University of Virginia Library

Letter: Boston Resident Says
Hippie Movement Dying Out

As a veteran of four collegiate
years and two summers in the
Cambridge-Boston scene, and a
recent visitor there, I would like
to comment on Mr. Randy
Foote's article on Summer of Love,
1968 (CD 4/26/68).

Cambridge-Boston is more and
less than Mr. Foote makes out.
It is much more by way of cultural
and intellectual traditions,
in terms of which Boston was, and
is, one of the most refined centers
in the country. In the terms
to which the article speaks, it is
also a 'groovy scene'. One returns
to Harvard Square to find
the Cambridge "Deacons" (a
Spade version of Hell's Angels
East, but not so dirty), streetside
discussions of the latest Ho-Che-Regis
orthodoxies, kids hawking
AVATAR (which is illegal) all
over the place, and the usual
beards and beads contingent. Last
summer, not this one, was
apparently the time for aspiring
hippies to congregate and really
be where it's at, just as the summer
of '66 was apparently the
time to make the scene on the West
Coast, before all the contradictions
reduced the Haight to a bad
trip.

Unfortunately it is difficult to
agree with the implications of Mr.
Foote's article that Summer '68
will be either a great mind-bending
freak or will produce anything
like the community he describes.
Not that there won't be any more
drugs, Omegas (ohms—Resistance:
Omega - Apocalypse), Be-ins,
meditation, ragas, and the whole
bit. On the contrary, the preeminent
positions these happenings
will have may indicate the failure
of the whole thing. This would
be the result of what I call a
conceptual minimalism—or the reduction
of the mind to the most
nominal set of clattering fake ideas,
symbolized in expressions like
"hassle", "spaced", and "do your
thing", which indicate precisely
what they mean to say, or very
little.

Personally, I find this minimalism
illustrated in AVATAR,
which one buys in Boston (even
businessmen buy it) in hopes that
one aids some cause. I had the
interesting experience of knowing
Wayne Hansen (the current editor)
for many years, and other members
of the Boston 'underground' for
almost as long. I find his articles
and those of other Harvard expatriates
paeans to a void. (I'm
just doing my thing, Wayne). Now
there is less and less point to hassling
the Establishment (which
never got screwed up on speed
or acid in the first place); there
is no longer any Art in AVATAR,
EVO, Oracle (a new position on
the cover every week) or the others;
there is no philosophy except in
the weed (which is pretty normal
stuff anyway), and even some of
the rock groups are returning to
the folk sound which was big in
the days when you could hear
Dylan and Baez in Club 47 (old
Club 47, on Mt. Auburn St.).
That was back in the days when
revolution and resistance were intellectual
propositions rather than
ideological programmes. One opposed
the permeation of logical
positivism in the Phil Department
at Harvard, and the Civil Rights
movement was just taking off.

I must admit that these latter
happenings were before my time.
Also, it cannot be denied that
Integration and Resistance continue
as coherent, committed
movements (Cambridge has a lot
of Omegas, and is totally, sexually
integrated at the underground
level. Negroes in Cambridge are
still individuals, although they are
coming to be called Blacks). But
it is clear that the hippie-yippie
scene is becoming an intellectual
void, which is also losing the moral
force it obtained by association
with the other movements. Personally,
I prefer some sort of
categorized, conceptual structure
to a mind bent out of shape on
a table. The initial attack on
social absurdities carried out at
the expense of social mores was
brilliant, reformist, and conceptually
enlightening, but now the
consequences of the movement
lead to their own reductio ad
absurdam.

Cambridge-Boston this summer
will be full of out-of-town yokels
looking for Where It's At; and
sleeping in the Boston Common
will be no fun. The remaining hard
core will not be available to the
barefoot kids looking for the
action, and might not be worth
as much as it was. While Boston
would undoubtedly be an educational
experience for many, the
movement and its meaning is a
dying thing.