Funny you should mention that. However, I never needed shoe polish, cuz I wore running shoes. Garcia also sold paintings and movies. He even painted my portrait; offered on eBay at $55,000 in November, 2001
What’s Up with The Hippie Movement and 1960s Hippies
 by David Stone in Subcultures, August 19, 2011
Mainstream media forgot the Hippie Movement when it became more subdued (and successful), but the 1960s hippies and the Counterculture that spawned them never went away. The movement may be even more effective than it was four decades ago.
Asked about it in an interview, Wavy Gravy, Official Clown of the Grateful Dead, and Hippie Movement pioneer, gently explained that the 1960s hippies were simply not as visible. Their passions and good work continued, but sometimes, it was behind ties and shoe polish.
Think about it for just a minute. Who do you think Jerry Garcia was designing all those ties for? Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party?
The Sixties Counterculture was a social surge that rose out of disenchantment with social injustice, institutiona racism, sexism and the burgeoning militarism in American life. Free speech activists, beats and rights activists were fertilized.
Out of the milieu too came the Hippie Movment. 1960s hippies were probably the most benign offspring. We were subversive as hell.
But gentle.
The Hippie Movement embraced a diverse range of ideas and ideals, but its most vibrant causes were peace, free love, mind expansion, human rights and brotherhood. Sex, drugs and rock and roll is what the media liked to parade because it put cheeks in seats for their advertisers and made the middle class cluck their tongues. But it’s typical of the majority of journalists, then and now, that they rarely take the time to dig deep or understand the less obvious elements of the subjects about which they’re writing. Meet deadlines, please the boss and don’t piss off the advertisers, and the poorly informed public can get back to whatever.
The great Wavy Gravy, Official Clown of The Grateful Dead
Violence forced the Hippie Movement to seek the shelter of camoflauge, but the movement continued.
Wavy Gravy makes a great example. Even without his clown nose, you can see from the photo above that he retains his hippie style.
An improvisational standup artist with Lenny Bruce as his manager and opening for top line musicians like John Coltrane, Wavy (hilariously referred to as “Mr. Gravy” in the ultra-stiff New York Times) went on to help form the Hog Farm commune, which Fed 400,000 unexpected guests at Woodstock for four days in 1969 and supplied security as the Please Force, while still using his given name, Hugh Romney.
Accidentally annointed “Wavy Gravy” by B. B. King, Wavy has continued his communal life, although married for forty years now, with the bulk of it spent at his Hippie Hyannisport digs in Berkeley. More signicant, his clown outfit symbolizes the merger of his activities in support of social and helping sick children. (He donned the suit to pay volunteer visits to children in hospitals in his community, and later discovered that it helped lessen instances of police brutality during demonstrations.)
Year round, Wavy Gravy continues his Hippie Movement commitmens by organizing benefit concerts for a variety of causes, and until Uniler bought Ben & Jerry’s, he donated proceeds from his signature flavor to charities.
His highest profile charity is Seva, a foundation he started with Dr. Larry Brilliant and awareness pioneer Ram Dass. Seva pays for tens of thousands of operations to reduce preventable blindness in the Third World, its original mission, and other social justice causes.
Camp Winnarainbow brings children, including some homeless who attend for free, and, more recently, for two weeks of spiritual and physical reconditioning every summer.
Many of Wavy Gravy’s causes are also supported in part by the Grateful Dead’s generous Rex Foundation.
Wavy Gravy, the Grateful Dead, Jackson Browne and others who donate time and money to do the right thing are the true legacy of the Hippie Movement. All 1960s hippies may not be able to afford the same visibility, but we’re all still here, doing the right thing.
Read more: http://socyberty.com/subcultures/whats-up-with-the-hippie-movement-and-1960s-hippies/#ixzz2LAgqhQ8k |
