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Introduction
I've built this website for a hobby
hoping that it would be a source of some first hand
information about what it was like to be a hippy/
hippie in
the 1960s, and also what influence it had on my life. I've
done that for several reasons.
Some of those were
 to
contribute to the global community,
to
have a Home on the Web where friends could find me,
to
introduce myself to others and tell them about my story.
to
have something interesting and useful to do for a hobby,
because many websites I found on the subject were made by
folks that were a bit too young in the 1960s to
understand all that was going on, weren't born yet or
were not hippies,
the
media portrays of the 1960 is often an image created to
serve conservative corporate and propaganda interests,
because my experiences were different from that of others,
to
prevent destortion of facts about hippies and 1960s Peace
movement,
and
for other reasons.
I was there, drank the wine, smoked the herb and passed
the acid test. So, if you won't expect too much from my
writing skills and find the time to go through some of
the stuff I've posted on this site, perhaps you'll find
some first hand information and opinions about the 1960-70s.
But most of all, this will be a biography of a 1960s
Chicago hippy rather then a work on the subject done by
someone that has done a lot of research. In my
transatlantic travels across the continents and mentoring
work I've done in Europe I've kept meeting people of all
ages that didn't understand America, the 1960-70s,
hippies and our lifestyles or "where I was coming
from". So, instead of writing a book or explaining
all of that over and over again to everyone I've come
across, now I have a site where everyone could see my
photos, hear my music, watch my simple videos, read my
poetry and stories, and learn more about my many
interests.
There may be other former 1960s hippies that may have had
different experiences from my own. But in 2001, when I
started building this site there weren't many old hippies
talking about them on the Web. Perhaps that was because
many of us may not be skilled in building websites (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 such as
YouTube or MySpace at that time. So, I encourage everyone
of them and their offsprings to publish old photos and
stories before time distorts the facts; especially about
1960s hippies, the Peace movement, things that sprung
from them and those that followed.
My Story
I have to admit that my Karma has not
prepared an easy and conventional life for me. If I were
a writer I could probably write a book or a movie script
based on the experiences I've had. The story would be
based on facts with some fiction added to spice it up a
bit. It would be a story about a young man that in 1960s
bacame a hippie, about the peace movement, a flight from
the draft to Canada and a transatlantic ocean voyage to
Copenhagen, Amsterdam and then to the Polish mountains on
the Czech boarder. And finally about a return to Europe
where as a middle age man he witnessed the Solidarity
movement and the fall of Communism. And to make things
even more exciting it would have lots of music, some
Austin Powers style James Bond international espionage
scenes and others from the Matrix series.
| But what you'll find on this
site is a true story, without tales or fiction.
So, perhaps I'll begin by trying to explain why I
became a hippie. The fact is that I don't really
know why because it wasn't anything planned but
something that happened by itself. I guess, there
may have been many reasons for that. Only about 2%
of American youth participated in the movement.
So, it was not because it was a fashion or
because everyone my age was becoming a hippie.
And in the beginning I was the only hippie in my
area. The hippie movement was a pacifist movement
at a time when most Americans were being brought
up on cowboy movies, wore very short hair or crew-cuts
and used lots of brilliantine or Vitalis to keep
their hair glued in place and shining. Hippies
were a repressed minority then that I strongly
identified myself with. It may have been because
of the anti-war and pacifist worldviews we shared
or because hippies were so Bohemian, and I
remembered seeing many young people like that
dressed in sandles with guitars and bangos on
family trips through Europe when I was a child.
Those were also the fashions and lifestyles I
found among early American hippies and hipsters.
And also the ideas I found among participants of
the anti-Vietnam War and the human rights
movements were ones that I strongly identified
with. In fact, the movement was so strongly
connected with the anti-Vietanam War movement
that it ended when the Vietnam war ended; though
many of us still continued the bohemian/hippie
lifestyles. |
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The hippie movement started in America
and incorporated many ideas and things that were already
taken for granted in Europe such as naturism, nude
sunbathing, herbal medicine, sexual freedoms, socialism,
easy-going lifestyles etc. But those were not accepted
among most Americans in the 1960s and still may not be
among many American Christians (European Christianity is
different from American Christianity). Those kinds of
things were often associated with witches, communists,
degenerates, anti-Christians, Satonists etc. by many
conservative American Christians. So, America was very
different before the hippie revolution came along. For
those and other reasons hippies were a very controversial
group and somewhat different from their European
followers. Also, American hippies formed an informal
political movement. Therefore, it's been said that
American hippies were social reformists that brought
about many changes that we take for granted in the world
today. And that made us different from European hippies
that were more into tramping around the world. That's
probably because they didn't have the Vietnam war, the
draft and other political issues to deal with as we did
in the States and also because it was a lot easier for
hippies to travel to other countries, India and Asia from
Europe.
But perhaps I should begin by explaining that I was
brought up in a cosmopolitan European family that moved
to Chicago in early 1960s. My Parents spoke several
languages, which is not uncomman for many Europeans. My
Mother was born in Germany and my Father was born in the
Czech Republic. Their families moved to Poland after
World War I in the early 1920s. My Father was a
successful businessman before World War II. After the war
he also made a living working as a freelance Artist. He
knew many successful people. Some of them were top Monte
Carlo racing drivers, European stage and screen actors,
clerics, politicians, manufacturers, merchants,
electronic and railroad engineers, publishers etc. Those
were usually people that were well traveled and that saw
many different cultures in distant lands. I guess that
probably helped to make my Parents a bit more open-minded
then the average American family decades before it became
fashionable to be cosmopolitan. I remember that when I
was a child we had guests at home from all walks of life.
My older brothers also had unconventional friends from
the bohemian scene. Some of them were photographers,
actors, professional ballet dancers, musicians, writers,
painters etc. So, it seems to me that the worldviews I
was brought up on were more of pragmatic-minded type
rather then the typical ones most mainstream Americans or
Europeans shared in those days. So, when we moved to the
USA it was natural for me to cling to artists, beatnicks
and hippies or to join The Peace Movement.
Beatniks, hipsters and hippies were urban subcultures,
and for me they were a continuation of the European bohemian scene. Hippies were very often urban and
suburban kids from Middle Class homes. But today there
are lots of folks that take anyone with long hair for a hippie. But that is a
mistake. There were other groups in the sixties that also
wore long hair such as for example, members of motorcycle
gangs that did not share the same values as the hippies
did. Hippies were, and many still are into certain things
such as ecology, psychedelics, Peace, music, art, poetry,
reformation of society and government, and other
progressive things like that. Since the 1960s hippies
were/ are a kind of social-political Reformers that
helped to move forward many Democratic and liberal
traditions the United States was founded on, and have
symbolized to the world for centuries. That's also what Allen
Ginsberg was
doing and many other hippie activists in the sixties.
Unlike some of those other folks, a hippy would never own
a gun or shoot an animals; though I have also come across
such hippies in recent years on the Web, but I think that
is a total misunderstanding. Real hippies were Earth
loving, pacifistic and funky creatures. Hippies usually
lived the way they did because it was an alternative
lifestyle to the Middle Class one they were often brought
up on. The hippie movement was a revolt against violence,
the Vietnam War and false values. A revolt that has
brought about many revolutionary changes in the world.
Today, it may seem to some that it was mostly about
taking drugs, living in the country or taking bubble
baths somewhere in California. But in reality, many
hippies were really on the run from the law for
draftdodging, burning draft cards or not registering with
the Draft Board. So they were on the road, crashed for
the night in hippy pads, houses and communes across the
country in an attempt to escape from the oppresive
government that was at the core of their problems. Many
of them settled in the country. Others escaped to Canada,
to Europe and to other continents as far as India.
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I guess I was a bit camera shy
in the 1960s. That's probably why
I have only a few photos from those days. And
none from Led Zeppelin, Johnny Winter, Savoy
Brown, Jethrol Tull and many other concerts at
the Fillmore or Grand Park (some photos taken at
a Jefferson Airplane concert in Grand Park are
further down this page). I also don't have any
from Anti-War marches and
demonstrations that were held in Chicago. But who
took cameras to those kinds of events and venues
in those days? Chicago’s
Old Town was the Midwest's '60s hippie
Mecca. The Old Town neighborhood was/is around
North and Wells Streets on the Near North Side.
It has changed much since the sixties, though. It
still is well known for the Old
Town School of Folk Music, Piper's Alley, Like
Young - a '60s folk music night club, Earl Of Old
Town bar, many boutiques, headshops, bookstores
and also the Second City Theater at 1616 N. Wells
that the definitive Saturday
Night Live cast and the Blues
Brothers came from. Old Town was a
place where one could find many artists, writers,
beatniks, flower
children, folk musicians and old
hipsters that were a lot like my
Father, who often wore a black French beret and
made a living through art and painting for many
years. Old Town was also where an illegal
backhouse tavern operated on Wells Street through
the 1970-80s called The
Blues Brothers Bar that was started by John
Belushi and Dan Aykroyd who later became better
known from their 1980 Blues Brothers movie. |
 I remember Old Town best for its
parties, Piper’s Alley, Folk Music Cafes that I
couldn't afford to visit too often, and Lincoln
Park
where we used to gathered on verious occasions.
There was also a lot going on at the University
of Chicago Campus, The Coffeehouse on 54th
Street in Hyde
Park
near the Museum
of Science and Industry and also in Grand Park.
|
|
Chicago is also well known among
hippies for the demonstration at the 1968
Democratic National Convention, the Chicago
Seven and
also as the birth place of the Yippie Movement that was initiated there by Abbie
Hoffman.
There were so many things going on in those days. Too bad
I didn't think of documenting it all for the future. In
fact, many of us thought of taking pictures as something
that squares did. And perhaps my Brother was really a
square for taking some of the '60s pictures of me that
have inspired me to built this website. I guess I was
just a bit too European for the 1960s America. Perhaps
that's also why there are not so many '60s photos around
taken by hippies themselves. Whatever the reasons may be,
I am very happy to have the few photos from those days.
The 1960s weren't just taking European
style bubble baths, practicing Yoga or watching sunrises
on beautiful West Coast beaches for the majority of us.
It was a time when members of my generation felt that our
lives may end at the ripe, young age of 18 or so. And all
that just for some senseless war that was fictitiously
kept up for corporate profits of US based companies doing
business in Cambodia. After Uncle Sam backed out of the War, the hippie movement began
to dissolve too. And unfortunately, those guys who were
drafted into the armed forces and fought in the war did
not get the honors they deserved when they returned home.
I and other guys who did not register for military
service or burned their draft cards were given amnesty
and life returned to normal for many of us after that.
After that, some of us joined other liberation movements
or causes such as ecology, gay rights, civil rights or
women's rights to name only a few. Some of us also turned
on to the Glam Rock or Glitter
Rock sceen,
and also the underground Disco
Music scene
of the early 1970s. The Disco music grew around
Motown and Soul music. But its
characteristic rythm and beat came from the classic soul/disco
song by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notesthe called "The Love
I Lost"
and others such as "Love Boat" by Earl Young
from Phillidelphia in the late 1960s. The disco scene was
very colorful and psychedelic. Chicago developed its own
disco music style that is called House
Music and
which spread to other discos in Detroit and New York.
House Music also influanced European Techno music;
especially in Amsterdam.
The 1970s was a fun time when my generation materialized
many of our 1960s dreams of unity, happiness, peace and
sexual liberation. And for that reason tt was a time of
celebration, partying and dancing in the streets and/or
on the clouds. The Disco scene united gays, blacks,
Latinos and people from many other walks of life. In the
beginning it was a fun, drugs and sexual liberation
movement. It was held largely in underground clubs, on
dance floors, in gay bars and bath houses in and around
some major hippie centers in New York, Chicago and San
Francisco. The first disco bar I used to hang out in, and
the one where I met some of the nicest people that I
really enjoyed was Dugan's Bistro a.k.a. Bistro Chicago
at 420 N. Dearborn Street. I'd love to hear again from
the friends I've met there. I also used to hang out in
other discos and clubs between Dearborn and Broadway
Streets; especially on Wells Street near Schiller Street
in Old Town and some on the Near North Side.
Click HERE to learn more
The disco movement burned itself out
by the early 1980s. It was soon after it became
extremely popular with the mainstream culture through the
success of the movie "Car Wash" and later
especially "Saturday Night Fever". It lost a
lot of its exclusivity and underground character. The
masses of people that joined the scene perhaps didn't
fully understand its core ideas or had a different
concept of it. That's probably why some of us started
turning away from it and going towards the Punk scene
that many clubs in New York, Chicago and San Francisco
started switching to. Finally it was in Chicago again
that an end of another great era came about. It started
with mass burning of disco records at a Chicago baseball
stadium. It was later followed by another one in New York
and perhaps in other cities. The idea came from a Chicago
radio DJ. I was told that homophobia and racism played a
great role in drawing uneducated riff-raff to those anti-disco
gatherings.
Yet, the spirit of the 60s and 70s
still survives. In fact, it has always accompanied
mankind. Today, it seems to be trapped in a vicious
circle between the Old Continent and the New Continent,
but it's really strongly rooted in the Afro-American
culture that I well remember from South
Chicago. It
keeps transforming itself anew into different forms of
being, but the same core ideas remain at its base. And
this time it was Donna Summer's disco song "I Feel
Love" that gave rise to the Euro-Techno, Trans and
Dream music scene. Today, the Love Parades in Berlin and
other similar freedom oriented scenes around the globe
are actually a continuation of that ancient spirit that
was well known among Shaman at the time of dawn of
mankind. The same core ideas and desires for love,
freedom, wisdom and happiness are at play. They are the
basic factors responsible for creativity, the evolution
of the Universe and the species, and the expansion of
consciousness to higher levels of awareness. Yes, I
believe that it is that desire for freedom, growth and
expansion that is the driving force even in the smallest
atoms that our material Universe is built of.
I've been told that I look a bit like John Travolta in
the 1970s. Well, perhaps it was the other way around. By
the time the movie "Saturday Night Fever" was
on in cinemas I was moving out of the Disco scene and
looking for something less mainstream to do, something
like moving to Europe. So, perhaps it would be more
correct to say that Travolta was styled after guys like
me, who used to go to Disco clubs but were not as
straight or as good on the dance floor as he was. I also
think we led more exciting lives then the movie hero and
we were much more into psychedelic drugs then he was.
However, I never used coke as it was fashionable to do
then (though rum or vadka and Coke was my favorite
cocktail) and I never tried any hard drugs and never will.
Not until the 1990s did I realize how important
role the movement played in the formation of later
generations' music, art, urban lifestyles and worldviews.
The 1980s was a bleak decade marked by the spread of the
Hiv virus, economic repression and oil crises that I
think was caused by the withdraw from the Vietnam War. I
was lucky to have not contracted the virus but did not
manage to avoid joining the unemployed, running my credit
cards to the limits and even writing a few bouncing
checks. Then, my Mother talked me into joining her in
Europe where she moved to after retiring on a small
Social Security pension over a decade earlier. Seeing all
kinds of problems developing in many parts of the world,
I decided to take advantage of article 13 and filed for
bankruptcy in the late 1970s. Finally, in the mid 1980s I
move to Europe and joined my Mother. She was also running
into some problems at that time. It was a post Marshall
Law state in Poland, and attitudes towards
Americans in general were not too good there. And then in
2005, fifteen years after the fall of the Iron
Curtain my
Mother passed away at the age of 91. I am still trying to
get myself together now in 2006 after all these dramatic
events and don't know if I should stay where I am, move
back to the States or elsewhere?
My
friends at a Jefferson Airplane Concert in Grand Park,
1969.
Later
that year some of my friends went to Woodstock in an old
Cadillac hertz
that I saw later in the Woodstock 1969 Movie.
My
Cousins had a great basement band in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
1965.
The were the warm up band for The Rolling Stones' Concert
in Milwaukee.
They also showed them around town in their red
Thunderbird convertable.
The thing that puzzles me most is how
I managed to be near the center of many important world
events such as the Peace Movement in America or the Solidarity
Movement in
Poland, and yet how I managed to miss the many
opportunities, which became available to me at those
times. But most of all the one that I do regret most, is
not meeting Allen
Ginsberg
when he was in a Warsaw Old Town Café near my
apartment in the Capitol of Poland. I also regret not
going to his concert that I was invited to by its
organizers. I liked Allen a lot as an artist who had
something wise to say. And he was very good at getting
his message across in a humorous way that marked his
genius. Allen, we really miss you!
Me and
Joe, an old hippy friend from Chicago's Old Town and Near
North Side, 1974.
Oh, and what about Woodstock? Well, I did that wrong, too.
Instead of going there with my friends from Chicago's
East Side as I hoped to, my family decided to screw up my
plans and sent me off to Europe for an extanded vacation
that year. I was seventeen and didn’t object because a
vacation in Europe sounded really cool and there was a
draft on, you know the “Uncle Sam wants you in
Vietnam” type of draft. Besides that, a trip to the Old
Continent was a chance to see my family, find my roots
and meet some interesting people. If not for that trip I
may have never gone back to Europe in the future.
I took
this photo on the Atlantic Ocean in 1970 on my way back
to Montreal, Canada
My vacation in Europe was
extended to a half a year. It helped to make me more
cosmopolitan and also solved my draft problems. Later,
after reentering the United States through Canada,
changing my address, dropping out of High School for a
few years and not registering for the Armed Forces my
draft situation was under control for a while. However, I
was risking a lot in case if I was cought. I’m still a
bit sorry though, that I missed a chance to go to
Woodstock and play around with my buddies in the rain and
mud or the pond and the bushes. On the other hand, I
visited Canada, England, Holland, Denmark and Poland. In
Poland, I was kept on the border for hours, had my
luggage searched and had many things taken by a Customs
Officer. And after all of that, I was made to pay a
ridiculous costumes tax on used clothes. All this because
the customs officer found a Peace button, Zig-Zag rolling
papers and a pipe in my luggage. It was a year after a
wave of 1968
student protests in America and Europe. And it was
also a year after the January and March 1968
student protests in Poland. But I did not find any hippies in
Poland. What I found there were students and kids that
were trying to look fashionable. They were also
interested in buying my jeans and LP phonograph records.
The time spent there was like falling into a time warp
for a while. I also learned a bit about Marxism, which I found had nothing
to do with the Marx
Brothers or
Marks & Spencer. I also knew the language. And in
those days English was not as popular in Continental
Europe as it is today. Besides that, it was also a cheap
place to stay.
A
photo of a street in London 1970
Later, I found out that Karol
Marx was a romantic, who believed that the working class
should have social benefits and more time to enjoy music,
art and culture. He was greatly influenced by Adam
Smith, a
well known 19 Century Scottish Economist. Marx believed
in globalization and that socialism would be good only
for highly developed and industrialized capitalist
nations. He did not recommend socialism for developing
such developing countries like, for example Russia or
India (!). Perhaps that's why it had failed in Eastern
Europe but survived especially in neighboring with Russia
and the Soviet Block Western countries such as Finland or
Sweden. In those countries the Working Class gained many
social benefits and greater autonomy from government
because of fear of spread of Communism.
A residential street in London 1970
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A monument I saw in Rotterdam,
Netherlands 1970
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Copenhagen, Denmark 1970
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Now, I must point out that my
life was not exactly a bed of roses. It was a bit like
some extreme sports I like. I am still reaping the
consequences of the events of the 60s that altered the
course of my future forever. As a consequence of dropping
out of school I got my High School Diploma a few years
later. But if not for the efforts of my Brother Mitchell,
who had helped me to get back to school and drove me to
it almost every day or the guidance of my good friend
Charles (Larry) Hribal I wouldn't have Graduated. He was
a Russian American, who used to play football for Notre
Dame University. Later he worked as a High School Teacher
and a Coach in New York, Florida and in Illinois. He also
coached me though life for a while in the 1970s, taught
me some self-confidence and was one of the best friends I
had. Larry moved to California in the 1980s just as I was
moving to Europe. Last I heard, he was employed as a
Surveillance Agent at the Flamingo Hilton Hotel in Las
Vegas, Nevada and passed away in 2000 after a long illness. After the end
of the Vietnam War, President Carter gave amnesty to guys
like me and abolished the draft. He is my favorite
President and I wish there were more like him, especially
today in 2005.
Budapest,
Hungary
Budapest,
Hungary
Poland had major unrests with
student and labor protests in 1968 and 1970. But 1969 was
a good and quiet year for my visit there. Though, I was
probably monitored a lot by the KGB. My Mother’s help
and understanding made my move to Europe possible. I also
had some friends there from the 1969 visit. And then in
1980s I made it back just in time to witnessed some
historical events in Eastern Europe that were to changed
the face of the world forever.
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A friend I
crossed the Atlantic Ocean with . . .
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On a ship
entering a port in Montreal, Canada 1970
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I moved into a modern one
bedroom apartment in a fashionable downtown neighborhood.
It was across the street from the Chinese Embassy where
once stood a Warsaw
Ghetto wall
built by the Nazis during WW2. My apartment was also a
few blocks from the Warsaw Ghetto Monument, the Warsaw
Uprising
Monument and other historical landmarks of the Polish
Capitol. In fact, I was surrounded by all kinds of
monuments and visited by some ghosts from the Ghetto. I
believe that there was some kind of magnetic field in
that place that drew me to it and kept me there for so
many years. But besides all this, some of the best times
I have had in the 1980s were on nudist beaches near
Warsaw (this is Europe, you know). Too bad interest in
the Naturist Movement had declined after 1989 in Poland
due to its disapproval by the Roman Catholic Church. The
Solidarity Movement that liberated much of Europe from
the oppressive Communist system brought about freedom to
the 90% Polish Catholic majority. However, it did leave
behind many minorities that were also oppressed by the
Communist system and by the Nazies before that. Those
minorities are still struggling for acceptance and their
rights.
Newsweek,
December 15, 1980
Warsaw's
Old Town Market Square
Some of my school friends
from the 60s and early 70s joined the Coastguard, some
died in Vietnam, others went on to study at Berkley and
other universities. And many of them moved to California.
I had hoped to continue my education at the University
of Notre Dame
when I was in High School. The draft, my engagement in
the Peace Movement, alienation from a overly consumption
oriented mainstream culture and dropping out of school
for a while changed all of that. The solidarity among
hippies and their like brought about the hippie movement.
When the War was over that solidarity disintegrated and
the movement did too for a while. It left many such as I
somewhat adrift. I have realized how I have grown old and
become somewhat more conservative. Guess time takes its
tall. That reminds me of what we used to say, that you
should not trust anyone over 30. And I am over 30 now. So,
if you happen to disagree with me somehow, please don't
get too hung-up about it. You may very well be right. The
contemporary world is facing many complex problems that
the world of my generation was not confronted with or
just not aware of. There's still plenty of things to be
fixing in the world. So, let's rock!
A family friend at Pipers Alley in Chicago's Old Town,
1968
The Peace Movement was over
in the mid 1970s, underground FM radio stations turned
commercial, head shops closed and so called hippie
ghettos or Meccas turned into popular tourist traps. The
War was over! Lennon got married, the Beatles were
breaking apart and the Peace Movement was over. Some
hippies returned back to their suburban homes, finished
schools, got jobs, joined political parties, the Rotary
Club, climbed up the ranks of the decked out world,
became the establishment ect. And in the 1990s, during
the George Clinton era led America to the longest period
of prosperity in history stopping just short of stating
“Better living through soft drugs”. The President
even admitted to smoking pot [without inhaling it, though]
in the 1960s. And what about me? Well, I smoked it too,
inhaled it and ended up in Poland, where pot was legal
untill about 1999. That's why I advice you not to do
anything I would. In the 1990s I experienced the longest
period of strife in my life and also the greatest rush of
creative inspiration. That's when I decided to build a
website for a hobby around a few 60s photos I had. And
this is that website.
This
portrait of Che that is on my graphic has become an icon.
The one with a joint comes from a tee-shirt I got in
Amsterdam.
I have never sympathized with
communism. I am an individualist and a communal life has
never appealed to me outside of my bedroom, of course.
However, I do admit being curious to learn something or
other about it, and about some of its enigmatic leaders
such as Ché Guevara. Many hippies read Ché’s
Motorcycle Diaries, a book about his travels through the
Andes. My favorite tee-shirt had Ché's portrait on it,
too. I did not know much about his later life in Cuba or
the terrible things he did there and in Africa. Ché's
Motorcycle Diaries were an inspiration for many old
hippies before he became a violent revolutionary. The
book was also an inspiration for many Beat Generation
Writers. He was a symbol of a free and united South
America/ Latin America, and also of a fight of the weak
for freedom. In the Motorcycle Diaries Ché said that
revolutions are never peaceful. He probably said that
because in his times there were no peaceful revolutions.
In those days many prominent freedom loving Americans
also had hopes that communism would bring about a better
world for the oppressed masses. Since then we have had
many reasonably peaceful revolutions lead by those who
grew up on Ché's book. And communism turned out to be
the most repressive, bloody and utopian political system
the world has known yet. However, none of those enigmatic
personas could compare to Einstein or Gandhi, who in my opinion, most
1960s hippies took as their role models, and perhaps many
still do.
Gandhi started a non-violent movement in India but was
confronted with a less democratic system. The hippies
were also interested in holding a non-violent movement
but in a free and democratic society. Some hippies also
met with various Hindus, who came with some advice and
spiritual support. Hippies wanted to change the politics
of their own government through a democratic process that
was Constitutionally available to them. But they did not
want to abolish the system, on which their Fatherland was
founded, and which enabled them to question their
government's policies. In other less democratic cultures
on our planet, such a movement would probably be quickly
silenced or would degenerate into a militant one.
Einstein was also into Hinduism. He studied Hindu
Scriptures and was a confirmed pacifist. Einstein gave up
his Austrian citizenship to avoid a draft and became an
activist in one of the earliest Peace movements in the
world at the time of the First World War.
The hippies did not want to abolish Democracy. They were
patriotic young people who wanted America to be a better
place for all to live, in the spirit of “…one
World… with liberty and justice for all”. The way to
achieve this less selfish objective was through changing
people’s worldviews on some fundamental things related
to the pursuit of happiness, justice and liberty for all.
In those days, that type of reformist movement had no
chance in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.
The 1980s Solidarity Movement in Poland, which I had a
first hand opportunity to observe, was possible only
because of some extraordinary and favorable circumstances.
Some journalists in the 80s had also compared it to the
American hippie Peace movement.
This
photo was taken in 1976
I do not want you to get a
wrong impression... I am not saying that Poland is a
hippie Mecca or anything like that. Please remember that
Pope John Paul II was Polish. And take it from me, it’s
probably one of the straightest nations in Europe, if you
know what I mean. But on visiting Poland I've had some
nice times in Krakow and the mountains, and at
the 1969 Warsaw Jazz Jamboree where a bop musician called
Dizzy
Gillespie
and other Jazz musicians gave some really awesome
concerts for a few days in a row. Though Chicago was once
a big Jazz capitol, and Gillespie was almost a household
word there for a while, we did not have such Jamborees
there or anywhere else like that as far as I know, accept
for perhaps New Orleans or San Francisco. In earlier
decades of Jazz music (1930-50) many famous Jazz
musicians and bands played at the Sherman House (formally
one of the largest hotels in America). I used to work in
that hotel as a cigar stand Night Manager around 1971. It
was the first job I ever had. The hotel stood just across
the street from Chicago’s City Hall. Mayor Daley,
against whom I demonstrated earlier in the 60s had his
headquarters on the first floor of the Sherman House. I
served the Mayor often when I used to work there. Today
on the site of the hotel stands the State of Illinois
Building. And now, his Son is the Mayor of Chicago.
I was told that Bebop parties were also held in
our ranch style home. It stood in a quiet but haunted
neighborhood between East Side and Calumet
City (Calumet
means in N. Amer. Indian lang. "Peace Pipe". It
is a place where many early Jazz artists such as Sun Ra, Frank
Sinatra, Sophie
Tucker, Keith
Speaks or Gypsy
Rose Lee
used to play in the clubs). Originally it housed a Tavern
(called "speak-easy" during the Prohibition)
and I was told there were many Bop parties there. That
also may explain why I used to hear music, dancing and
voices of crouds in my dreams when I was a kid. I guess
they never seized to stop reverberating in the particles
of atoms, which formed the ceilings and the walls of that
house.
Had
I gone to neighboring Czechoslovakia in 1969 I might have bumped
into George Clinton who was studding in Prague then or
into one of his future advisors. I did that wrong, too.
What more can I say? I guess that’s why they called me
The Polish Hippy. Oh ye, one more thing... if you see
Woodstock the Movie, you might get a glimpse of my
friend’s Cadillac hertz parked near some bushes or
woods. Well, I am sorry not to have spent a night or two
with them in that car... But who would have guessed then
that that would turn out to be such an important
historical event. After all, I did participate in other
important events in Chicago, which are hardly remembered
by anyone today or not at all.
Even though sometimes I may not look like a hippy anymore,
I will always remain a hippy at heart. I still have the
Hindu beads I used to were in the 60s and other stuff
such as a wooden stash box, small Hindu incense burner
with a few original 60s incense sticks in a medicine jar,
a bell, earrings, a few books and other hippie
paraphernalia I got in Chicago’s Old Town Head Shops,
Piper’s Alley and a head shop in Roseland. But my
psychedelic day-glow posters, pipes, collection of LP and
45 rpm records and other stuff like that got lost through
the decades. Not until 2003 did I managed to reconstruct
some of my favorite 1960s records with CDs.
Family
friends at Pipers Alley in Chicago's Old Town 1968
Peace
& Love
| On the next
pages are some photos that were altered for a
psychedelic effect and a few words about 1960s
fashions followed by a link to My 1960s Photo
Album. |
Jump to page: 2, 3, 4
|
by Adam Wojtanek