I remember the first time someone ever called my husband and me a name so loaded, so antiquated, so unspecific that we could only respond based on our own biases.
We were hanging out with our friends Crystal and Cary, who are these unbelievable Midwestern hippies — the only real hippie friends we met while living in Iowa City. I had baked a cherry crumble, which we were eating with vanilla ice cream on a Saturday afternoon as the crowds milled towards Hawkeye Stadium for another football game we were surely not going to follow.
Crystal says: “Hey man, you guys are totally our hippie friends.”
“What? You’re our hippie friends. We’re not hippies.”
“Sure you are. You make your own yogurt and grow plants and are always recycling and eating all that hippie crunchy stuff. You guys are totally hippies.”
“No way, man, you’re the hippie. You’ve got the linguistic habits to prove it, man.”
And so, a misunderstanding, a challenge of sorts. No one really knows what a hippie is anymore. That’s why when I wrote my recent column on finding things to do at Salem until 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday night and called Venti’s downtown our “go-to place for crunchy hippie food,” I received a little bit of flak from some people downtown who see hippie as a pejorative.
To be fair, I’ve been working on a better way to describe the food at Venti’s to massage the egos of these lovely Venti’s fans. I haven’t come up with anything to explain people who seem to have cut and pasted the best from a number of ethnic cultures to form new and exciting arrangements of hummus and peanut sauce (you get a kick in the pants if the word “fusion” just popped in your head).
But the real issue is the word “hippie.”
Maybe because I grew up on the East Coast, maybe because I have seen so many incarnations of hippies as to warrant the term almost meaningless — and certainly not the catch-all some seem to think it is — I’ve always kind of loved hippies.
We certainly saw our share of their modern incarnations at the Oregon Country Fair yesterday… and since hippies like to make stuff, I’ve selected a few images to show my fairest of the fair — the most interesting things I saw happening there.
Unlike some photographers there, who seemed more drawn to the “nudes” on display, I can’t say I felt compelled to capture the chaotic free-for-all pulsing through the woods at the fair. When things got really jammin’ at around 4:00 p.m., I was almost ready to leave. I can revel with the best of them, but I prefer not to be brushed by a stray breast or an… ahem… half-dressed unicorn.
A one-man stand of on-demand, hand-stitched Sewing Machine Designs:
The artist asked for a phrase of five words or less, which he would then interpret right before your eyes. I was seconds away from asking for “gas stove catching fire on bathrobe,” which actually happened to me last January, but then he was being kind of snooty and unresponsive and we decided to move on. I could have used a patch for that bathrobe, though.
Can anyone tell me what these are?
A puppet show about two bunny rabbits who go on a picnic:
Strange, carnival-esque Francophile revelers at the beginning of the fair:
More puppets: You are seeing a pattern. These are made by Portland’s Alchemystical Workshop.
Finally, things we ate at the fair:
1 potato and mushroom kanish
1 potato and garlic kanish
2 baklavas
1 cup of famous gumbo
2 ice cream sandwiches dipped in dark chocolate
1 homemade root beer float
1 avacado dreamboat stuffed with hummus, cheddar-jack and yogurt
Final verdict: Hippies like delicious food, making neat stuff that doesn’t always make sense, banging drums in circles, dancing like West Africans, whole grains, dressing up in fairy garb, forests, belly-dancing, natural childbirth, folk music, and puppets.
I won’t profess to being a hippie, but I still like them quite a bit, even – as our pork dude at the Salem Saturday Market calls them — the “nudes.”
Hippie? HipSTER? Just be glad someone didn’t add “tree hugging” to the beginning. Hippie conjures images of the 60′s and 70′s for me (didn’t live in either)
While no one likes being labelled, I would consider the activities above to fall under hipster, and not hippie. For example, if you look at Wikipedia, it makes a statement on the hipster:
“In the late 1990s, the term started to be used in new, sometimes mutually exclusive ways. In some circles it became a blanket description for middle class and upper class young people associated with alternative culture, particularly alternative music, independent rock, alternative hip-hop, independent film and a lifestyle revolving around thrift store shopping, eating organic, locally grown, vegetarian, and/or vegan food, drinking local beer (or even brewing their own), listening to public radio, and riding fixed-gear bicycles.[1]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(contemporary_subculture)
That description kind of feels like the subculture in Portland, Salem, and Eugene. But I think either of those definitions are still in flux and evolving. I think we live in an era where people are eating healthier, caring about their impact on the environment, and have a deeper appreciation for local culture and art. Nothing bad about that.
I just read your WL article. Good on ya! There are some people that say that Salem has nothing, no culture. As you’ve no doubt experienced yourself, they’re completely wrong. They just aren’t looking hard enough.
Ok, that guy making the sewing designs is totally a hipster, true. But there are a whole lotta hippies and not a lot of hipsters at the Country Fair. Hipsters borrowed a lot from hippies, just not the tight pants.
Or it’s possible that I just subconsciously hand-picked the hipster stands from the hippie ones. Classic Emily.
Hi Emily,
I love your blog. You’re a wonderful writer, so I was amazed that you had a grammar and a spelling mistake. You start off in the first sentence using “I” instead of “me.” And then in your next to last paragraph you write, “Hippie’s like delicious food….” You’re much too good for those things.
I’m not raggin’ on you. Just lettin’ you know to be more careful. Thousands are reading your every word.
Neil
I’ve always responded to the utter humanity of the blog. So immediate, so powerful in small ways, so fabulously mensch-y.
By the way, I also spelled avocado wrong. While I strive towards excellence (for more on the emptiness of that word, check out The University in Ruins by Bill Readings), I too make the occasional grammatical error.
Until my readers start supporting this blog work, which currently takes up at least 1/10 of my work day, or I start taking ads, which wordpress doesn’t support anyway, an occasional error will rear its ugly head. But I do appreciate the thoughtful red-inked wrist slapping.
Oh, and thousands. Ha ha! You flatter, Mr. Hornsby.
You forgot something that hipster hippies enjoy – stilts. A whole lot ‘o knee knockin’ goin on.
Speaking of hippies (teehee), anyone going to the Art Fair this weekend?
oh, and WordPress DOES support ads. All kinds, but especially easy to put Google AdSense stuff in there with plugins and widget integration. It’s more about tasteful theme integration, than anything. Luckily you can shift around the form and function without sacrificing the content.
Speaking of content, where’s my Feedburner Email Subscription signup form, Em?
Ha ha, still have to do that.