Whenever we talk about the 60's or 70's, there's always at least hippies in the back of our mind.  ;)

Like most people, I know that hippies didn't just spring out of nowhere at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 1960, it took a few years for them to accumulate. 

And I also know they didn't end exactly in 1969. Or did they? Can someone tell me when the hippies first showed up and when their culture ended!  :)

Whenever we talk about the 60's or 70's, there's always at least hippies in the back of our mind.  ;)

Like most people, I know that hippies didn't just spring out of nowhere at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 1960, it took a few years for them to accumulate. 

And I also know they didn't end exactly in 1969. Or did they? Can someone tell me when the hippies first showed up and when their culture ended!  :)





As I saw it then, the hippy "look" started in San Fransisco around 1965 in the Haight Ashbury area, but it didn't take a life in the East Coast until 1965 when Sonny and Cher got their hit song "I got you babe", appearing on TV , Sonny with long hair wearing animal fur vests over a tee shirts and bell bottom pants and Cher in black turtle necks sweaters with her straight long black hair and heavy dark eye makeup wearing a vest and Indian bead jewelry,they were strange looking characters for that time, but like a wild fire their "hippy look" ran through the New York area in a short time.  The "Hip" image was really introduced by the Beatles but in a higher styled neater British look created on Carneby Street, London.

I only commented on the "hippy look" not the free spirited commune living societies that the definition of "Hippy"  represented. A way of life that went into the early 70's and maybe some still might exist today in the deserts and mountains out west. I have to say also that maybe the biker gangs in the 50's dressed "hip" styled and lived the commune life not by choice but out of necessity being outlaws on the run most of the time and planted the seeds of that life style to the common "drop out' civilian of the time. there was big changes going on in America at the and the "hippy" look was the "uniform" of the time. It lost it's punch in the mid 70's but if you look around you still see some  old hippies stuck in a time warp now with balding heads and pony tails still wearing their water buffalo sandels.

I can't speak to when hippie culture started, although if pressed I'd say probably around late '66 or so.  As far as when it ended, I'm not sure either.  But, as a 70's teen, my recollection tells me that it was cool to be a hippie in early-72, and it was no longer cool to be a hippie in mid-74 (even though there were still hippies).  So the hippie culture seemed to deteriorate sometime in the 72-74 timeframe.  If I were to pin it down, I'd say things changed around late '72, roughly the aftermath of the '72 election (though I don't know if there's a significant correlation).

This is just an educated guess, because I really don't know, but I wanna say 65 - 74? Just from what I've seen in history and photos and stuff.

I'd say, from research, that the Hippie culture has it's roots in the '50s, but the actual culture appeared around 1966 and ''ended'' sometime between 1971-1973. In 1970, you still had large scale protests (see the May Day Match, over 10,000 people arrested in 2 days), but with the Manson trial, the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin in 1970 and '71, and the end of America's involvement in the Vietnam War in 1973, Hippies as a major, counter-cultural force probably ended between 1971 and 1973, with most of the Hippie elements (long hair, pot, etc) being assimilated into mainstream culture or modified by the blooming Heavy Metal culture; By 1975, we were in the beginning of the era of Disco, Punk and Glam Metal.

Hippies probably started earlier in the West Coast. I watched "Beach Party" (1964) today and this group of kids seem a little hippyish. But there's also greasers in it... but they aren't proclaimed to be cool anymore.

I've discussed this on numerous threads.  The multifaceted hippie culture grew out of earlier bohemian and non-conformist subcultures you can trace back to the middle ages.  It's most direct ancestor was the Beatnik movement which emerged chiefly in Greenwich Village and San Francisco in the 1950s.  The Civil Rights movement further catalyzed the social justice aspect of hippie culture.  

I think it important to include the Baby Boom and the prosperity of post-WWII America as facilitators of hippie culture.  You had a huge on-rush of teens and young adults in the early 1960s who had unprecedented aspect to education and leisure time which was in previous generations available only to youth of exceptional privilege.  In the 1960s middle class kids had the chance to experiment with different lifestyles rather than just getting married and going to work as soon as they left home.  

When did hippie culture end?  It never did.  Yes, its influence waned and the right-wing backlash of the later seventies and early eighties was successful in instilling a sense of cynicism and materialism in my generation, Generation X.  However, there are pockets of counterculture still around.  Unfortunately, sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll has had more staying power than the more spiritual and revolutionary side of hippie culture.

I know this probably is simplistic but I see Gen X as the product of "Hippy Boomers' and Millennials as products of the "Yuppy Boomers". Including the long hair and dingy cloths (Grunge), Gen X also mirrored the disregard of the establishment. Many later Xrs also have Aquarian Boomers as parents. Millennials generally grew up with more Yuppish parents that centered on the brighter but more materialistic households.


Very well said, Echo. You get a Karmel for that!

The hippie culture ended? Oh man, then what I'm I going to do with my blue jeans, long hair & tie-dyed tee shirts?

Peace, man.


Cat

The hippie culture ended? Oh man, then what I'm I going to do with my blue jeans, long hair & tie-dyed tee shirts?

Peace, man.


Cat


As you got older and not losing our head from all these years ago, you can still love them, you can still wear them till your sixty four.

As you got older and not losing our head from all these years ago, you can still love them, you can still wear them till your sixty four.



;D ;D ;D ;D



Cat