Hippies
HIPPIES
HIPPIES. On 5 September 1965, in an article in the San Francisco Examiner about the new "Bohemian" scene developing in the Haight-Ashbury district, Michael Fallon labeled its members "hippies." The label stuck and was thereafter applied to any young person who experimented with drugs, exhibited an unconventional appearance, enjoyed new forms of "acid" music and art, expressed disdain for mainstream values and institutions, investigated exotic religions, or espoused a philosophy that combined the beats' existentialism with a colorful, expressive joie de vivre all their own. Although initially treated as a harmless curiosity by the media, Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, spoke for many Americans when he defined a hippie as someone who "dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheetah."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lee, Martin A., and Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1992.
Perry, Charles. The Haight-Ashbury: A History. New York: Vintage Books, 1985.
Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968.
RickDodgson
See alsoAntiwar Movements ; Counterculture ; Youth Movements .