Hippie

Hippie (or sometimes "hippy") is a term originally used to describe some of the rebellious youth of the 1960s and 1970s. The word, "hippie" was coined by the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen.

Origins

In the 1940s and 1950s the term "hipster" came into usage by the American Beat generation to describe jazz and swing music performers, and evolved to also describe the bohemian-like counterculture that formed around the art of the time.

Related Topics:
1940s - 1950s - Beat generation - Bohemian - Counterculture

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The 1960s hippie culture evolved from the beat culture, and was greatly influenced by changing music style and the creation of rock & roll from jazz.

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The first use of the word Hippie on Television was on WNBC TV Channel 4 in New York City at the opening of the New York World's Fair in 1964, some young Anti-Vietnam War protesters with long hair like The Beatles were called Hippies by NYPD and reporters. The police swung their batons at them to chase them off the escalators and they fought back. They had long hair and beards and wore T-Shirts and Denim Jeans.

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On the East coast of the U.S., in Greenwich Village, young counterculture advocates were called, and referred to themselves as "hips". To be "hip" meant at that time, "to be in the know". Young disaffected youth from the suburbs of New York City flocked to the Village in their oldest clothes, to fit into the counterculture movement, the coffee houses, etc. Radio station WBAI was the first media outlet to use the term "hippie" to describe the poorly-dressed middle class youths as a pejorative term originally meaning "hip wannabes".

Related Topics:
U.S. - Greenwich Village - Counterculture

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September 6, 1965, marked the first San Francisco newspaper story, by Michael Fellon, that used the word "hippie" to refer to younger bohemians. The name did not catch on in mass media until almost two years later.

Related Topics:
September 6 - 1965 - San Francisco - Bohemians

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Hippie action in the San Francisco area, particularly the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, centered around the Diggers, a guerrilla street theater group that combined spontaneous street theater, anarchistic action, and art happenings in their agenda of creating a "free city". The San Francisco Diggers grew from two radical traditions thriving in the area in the mid-1960s: the bohemian/underground art/theater scene, and the new left/civil rights/peace movement.

Related Topics:
San Francisco - Haight-Ashbury - Diggers - 1960s - Peace

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Los Angeles also had a vibrant hippie scene in the mid-'60s, arising from a combination of the L.A. beat scene centered around Venice and its coffeehouses, which spawned the Doors, and the Sunset Strip, the quintessential L.A. hippie gathering area, with its seminal rock clubs, such as the Whisky-a-Go-Go, and the Troubadour just down the hill. The Strip was also the location of the actual protest referred to in the Buffalo Springfield's early hippie anthem of 1966, For What It's Worth.

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Summer 1967 in Haight-Ashbury became known as the "Summer of Love" as young people gathered (75,000 by police estimates) and shared the new culture of music, drugs, and rebellion. However, the Diggers felt co-opted by media attention and interpretation, and at the end of the summer held a Death of Hippie parade.

Related Topics:
1967 - Summer of Love

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The hippie movement reached its height in the late 1960s, as evidenced by the July 7, 1967 issue of TIME magazine, which had for its cover story: The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture.

Related Topics:
1960s - July 7 - 1967 - TIME

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Because many hippies wore flowers in their hair and distributed flowers to passersby, they earned the alternative name, "flower children".

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