The Polish Hippy - website of a 1960s Chicago hippie

Hippie also spelled 'hippy' is a member of a counterculture group that began in the United States during the Vietnam War, just after the British Invasion in 1960s. Hippie, Flower Child or Contemporary Hipster are synonyms for a Hippy. Hippies are people whose behavior, dress, worldviews, use of psychedelic drugs, tastes in art, music etc. imply a rejection of conventional Upper Middle Class values. Origins of Hippies are in European Bohemians, American 1940s Hipsters and 1950s Beats.

During the 1950s, aspects of the Beat movement metamorphosed into the sixties counterculture, accompanied by a shift in terminology from "beatnik" to "hippie" [Read more]. Hence, hippies came from the Beats. The leading writers known as the "beats" were Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso. Their followers were called "beatniks", and the word "beatnik" came from the word "beatific", which means "bestowing bliss, blessings, happiness, blissful, saintly” [Def. from: Dictionary.com].

The most obvious differences between beatniks and hippies were their tastes in dress and music. Beatniks preferred Jazz music, abstract art and fashions from Paris, France. Hippies preferred Folk-Rock music, psychedelic art and fashions from London (Mod) and San Francisco (jeans, bandanas, Hippie Look).

The name of The Beatles, a 1960s English band that started the British Invasion was a play of words in the spelling of the words "beat" + "beetle = "Beatle". That play in spelling identified The Beatles with the Beats and with Hippies. The spelling was a stoke of genius that came to John Lennon in a dream. On July 6, 1961, John Lennon was asked by a reporter from Mersey Beat (Vol.1 No. 1) how did the name Beatles arrive? He replied "It came in a vision - a man appeared on a flaming pie and said 'From this day on you are Beatles, spelled with an A'. Thank you Mister Man, they said, thanking him."

In order to know where we’re going, we have to understand where we’ve been. In that spirit this website was built. It's a story about the Webmaster's experiences as a 1960s hippie.

Reasons for the construction of the website
because many websites on the subject were created by folks that were too young in the 1960s to understand what was going on, weren't born yet or were not hippies themselves,
because the media portrays of the 1960 is often an image created to serve conservative corporate and propaganda interests,
because the Webmaster's experiences were different from those of others,
to prevent distortion of facts about hippies and 1960s Peace movement,
to contribute to the global community,
to create a home on the Web,
to tell about the Webmaster's personal experiences,
to preserve the spirit and ideas that are dear to hippies,
and for other reasons.

I was there, drank the wine, smoked the weed, passed the acid test, got initiated and was given a hippie name: The Polish Hippy. So, if you won't expect too much from my writing skills and find the time to go through some stuff posted on the site, perhaps you'll learn a bit more about the 1960-70s and how and why they changed the world so much. But most of all, this will be a biography of a 1960s Chicago hippy rather then a research type work on the subject.

In my transatlantic travels across the Old and New Continents and the mentoring work I've done in Europe I've met folks of all age groups that didn't understand America; especially the 1960s cultural revolution and hippies. So, instead of writing a book on the subject, caring photo albums and scrap books with me to keep retelling the same story to persons I've met, I've built this site instead. There's lots of information, links, photos, music recordings, videos, stories, my bio, personal interests etc., and best of all, the site was made 98% by me. Thus, the site has become an online work of modern art and literature that covers many different areas of interest and activity that can be accesses 24/7 around the planet.

There are other 1960s hippies that have had different experiences from my own. But in 2001, when I started working on the site there weren't many on the Web. Perhaps that was because many old hippies were not computer literate (though hippies and psychedelics did play a major role in the development of computers, informatics and the World Wide Web) or because there weren't any Web 2.0 services available then such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace etc. where one could set up a personal website with ease.

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