In an earlier blog and the discussion that follows I consider the hippy dream of creating a better world for all of us to live in.
We hippies never did
succeed, and I may have been the hippy that failed in this regard.
The closest thing to a hippy village is Christiania in Copenhagen
which I understand will soon be closed.
The important point is
that what the hippies didn't do, the gay community has done. I live
in the gay community, the Castro in San Francisco. Gays live openly
in the Castro and have since 1975. They have every business service
they want and plenty of political representation. The neighborhood
is one of the safest in the U.S. It is clean and attractive and
caring. When AIDs hit the community 25 years ago, the members created
hundreds of caring and wonderful institutions to help each other. The
gay community succeeded.
We hippies failed. In the mid-1970s I took a group of fellow hippies to the hills above Brisbane, a town just south of San Francisco. I showed them how we could buy a few dozen homes and create the beginnings of a genuine community. Everyone was gung ho. Before we could make bids on the inexpensive hillside houses the prices doubled in one month as Saudi Arabian money poured in to buy half the hillside. We gave up.
I had also created a hippy business network (the Briarpatch) which was a wonderful model for a new way of living. Much of the Briarpatch has been assimilated into the larger society.