The Retro Blog

You may have noticed I don’t write much about hippies on this blog. That’s because hippies suck.

I’m tempted to end it at that but I suppose I’ll attempt to articulate myself a little better. For one thing, I find hippy fashion dreadful. I can do without the majority of hippy music. The main reason, though, is that I’m absolutely sick of all the self worshipping ex-hippies do. Maybe it’s just my close proximity to Berkeley upbringing, but if I have to sit through one more old guy talking about how he and his friends changed the world by smoking a ton of dope I might scream. Don’t even get me started on the endless stream of “wow, weren’t hippies amazing” documentaries on PBS.

So today hippies will be making one rare appearance on the retro blog. You see today is the 40th anniversary of the Altamont Free Concert. It’s often considered the death of the hippy era. I’ve learned this because Peter Coyote tends to get very somber during the Altamont section of the thousands of PBS documentaries about the 60s. The Altamont concert was organized in exactly the sort of way you might expect people doing lots of drugs might organize a concert. The venue changed a few times so the concert grounds ended up not having toilets or medical tents. The Rolling Stones hired Hells Angels to act as security in exchange for $500 worth of beer. Violence escalated through the night until one fan high on meth drew a gun and the Angels reacted by stabbing and kicking him to death.

Here’s The Rolling Stones playing “Sympathy for the Devil” amid the chaos. The Stones are OK by me, but Mick’s cape thing has got to go.