Hippies

The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology ofthe term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. The early hippies inheritedthe countercultural values of the Beat Generation, created their own communities, listened to psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution, and some used drugs suchas cannabis, LSD, and magic mushrooms to explore altered states of consciousness.
In January 1967, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco popularized hippie culture,leading to the legendary Summer of Love on the West Coast of the United States, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast. In the United Kingdom, mobile "peace convoys"of New age travellers made summer pilgrimages to free music festivals at Stonehenge. In Australia hippies gathered at Nimbin for the 1973Aquarius Festival and the annualCannabis Law Reform Rally or MardiGrass. "Piedra Roja Festival", a major hippie event in Chile, was held in 1970.[2]
Hippie fashions and values had a major effect on culture,influencing popular music, television, film, literature, and the arts. Since the 1960s, many aspects of hippie culture have been assimilated by mainstream society. Thereligious and cultural diversity espoused by the hippies has gained widespread acceptance, and Eastern philosophy and spiritual concepts have reached a larger audience. Thehippie legacy can be observed in contemporary culture in myriad forms, including health food, music festivals, contemporary sexual mores, and even the cyberspace revolution.[3]