Does anyone recall anyone who could be described as a hippie calling themselves a hippie?

[NNN0LHI]

I lived during that time and none of us did. We called ourselves freaks, not hippies. Anyone else remember that? Freaks, greasers, and jocks were the three main groups during that period.

That is why when I hear someone refer to themselves as a hippie it strikes me as odd.

Don

[Warren Stupidity]

1. mostly we were 'freaks' and 'heads' although I don't recall objecting to hippy.

it just wasn't used much by us.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

2. Uh, Me. Grew up in the Haight. Still call myself an old Hippie.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. Remember the place with "BAGELS" painted in white and blue?

I saw that in '82 when I went to see my musician cousin. He was in the house band at the New Bell Saloon.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

43. Sorry, by 82 I was in another universe.

[demwing]

3. I knew many self-defined hippies in Berkeley

and yeah...they were legit hippies

[bemildred]

5. Me, I did that. nt

[azurnoir]

11. so I gotta ask were you part of the 60's group or the 70's group? n/t

[bemildred]

16. That would be the 60s, pre-1969 actually, like '64-68.

I am still known to refer to myself as an old hippie, now and then.

[Sal Minella]

22. I was probably bumping elbows with you at the Co-Op.

Wasn't that a great place -- I hope it still is.

I frequently saw Ludwig (himself) in Ludwig's Fountain and was a charter subscriber to the Berkeley Barb.

Still have some bags from Moe's Books.

The real hippies I knew referred to themselves as "The People."

[bemildred]

39. Yah. I remember Berkeley in '67 & '68, and I went to school there in '75.

Who remembers the diggers now? Emmet Grogan, Kesey, all those crazy people who were not afraid.

[azurnoir]

24. ah I was curious as to when the term freak as opposed to hippie

came into common usage or had it always been by '71 or so when I became a freak the peace and loveness of the earlier folks had largely evaporated, we were more urban and aware that we were being predated on especially girls or remember the infamous Minnesota Strip?

[bemildred]

40. Many names and labels were bandied about as time went on.

There was money to be made, attention to be gained, persons of the opposite sex to become acquainted with. But it didn't start out that way, and the roots go back into the '50s.

[NNN0LHI]

45. Yea, the beatniks were fading out about the time I was born

Though I do remember watching Dobie Gillis a lot on TV.

Don

[azurnoir]

6. lol exactly albeit I was part of the 'second' group

I'm 55 now, and was too young to have been part of the 'Peace and Love flower child' movement of the late '60's but part of the second group that started in the very early 1970's and we called our selves Freaks as I have had to tell my children and other "I was not a hippie, I was a Freak with an F

[Mojorabbit]

9. Same here. I am 56 and hung with the freaks and heads. nt

[NNN0LHI]

17. I was a hybrid of all three during that period

Anti-war but not pacifist. Had long hair but I still loved and played sports. Had a black leather jacket like the greasers wore but that was more because that was how the Black Panthers were dressing during that time and I had friends from school I hung around with who were Panthers back then. I can remember getting the first issue of Rolling Stone from some guy in the street in downtown Chicago. He was passing them out for free.

Mixed bag, huh?

Don

[azurnoir]

27. But that's the way it was by then

in my area Minneapolis the peace and love commune life had gone to wayside we were more street kids

[seabeyond]

7. i was in calif. i knew some hippies. they knew they were hippies.

but it was in 70's. i was too young in the 60's to recognize all that

[sufrommich]

8. Yep, it was freaks for me too. Freaks, Frats and Greasers. nt

[Melinda]

10. **waving hand**

I grew up in CA - spent a LOT of time traveling from the valley to the Bay area, and being indoctrinated by leftist rabble raisers from Berkley. Once we were done making molotov cocktails, we'd commune by the river and sing as we would weave hemp baskets (or was that smoke hemp and sing in baskets!).

Seriously tho, by the time I was 15, I was all about the attitude, dress, music, and communal lifestyle associated these days with being a 'Hippie". All I wanted to do at that point in my life was help stop the war, raise healthy food, show love and kindness to human kind, and get Nixon gone. Funny that.... substitute the GOP for Nixon, and I'm still a Hippie, just now an old one. ;)

[DevonRex]

21. IMO hippies never get old. It's a state of mind. Nt

[DevonRex]

12. Wasn't that in high school tho? Nt

[Hepburn]

13. Refer to myself as an aged Hippie.

Lived in Isla Vista (UCSB) during the '60s and sort of can remember going to class! :smoke:

[CanSocDem]

14. You're right.

"Hippie" always sounded a bit derogatory. Though, in some circles, it was used ironically to explain attitudes and behaviour that were incomprehensible to "straight" people.

A couple of years ago I worked with a guy who was born a decade after the last hippie, but reveled in his nickname 'Hippie'. As I was looking for someone to share a doobie with, I thought I should first ask how he got his nic'.....he said he liked their "lifestyle"....what he knew of it.

I didn't get the impression he wanted to get high.


.

[frazzled]

15. I don't remember our calling ourselves anything

Because (I suppose) of when and where I lived, it was the norm to be countercultural. Everybody of a certain age had long hair, wore "hippie" clothing, smoked pot (and, well, other stuff), listened in general to the same music, read Karl Marx and the I Ching, etc.

This was lower Manhattan in the late 60s. I think "hippie" was a little earlier and a little more West Coast. But we wouldn't have cringed at being called hippies--though I think we associated that term more with the Haight, communes, etc. We were all pretty much ersatz Hippies I guess ... it had entered the popular culture to such a degree that we were just "young people." It seemed normal to us, but we didn't quite want to go off and live on a commune.

Other people would have called us Hippies, however.

[MineralMan]

18. I don't remember calling myself anything at all.

I was frequently called a @#$^&@$^ hippie, though. My nieces and nephews still call me "Uncle Freak," with my blessing. I'm 66 years old, and dropped out in 1964. I rejoined general society in 1974. :shrug:

[Cirque du So-What]

19. Some context?

Is this in reference to a comment made by someone in the public eye? I ask reluctantly, because it's an open invitation for snark in the vein of, 'are you so stupid that you don't know what EVERYONE is talking about?'

As to your question, I have heard people with bona fide hippie credentials refer to themselves with that term. On the other hand, I have also heard it used by poseurs.

[NNN0LHI]

20. Nothing to do with any comment made by someone in the public eye

Just a question I was curious about.

Don

[murielm99]

23. Yes. The term we used was "freaks."

It was one of those things that has been thrown at us as an epithet. We turned it around and made fun of it, disarming it as a hurtful term.

[OregonBlue]

25. We called ourselves hippies until it became a dirty word. Then it was heads.

I still refer to myself as an old hippy.

[Blue_In_AK]

26. Not until well after the fact.

I say it now, kind of tongue in cheek, but at the time, NEVER. I'm an old, first-wave hippie, so I never referred to myself as a freak. Head, yes.

[Scuba]

28. Funny. All my "straight" friends thought I was a "hippie"...

... and all my "hippie" friends thought I was "straight".



Today, I like to think of myself as an OH WOW.
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. Old Hippie, WithOut Worries

[Lyric]

29. My Mom and Dad did.

Dad was part of the 60's wave, and started calling himself a hippie after coming home from Vietnam with PTSD and a general distrust for the government. Mom was an early 70's hippie.

[mitchtv]

30. I guess I did although I was Gay Hippie

something altogether different. we didn't hang with the strait ones,We started coming out in about '70.I was the older group from the 60's . I am now 67 , and am a retired hippie. I was one of the first long haired mailmen in SF,We were kept off the dais in the anti war marches at first.

[Blue_In_AK]

35. I used to have a long-haired mailman friend in SF

in 1969. I loved that guy. His name was Charlie. Unfortunately, he was married. :(

[OffWithTheirHeads]

42. Well, allI can say is that you didn't hang around with us.

We didn't really care what your orientation was.
As long as you were nice to people. Sorry I missed you. You would have liked us. Sadly, that was a long time ago.

[UTUSN]

31. I call my then self fringe-hippie because I just experimented (really)

Wasn't deep into the lifestyle although the current of the times swept most of us along with jargon and appearances. I could never be that laid back and knew I had to work for The Man in some way and sooner rather than later and lacked the creativity to find a way to weld alternative lifestyles with capitalistic ventures the way some "hippies" became Yuppies?

I dabbled a tiny bit into health foods and vitamins, but not all the way, key word "dabble." I'm a generalist and/or a contrarian, don't give myself over to a group.

[madmom]

32. My kids always told their friends that we were hippies, does that count?

[Blue_In_AK]

33. We never called anyone a greaser, either.

They were "hoods" in my day.

[hobbit709]

34. I was a freak though was called a hippie lots of times.

Mostly by people who didn't know shit.

Started doing acid when it was still legal.

[ellenfl]

36. yup, me. and i still have some of the idealism . . .

i don't think you had to look the part. i think it was more of a mindset. imo, nowadays, most with that mindset might now be called democrats and those who only dressed the part are now republicans, notwithstanding 'the big chill'. :hippie:

ellen fl

[Desertrose]

37. I was an "art student" then...now I call myself an old hippie.

...and try not to emphasize the "old" part. :)

[livetohike]

38. My family and friends called me that

My brother still says Aunt Livetohike was a hippie (my nieces and nephew are all in their 20's now). I kept some of my "hippie clothes" and they borrowed them for Halloween, LOL :-).

I'm still a hippie...still idealistic and a fierce environmentalist. Those things haven't changed.

[Iggo]

41. Hippies was what people a lot older than me called people a little older than me.

[Warren DeMontague]

44. Anyone who is hung up on labels and takes them seriously or literally

isn't a freak OR a hippie IMHO.

[mmonk]

46. Nope. I was called one. Never called myself one.

In the latest protests I've been involved in this year, had USA USA chanted at me as if I were not a citizen and at the other, was told to go back into my cave. Funny, they are the ones that remind of primitive humans.

[The Magistrate]

47. Exactly, Sir: 'Hippies' Were Tourists, Freaks Lived There....

[McCamy Taylor]

48. I knew hippies in 1960's Austin, Texas. There was even a Hippie Hollow for skinny dipping.

Maybe there were regional variations.

[Zorra]

49. A lot of us that didn't care for being called hippies back in the day now

proudly refer to ourselves as "old hippies".

Sometimes meant as kind of an unspoken loose code term generally understood by old hippies to mean "I was a freak back then, and I'm still a freak today".

There's usually lots of us old hippies at Rainbow Gatherings:

The organization is a loose international affiliation of individuals who have a common goal of trying to achieve peace and love on Earth. Those who participate in, or sympathize with, the activities of this group sometimes refer to the group simply as the "Family." Rainbow Family participants make the claim that their group is the "largest non-organization of non-members in the world." In addition to referring to itself as a non-organization, the group's "non-members" also even playfully call the group a "disorganization." There are no official leaders or structure, no official spokespersons, and no formalized membership. Strictly speaking, the only goals are set by each individual, as no individual can claim to represent all Rainbows in word or deed. Also contained within the domain of Rainbow Family philosophy are the ideals of creating an intentional community, showing respect for indigenous peoples and culture, practicing ecology and environmentalism, embodying spirituality and conscious evolution, and practicing non-commercialism.<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Family

I know lots of rainbow kids today that sometimes refer to themselves as hippie kids.