Hippies: I Am Not One

This may come as no surprise to anyone who knows me or has ever seen me, but there was a time that I thought I was one. Well, never in outward appearance, but at least I thought that mentally I was a hippie. Those were my Austin days, back before I knew what a real hippie was.

I thought I learned what a hippie was when I moved to Austin, but it turns out that what I thought was a hippie was really just a slightly rebellious young person who cared about the environment and liked yoga and organic food. In other words, your average liberal. (I'm from a small east Texas town. I grew up thinking that liberal = hippie, but not really knowing what either term really meant.)

Moving to Boulder has shown me the true meaning of the word "hippie," and I can say I most certainly am not one. We may share a few broad views, but trust me, I'm about as distant from everything a hippie is as I am from everything that Jerry Falwell was. I'm about to unload the only real complaint I have about living in Boulder.

The Austin "hippies" I recall generally dressed in drab clothing that was sometimes hand made, and they were generally well groomed, friendly, young, idealistic, and had jobs. And they liked incense. I always hated incense, but their other qualities were wonderful. Maybe they didn't use deodorant but they bathed regularly. They were functioning members of society. They were intelligent, pleasant, sane and maybe even had some formal education.

The Boulder "hippies" are largely not these things. A Boulder hippie may range from scarcely pubescent to retirement age, though they strongly tend toward the young end of the spectrum. They are always filthy, generally won't look you in the eye unless they're begging for change, food or beer, and they camp in the bushes and under rocks in the middle of our downtown parks. They're basically transient bums with dreadlocks and a serious pot problem. Oh, and they invariably drag behind them a mangy dog. I really don't care if people choose to live this way. I think we all have a responsibility to contribute something to society, but I'm not one to say they're wrong for doing what they do. The problem I have is when they plop themselves down in the middle of MY world. That is not okay with me. They congregate, sometimes 30 at a time, in the middle of our sidewalks and greenways. They're loud, obnoxious, and often publicly intoxicated. They trample public gardens, yell obscenities, and leave trash EVERYWHERE. These things I have major problems with. They are sleeping in and trashing the public spaces that my tax dollars are paying for. The City of Boulder has a truly fantastic homeless shelter, provides food and will even give them money and bus fare to help them get jobs. But they just don't want a job, though they'll gladly take the handout. Maybe this is where some of my conservative roots start to show, but I really have a problem with enabling people. I know a lot of homeless people have mental problems and that homelessness is not a problem with an easy solution, but I'll be damned if it doesn't piss me off when these people are dumping in my park.

Now I don't want to make Boulder sound like it's overrun with bums. It's not. You never see these people except summer, and even then it isn't a daily or even a weekly thing. And they're only found downtown, where handouts are easy. Cops are pretty good about keeping an eye on them and keeping them moving, especially if more than a few get together at a time. Every city unfortunately has a problem with homelessness, and I'm not talking about your run of the mill homeless population. What I'm talking about is the so-called "Rainbow Family" and their kind. Back in the 1960's when hippies first materialized and started to flow toward California, Boulder became a major stop. Throughout the 1960's and 1970's, Boulder had some pretty serious issues with hordes of hippies, involving violence, vandalism and other crimes. As the hippie movement died down the problems decreased significantly, but Boulder still remains a rest stop for bands of these nomadic dirtbags. Just two weeks ago, about a dozen Rainbow Family members were found sleeping on top of the public library downtown. With their dogs. Apparently they had scaled the building and had been camping up there for days. And remember, these people don't adhere to the "leave no trace" philosophy.

The Rainbow Family was, like the hippie movement, conceived out of the desire to bring something good and peaceful into the world. But like most things, it didn't take long for corruption to set in. I know not all hippies fit this description, just like not all Christians are self-righteous small-minded hate-mongers. I did some reading up on the Rainbow Family awhile back and apparently knife fights, alcoholism and drug use rates are quite high, and the average age of a member is early to mid twenties. Doesn't sound like they abide by the principles upon which the group was supposedly founded. These days the Rainbow Family is little more than a loose association of homeless delinquents wandering from town to town across much of the west. Apparently there are thousands of them. Fortunately they only get together en masse once or twice a year and, to my knowledge, it has never been in Boulder.

Since I'm on the topic, I wanted to get one last thing off my chest, and this is something I feel bad about. I think I bumped into one truly genuine, real-life, honest-to-goodness hippie who might possibly have represented the essence of the hippie movement and the ideals that conceived the movement. It was last summer. I had spent a lot of time downtown during the height of summer and so had become quite hardened to people who even remotely appeared to belong in the dirtbag category. I was walking home when I saw a slightly older man who looked a whole lot like John Denver standing on the sidewalk ahead. I knew immediately he was going to ask for money. And he did. But before he got half his sentence out I snapped back in no uncertain terms that he was not welcome to even talk to me. I was kinda mean, actually, and it has bothered me ever since. But the reason why it bothers me so much is because I immediately realized there was something quite different about him. He was clean, and he literally looked like he could have been John Denver plucked from the height of his career. I heard him say something about traveling to California and something else that made me think he might really have been a hippie of old. He was very polite, and very reserved. I really don't have any hard evidence, just a gut feeling that he was different and that I had allowed myself to take out on him the anger I had toward others. John Denver, wherever you are, I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that.