Althouse: "I once lived in a hippie commune is Taos, New Mexico in 1972. Best time of my life. Peace, love, the sexual revolution..."

July 29, 2015

"I once lived in a hippie commune is Taos, New Mexico in 1972. Best time of my life. Peace, love, the sexual revolution..."

"... and lots of good weed, mushrooms and acid. It's shame the ethos did not last. By comparison, the world today totally sucks."

Top-rated comment at a HuffPo article titled "Haunting Nude Photos Bring 1970s Hippie Community Back To Life/From 1969 to 1977, Taylor Camp became a hippie's utopia on the island of Kauai."

39 comments:

Kevin said...: Yeah, it's a TOTAL mystery why that lifestyle was unsustainable.

*SNORT*; 7/29/15, 10:36 AM
CWJ said...: First lion, then tiger, then bear. This post must be the "Oh my!"; 7/29/15, 10:40 AM
Jaq said...: Let me guess, they ran out of other people's money.; 7/29/15, 10:45 AM
CJinPA said...: "By comparison, the world today totally sucks."

Growing up is a bitch, dude.; 7/29/15, 11:06 AM
MadisonMan said...: Why are those photos "Haunting"?; 7/29/15, 11:07 AM
Quaestor said...: Let me guess, they ran out of other people's money.

Every hippie commune had its patron, usually a twenty-something with a hefty trust fund in his hip pocket.; 7/29/15, 11:09 AM
buwaya said...: Other than the beautiful nude women, the place looks much like a Filipino squatter settlement.
Or the more downmarket rural houses these days.
Maybe our lot is too crude to see the advantages in this lifestyle.
Other than the beautiful nude women of course.
One wonders though what was in it for them.; 7/29/15, 11:12 AM
Anonymous said...: Yay, squalor!; 7/29/15, 11:22 AM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/29/15, 11:28 AM
William said...: I think the children that grew up in the commune are considerably less enamored of the hippie life style.; 7/29/15, 11:35 AM
jeff said...: See the expression on the faces of the children? They don't look like they're at The Church of the Brotherhood of the Paradise Children.; 7/29/15, 11:39 AM
Anonymous said...: "....Other than the beautiful nude women,.."

I was oblivious to everything else.

I wonder whose grandma they are now?; 7/29/15, 11:41 AM
Mr Wibble said...: Those hippie communes were great. All the drugs you could do, all the children you could molest, all the diseases you could catch.; 7/29/15, 12:01 PM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=cartman+hippies&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid=5A1CBF692C69A1E1E5855A1CBF692C69A1E1E585; 7/29/15, 12:04 PM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=cartman+hippies&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid=D48716C9D85790DE518AD48716C9D85790DE518A; 7/29/15, 12:10 PM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=cartman+hippies&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid=2F6E356CC081711330562F6E356CC08171133056; 7/29/15, 12:17 PM
Xmas said...: This is kinda interesting in relation to this past Sunday's "True Detective".; 7/29/15, 12:19 PM
Bilwick said...: I wish "liberals" (and by "liberals" I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State fellators") would get back to the hoppy commune spirit. Share your wealth among yourselves, voluntarily--while leaving the rest of us the @#$% alone, and keeping their hands out of our @#$%ing pockets.; 7/29/15, 12:21 PM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: Yes, life is great when you can subsist off the government while living in a shack on a tropical island paradise.

And are young, healthy, and attractive.; 7/29/15, 12:25 PM
Brando said...: "I wish "liberals" (and by "liberals" I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State fellators") would get back to the hoppy commune spirit. Share your wealth among yourselves, voluntarily--while leaving the rest of us the @#$% alone, and keeping their hands out of our @#$%ing pockets."

If nothing else, some time in a commune might make the more intelligent among them realize why such systems don't work. At which point I would like to open a "free market" commune next door, where they can learn the virtues of trading the products of their work for various things they need and realize the true glory of free trade.; 7/29/15, 12:26 PM
pst314 said...: "Yay, squalor!"

Yes. I remember those days: The hippies tended to be very careless about cleanliness, in their persons and in their homes.; 7/29/15, 1:07 PM
deepelemblues said...: Those comments are fucking hilarious. Don't miss out on reading them all and laughing. Or weeping.; 7/29/15, 1:23 PM
Sam L. said...: I like that Frank Zappa Sat Here poster.; 7/29/15, 2:15 PM
walter said...: Why does it hurt when I pee? (mit backenstoryen); 7/29/15, 3:51 PM
pst314 said...: "At the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, there were doctors treating diseases no living doctor had ever encountered before, diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names, diseases such as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot."
--The Great Relearning, by Tom Wolfe; 7/29/15, 5:01 PM
pst314 said...: from the article:
"the camp was a whimsical experiment in living ostensibly supported with the back-to-the-land ethos of fishing and farming (while actually propped up with food stamps and welfare)."; 7/29/15, 5:04 PM
Big Mike said...: Yes. I remember those days: The hippies tended to be very careless about cleanliness, in their persons and in their homes.

Nowadays they run for President as Democrats.

I wonder whose grandma they are now?

"Hey Grandma, was that really you? You were hawt!; 7/29/15, 5:06 PM
MacMacConnell said...: "... Peace, love, tyhe sexual revolution and lots of good weed, mushrooms and acid"

So explain to me the difference between these hippies and Bill Cosby.; 7/29/15, 5:23 PM
David said...: Taylor Camp was also a place where vulnerable young females were manipulated and exploited for sex and their labor. I've been to the location, and went to an event where some oldsters who were there (or claimed to be) talked to people like me who missed out on all the sex and drugs. Right era, wrong guy in my case.

A few of them were interesting, and a couple of the women were still stunningly beautiful. In addition to the drug injuries, people got sick a lot. There were robberies and thefts. Also days on the beach, in firelight, moonlight and sunlight, with lots of tripping and fucking. They lived in large part on public assistance, plus drug dealing money and a few richies who came in and spread cash.

Basically they had their little era at the expense of the most vulnerable in their group and the public.

And then there were the rapes.

Idyllic, eh?

Betcha Rikki Cooke came by for a few hits and fucks. Or maybe he didn't need to lower himself.; 7/29/15, 5:36 PM
David said...: "So explain to me the difference between these hippies and Bill Cosby."

Cosby had a job.; 7/29/15, 5:37 PM
Beldar said...: I never skied Taos, but I heard tales from that era of the "Martini trees" -- aspens with wine-skins slung from their lower branches, loaded with nicely mixed gin martinis (no olives), from caring & sharing fellow-skiers. I'm disappointed to find so few mentions of it on the 'net, but: http://www.onthesnow.com/news/a/11567/talk-ski-tech-with-pros-at-taos--visit-fabled-martini-trees; 7/29/15, 5:39 PM
Skipper said...: Breaking Bad worked out so well, too. What's with New Mexico?; 7/29/15, 5:57 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: Those pictures are a trip! I used to be one of those kids -- well, not in Taos, but in Eugene, Oregon, in the early 70s, when I had to visit my Dad in the summers.

The hippies were hygienically challenged to say the least. Yes, it was fun in your 20s to not work, have sex, dance badly, listen to Jim Morrison, rarely bathe and smoke lotsa dope.

Who said otherwise?

The problem is when the crash came, i.e., the chicks got pregnant, or the rent went unpaid, or Mommy's credit car got maxed out, or some dude died of an overdose, or when, like, you know man, you have to get a job.

In all seriousness, there were many casualties both of the adults and the young kids, who were generally neglected or taught terribly misguided values or taught nothing practical at all.

I enjoyed my 20s in the 1980s. There were very few hippies left, Thank God. The women were smart and pretty. The guys drank beer, played sports, read books, got successful middle class professional jobs, and married well.

The hippies were a fad, a temporal community of slackers, pretending to live according to an enlightened code of modern values, but mostly just postponing adulthood. The music was good though, I reckon.; 7/29/15, 6:03 PM
walter said...: "And then there were the rapes."

What? Without light bulbs!!!??; 7/29/15, 6:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Blogger Skipper said...
Breaking Bad worked out so well, too. What's with New Mexico?

7/29/15, 5:57 PM
------------------------------

Filling up with refugees from Mexifornia; 7/29/15, 6:11 PM
Michael K said...: "Growing up is a bitch, dude."

Yeah, but some never did grow up. A friend of mine in Tucson lived in a commune as a child after her mother left her father and became aa hippie. Still is in mentality. The daughter is very conservative and, with her husband a Marine fighter pilot, has raised three great boys. She home schooled the boys each for a year. One is entering the Marine Corps and hopes to go to flight school. The second is a junior in petroleum engineering at U of Arizona and the youngest is a freshman.

The mother of my friend is very nice but dumb as a stump. Fortunately, she met a guy in the commune who became a very successful ophthalmologist after he got over his hippie phase and they live very well.

She would starve on her own.; 7/29/15, 7:59 PM
cf said...: The prize certainly aimed away from the "kinder, gentler" "live and let live" attitudes to those with the worst of power-madness in their hearts. So it is touching because the totalitarians won.

One way or another, We are all militants now.; 7/29/15, 10:14 PM
walter said...: "She home schooled the boys each for a year. One is entering the Marine Corps and hopes to go to flight school. The second is a junior in petroleum engineering at U of Arizona"

Oh..the "collective" shudder that sequence must have created.; 7/29/15, 11:17 PM
Joe said...: "Taylor Camp was also a place where vulnerable young females were manipulated and exploited for sex and their labor."

That's right, women are incapable of making choices for themselves.; 8/2/15, 2:36 PM