What was it like to be in the 60s?

greatest thing about the 60's was that i was twenty something ... your grandkids will ask you the same things about the 2000's ... any time you're young and free is a good time.

 

from what u guys seem to say...it was a time when we stood up to the government...why the hell wouldent it be a good place to be. I wish for that era to be mine for many reasons...the music...the new age was created... but the biggest is...every one understood how i feel...

 

I came of age in the 60s/70s. Born in 1954 with a brother 4 years older to me that was into the hippie scene right off, which enticed me and lead me that way as well, at an early age.

It was a time of experimentation, free thinking, "live and let live" among the hippies, but we still had our parents and families to deal with. They were stuck in their belief systems and were somewhat ashamed of what we were becomming. It took a few years for that to rub off a bit on my parents, and they mellowed. My dad accepting that we all smoked pot. He had built a recording studio in our garage (sound booth) and we'd all cram in there with him while he played big band music (Benny Goodman, etc) and let us toke out. Mom on the other hand didn't "get" pot until the late 80s. And when she started smoking it, it was a regular thing for her after she quit the booze. She toked until the day she died.

I'd given up a son for adoption in 1971 - and promptly got kicked out of the house by her when she found out I was on birth control. I ended up on Zendik farms for a spell with my brother and his "old lady". THAT, freaked her out.

When I went back home, I could finally be myself - and my parents often "hosted" parties for me and my friends. The pot still had to be hidden from them, but they let us drink at home because they thought it was safer than having us out on the streets doing it. For my parents, it was cocktail parties every weekend. They were fairly "loose" times for quite a few parents (note Donna's parents from That 70s Show) and us kids.

Growing up in Los Angeles in those days, we spent a lot of time in Hollywood and Griffith Park. Love-ins at Seal beach, protests, working for the McGovern campaigne, getting high with the lawyer that ran the campaign (who was from Boston and rolled the skinniest joint I'd ever seen). I even ended up in the back seat of my '64 Chevy Impala with him. hubba hubba Oh, did I mention all the concerts??? CSN&Y WITH Joni, at Griffith Park. That concert cost $2.00. And yeah, I wore my fringe jacket.

I then found my way to San Diego for a few years where my closest friends were a group of herion addicts. Crazy days. Welfare, comodities (free boxes of gov't food from the church across the street), drinking wine and listening to music and toking all day. Doing odd jobs here and there, but mostly just being free.

Ah, the tye dyed sheets and curtains I used to make....*remembers it all fondly*

And yes, I'd love to return to the 70s (early 70s). Those were the best days of my life, with my crowd of friends (whom I'm still in contact with) - and with all of my immediate family dead an gone now, yeah, I'd like to return to better, happier days.

 

I was drafted in in the late 60s..we had plenty of hippies "in"the service at the time!..we were called Bucks.(rhymed with "dont give a fuck!")..staying alive and staying ripped were pretty synonymous!as I recall...matter of fact my last day I celebrated so hard ,all I did was walk around post totally detroyed getting paranoid I'd "forget" to go by Finance and "clear post" as it was called.(your last stop before leaving!)..once out ,it was getting a job in North Bergen NJ and going to school in NYC...eye openers to say the least. Head shops,underground record shops,and more. Had to be the closest thing to letting a dog outta the pen after a couple years. Just amazed at everything!..getting in line at the Filmore for a concert, music shops in the Village etc..Also accidentally dropped into the VietVets Against the War March in NYC later in the year(few feet away from John and Yoko,etc.)totally different from anything I was used to....and thats basically the definition of how I try to describe the 60s to my son....it was not possible to pigeon-hole a definition because everything was so subject to change at any given moment!! that was the neat part of it.. Oh well ,I miss it.

 

most of us ancients who lived and loved during the 60's would i think say you had to be there ... we can tell you about the vibe ... the music ... the micro-minis the girls wore ... the beatle suits and boots ... the great british breakthrough ... vietnam ...
only having to worry about making your girl pregnant when you had sex ... the cold war ...when the stone were rolling and not strolling ... it was a time when those of us who were there had the same concerns ... fears as kids have today ... we hated our parents too and made love not war ... we cried when jfk was killed but we cried even more during 9/11 ... apart from all that ... shit it was just like today only we had no pcs or cellphones ...peace.

 

Well the sixties were the best time of my life .... The colorful clothes, the bellbottoms,just laying out under the stars with our brothers and sisters each one of us full of love and happiness for one another.... Yep the hippie still lives in me.... just groovin to the music and just enjoying life itself. We were hardly accepted back then because of our dress and sometimes our right for freedom and speech and for what we believed.... But as I look around now could we have believed any different for that time was for us.... Peace to ya's.... mistibluflwer.

 

I was just getting out of high school in '67. I used to get off school on friday afternoon, pack a backpack. Strap it onto my old beat up Harley 250 and run up hiway 101 to Golden Gate Park. There was a Shell Station on Stanyan, right across from the entrance to the park. I'd park my bike behind that station, l'd leave my backpack strapped to the bike and disappear into the park. What happened in the park is a whole nother story. When I'd come back out of the park on Sunday afternoon, the bike was always there, untouched. The backpack was always there untouched. For me that was the essence of the 60's. You could trust strangers. Try that nowdays, Lol!
Dusty

 

I remember that station Dusty-Don't tell me-you crossed the street and spent the day smoking cheap 60 bucks a kilo "takes a whole joint ta feel it" rag weed then strolled up to the fish and chip place or into the Phsycedelic Shop before gettin on your scooter. Did you head down Fillmore St. to the original Fillmore Auditorium to hear the Dead play that night? Man' life was easy if you had a place to live-I was lucky I had my parents house just 20 miles down the coast. To sleep on the streets would have been a real bummer and thankfully there was alot of communes and crash pads then-before the invasion began-You could have gone a mile down Haight then dropped down to Page St. and rented a room at Peter Albins place' from Big Brother and The Holding Co.. The old victorian there was turned into a hippy/beatnik boarding house and the best part was that practicing for their first gigs ' down in the basement was Janis Joplin and Big Brother!-

 

Changing attitudes takes alot longer then we ever thought it would. It can't be done in a decade' maybe a century. It has to happen from both sides and it needs to be done with love and not forced on people in employment or school busing. The wars that are being fought today are because of people not excepting the ways of others.
Some day these differences won't matter and people can share this blue marble in peace.

 

That was a most excellent post. Bravo! Also loved the other posts from the original hippies.

 

Great recall there Dew!-In 69' you were 15 outside Detroit. In 69' I was 19 in San Francisco and yes' it was a simpler life as far as gas prices and housing and the bbqs at the neighbors but then we have to remember that little war we had going on as well.
Had we not had Viet Nam drilled into our heads everyday from both sides' life would have been much nicer. Did you ever make it to SF? But' by then it was all over in the Haight.

 

you did paps/ma, you did.

 

quite contrary. there is the internet now. its non disruptable, inevitable. its bringing direct democracy concept to the world bit by bit. the design logic they used to make it indestructible in the case of nuclear wars is making it also impossible to censor or avoid it.

if hell doesnt break loose, the going is good. just take care of your health and stay alive. if not, well who knows what will happen.

 

for any mainstream school of thought, there happens to be people getting in due to the psychology of the flock. not truly into it, but they get in because everyone else does, and its hip. they later fall out.

 

"Now most of the 60's/70's 'hippies' have become the 50-60 year old money-worshipping, egocentric, Bush-loving conservatives. They own businesses that condone urinalysis, they go to church, they are anti-drug, and could care less about personal liberty because it doesn't benefit their estate. Funny how people change. "-------

The real "hippys" of the 60s are not Republicans or money hungry war mongers. I resent those comments because I was one of the original Haight Ashbury "hippys" and I have never wavered from my ideals and attitude about life. We learned along time ago about the evils of gread and even though we all went to work' we had kids to feed and lives to lead but the things we learned back then are still alive and well. As far as condoning a UA' so what? Do you want the guy working on heavy machinery next to you' stoned? I don't-there's a time and place for that and the job site is not a good place to be getting high. And whats the problem with church?-Freedom to worship is gaurenteed in the constitution. Don't be so quick to slam the way other people live. Thats not the hippy way. Exceptance is.

 

Well if you noticed, (which I noticed you didn't) I quoted someone else. I wished I was alive at that time. To be part of all that. Not to mention see some of my favorite performers, who are for the most part, dead.

 

ouch-well-I suppose you could go ahead and make it your own-whos gonna know? lol-so-good post COSMIC DUST!-happy?

 

"Robspace2, you were one of the trailblazers. I was only an egg when I first did LSD in May 1969"-Schlubelberg-in the year 66'-San Francisco was enjoying a private party. It was a good time to be there but in all I would much rather have grown up in a more country enviroment. For me' the city of San Francisco holds tons of memories but the country is much more peaceful.

 

from 67' on' due to overcrowding and the influx of hard drugs to the Haight' the party ended' there. But the by then the whole world was waking up to the new freedoms and ideas that we were living. The mass public started asking questions of their government about this war' and lets face it; that war was the center point and focus of the whole movement. It had to stop!-"We"' the long haired druggies were not the ones to stop it-we were only part of a nationwide movement that came together through total frustration to put an end to the killing that had been going on for years. We can't take complete credit but partial credit for getting the ball rolling. It took the whole country to end it just as it will again. When I watched people being killed up front at Altamont' yea it could have been so nice' and then John Lennon said the dream is over-it was-but some things never die-like truth and honesty and caring about life and other people. Those things never fade away.Don't give up the world-change it

 

Hey it's cool. I figured maybe for one the original poster may know & I couldn't take credit for his brilliant post. (or her?)