Berkeley Hippies

Berkeley, California: beautiful university, strange city. 'Come for the culture, but stay for the food', said the tourist slogan. But other than the University (very cultured, no doubt about it) it was difficult to see what other culture this might to have referred to, apart from its subculture... And I found this a combination of the disturbing and the commodified.

The most striking thing about non-university Berkeley is its culture of Hippiedom. Hippies live on the streets there, partying like it was 1969. Except of course we're long after 1969... So it made me wonder: is it possible to be a 'proper' hippy post-Manson? The hippies I encountered, predominantly men in their fifties sporting frizzy goatees and coloured round shades, and producing a half-hearted street-theatre (sitting on the pavement, walking on tightropes, selling clothes and 2nd-hand books, etc.), seemed uniformly menacing.

But it also reminded me that postmodernism, contrary to much of the theory, can be a very unself-conscious practice rather anything deliberately self-reflexive. You can 'be' someone by following a cultural script. But the script is complex and many-faceted, a veritable wiki-text of meanings and values. Manson turned the values of the 60s inside-out, in a process we could term (after Baudrillard) 'reversibility'. To be a hippy, all you have to do is buy the tie-dyed clothes and display the anti-authoritarian slogans. But this look is saturated not just with connotations of peace and love, but with Manson and Altamont.