Bryan Boone: Hippies

  What happened? A couple of nights ago I was watching an infomercial for Time Life’s Summer of Love CD collection. I watched as Tommy James of Tommy James and the Shondells was describing the summer of 1967 when the beginnings of a counterculture known as the Hippie movement started in a district of San Francisco known as Haight Ashbury. This movement rapidly became a nationwide phenomenon that spread to Canada and Europe before it died down somewhere around the mid 70’s.

  Hippies opposed war, they believed in love, peace, hope and championed music icons like John Lennon, Janice Joplin, Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia; most Hippies were musicians themselves and carried a “make love not war” banner everywhere they went. In August of 1969 an event that has been dubbed by Rolling Stone as “the most famous event in rock history” took place, Woodstock. On a large farm in Bethel, NY an event that had hoped to get at least 50,000 in attendance, culminated in crowds in excess of 500,000 and an event where tickets became irrelevant. The fences to the event were never completed and soon became overrun by people attending; the announcement was made “it’s a free concert now,” as Hippies began to pour in. There was so many of them then, united in their message as well as their loyalty to the planet and the human race.