New York Hippies
New York has everything in the world that anyone would ever want, except for maybe some peace and quiet, but that can certainly be bought here. Everything is negotiable, and everything exists here. It’s one of the most exciting places in the world for many good reasons, and it continues to attract members of every generation and every culture every day. It’s a wonderful place to visit, and of course, a very difficult place to live. It has the potential to accommodate everybody, from youth hostels to New York hotel suites, and for short trips, there is no place on earth that’s more delightful or interesting. But for long term living, it takes a lot more money than most people have access to.
That’s one of the reasons why the hippie scene had such a different vibe than the rest of the country in 1967, the year I was born. I can’t give first hand evidence, but the stories go that living in the city had all the same challenges then that it has now. The countercultural scene has always been very strong here, at least since it defined itself as a bohemian paradise at the turn of the 20th century, and it certainly wouldn’t miss out on a movement like this, not with all the eyes of the world watching for signs of peace and love from all the corners of the world.
New York had its highlights, and its major contributions to this particular culture, at this particular time. But the challenges were much more difficult, because it’s hard to live in a city. Food and rent have always been the biggest draws on personal accounts, and even in those days, no one was willing to overthrow a delicate infrastructure for a barter system, at least not on any grand scale. Many of the hippie generation looking for the kind of experience San Francisco was famous for would leave the city for New York’s rural areas, hippie havens where you could live in communes, with more than a little less attention from the other citizens, or the authorities. But those who stayed in the city left a very strong imprint on its sensibility. Nothing was overthrown, and no revolution had any visible lasting effects, but there are signs everywhere of what happened here when people decided to take a stab at dancing as if no one was watching.