hippie values and lifestyle resulted in meeting my wife (of 10 years) as well and since she's younger than I am, introducing her to alot of boomer-hippie culture as well over those 10 years (so far)..