Go Ask Alice
Your New Hair Guy
Hello again! I’m not Truman. Let’s just get that out of the way at the top.
Truman, as you all may have noticed by last week’s blog entry, has gone native so to speak. He recently decided that he was sick of all the crap that America has saddled on him, and has declared that he will never return stateside. Unless the British decide to take back the land we stole from them. Then he’ll come back.
Until then, you’re stuck with me. Last week’s diatribe that nobody cares about regarded renting movies, and this week, I intend to discuss something only remotely more interesting. And that topic is hippies, of course.
As I vaguely alluded to in the last time I wrote for the Hair Guy, I returned to my hometown of Davis, CA for the first time since early March. It was great to get home, effectively breaking free of the shackles of school for a blessed three days. Instead of normal college life, I had my meals paid for, got to see Iron Man 2 on my parents’ dime and sleep in as late as I wanted. In short, heaven.
But I forgot one important aspect of Mother’s Day weekend in Davis. Every year, in a tradition that stretches back for eons*, a swarm of hippies descends on the sleepy little UC Davis campus to take part in the Whole Earth Festival. They bring with them their drum circles, tie-dye, pachouli oil, and pipes and cigarettes filled with a perfectly harmless blend of various herbs and spices**.
*Probably.
** Marijuana.
In Eugene, this is known as every day. We’re so accustomed to hippies at U of O that it would be weird to NOT be accosted by a drumming dread-head on your way to class. They pervade the very fiber of our campus, and it gives Eugene a unique vibe that is off-putting, mildly amusing or awesome, depending on how many pot brownies you ate.
Davis, while certainly not Stepford, has a far smaller hippie population for the majority of the year. It’s really a town where hippies go when they’re too tired to rage against the machine anymore and want to settle down and start a family. It is also a town where you move to if you’d like to build a tunnel for frogs to pass safely underneath a busy street.
But when the Whole Earth Festival rolls into town, it’s a whole other ball game. The overwhelming musk emanating from the UCD campus pervades the town for the entire three-day celebration of Mother Earth. And that’s fine. I don’t really have a problem with hippie culture, especially due to the inherent peacefulness they strive to achieve. No one has a Reefer Madness-esque freakout and runs around murdering innocents*, and they clean up pretty nicely.
*At least that we know of.
The problem comes from the junior high and high school kids who attend Whole Earth for the sake of seeming counterculture for a few hours*. These are the same kids who stress themselves out over school on a daily basis, the kids who overachieve beyond belief. They’re the children of doctors, lawyers, university professors and other folks who fit nicely into trust-fund territory. For them, Whole Earth is the safe, easy way to pretend that they’re totally cool while paying $30 for a henna tattoo that will wash off in two weeks.
*Also, free pot.
And it’s not entirely their fault. For every peacenik who rode their bike to Davis from San Francisco, there’s a shrewd businessman selling $40 tie-dye t-shirts. Whole Earth Festival, while embracing the great things our Earth has to offer, is simultaneously an excuse for a guy with slightly above-average smarts to make a quick buck.
But it doesn’t really matter. Whole Earth has achieved a certain balance that seems to serve it well. You could go there and spend no money, camping out, purifying your urine to create clean drinking water and rocking out in the greatest drum circle in your life. Or you can borrow $20 from your folks, put on your store bought tie-dye, buy a peace necklace and throw up on the way home because you forgot to listen to your mom and not take the brown acid.
Jack Brazil knows this is shorter than a normal entry, but his rage burns white-hot for only a brief period of time.
But I forgot one important aspect of Mother’s Day weekend in Davis. Every year, in a tradition that stretches back for eons*, a swarm of hippies descends on the sleepy little UC Davis campus to take part in the Whole Earth Festival. They bring with them their drum circles, tie-dye, pachouli oil, and pipes and cigarettes filled with a perfectly harmless blend of various herbs and spices**.
*Probably.
** Marijuana.
In Eugene, this is known as every day. We’re so accustomed to hippies at U of O that it would be weird to NOT be accosted by a drumming dread-head on your way to class. They pervade the very fiber of our campus, and it gives Eugene a unique vibe that is off-putting, mildly amusing or awesome, depending on how many pot brownies you ate.
Davis, while certainly not Stepford, has a far smaller hippie population for the majority of the year. It’s really a town where hippies go when they’re too tired to rage against the machine anymore and want to settle down and start a family. It is also a town where you move to if you’d like to build a tunnel for frogs to pass safely underneath a busy street.
But when the Whole Earth Festival rolls into town, it’s a whole other ball game. The overwhelming musk emanating from the UCD campus pervades the town for the entire three-day celebration of Mother Earth. And that’s fine. I don’t really have a problem with hippie culture, especially due to the inherent peacefulness they strive to achieve. No one has a Reefer Madness-esque freakout and runs around murdering innocents*, and they clean up pretty nicely.
*At least that we know of.
The problem comes from the junior high and high school kids who attend Whole Earth for the sake of seeming counterculture for a few hours*. These are the same kids who stress themselves out over school on a daily basis, the kids who overachieve beyond belief. They’re the children of doctors, lawyers, university professors and other folks who fit nicely into trust-fund territory. For them, Whole Earth is the safe, easy way to pretend that they’re totally cool while paying $30 for a henna tattoo that will wash off in two weeks.
*Also, free pot.
And it’s not entirely their fault. For every peacenik who rode their bike to Davis from San Francisco, there’s a shrewd businessman selling $40 tie-dye t-shirts. Whole Earth Festival, while embracing the great things our Earth has to offer, is simultaneously an excuse for a guy with slightly above-average smarts to make a quick buck.
But it doesn’t really matter. Whole Earth has achieved a certain balance that seems to serve it well. You could go there and spend no money, camping out, purifying your urine to create clean drinking water and rocking out in the greatest drum circle in your life. Or you can borrow $20 from your folks, put on your store bought tie-dye, buy a peace necklace and throw up on the way home because you forgot to listen to your mom and not take the brown acid.
Jack Brazil knows this is shorter than a normal entry, but his rage burns white-hot for only a brief period of time.