Love blooms anew for 1967 - Boomers mark the 40th anniversary of a celebrated summer (BARRRFFF!!!)

Chicago Tribune ^ | May 28, 2007 | Stevenson Swanson

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

kent state - a good start.

[FierceDraka]

Seems like every ten years (when the year ends in the number seven), the Boomers engage in an orgy of self-congratulatory garbage.

I remember back in 1987 - you could NOT get away from all the damned "Summer of Love" remembrances and tributes.

Didn't catch any of the hype in 1997, because I was too busy trying to just survive.

That said, I must add that I am absolutely sick and tired of the damned smugness and sense of entitlement of the Spoiled Generation. We Gen-X'ers have had to claw and fight and scratch for everything we've got.

[FierceDraka]

My parents got married that summer. They are still together.

My parents (both Boomers) got married 2 years earlier, were NEVER hippies, and are still together.

[FierceDraka]

The best slogan I could muster was, "Make love and war."

LOL Sounds like my son - gung-ho US Army Soldier. Hoo-ah!

[Riverman94610]

I was at Monterey.A magical moment in time that could never be surpassed.

[warsaw44]

I hate Hendricks, can’t stand Joplin, and break out in hysterical laughter when I hear “If you’re going to Saaan Fraaan Sisco.” That’s gotta be one of the dumbest dumbass songs ever written.

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Roger that. Man, I hate the friggin music from that time period.

[FierceDraka]

Everybody goes through their own "Age of Aquarius" at some point.

Yeah, me too. But I was born in '66, so my "Age of Aquarius" was in the mid to late '80's.

The difference was, instead of "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out", it was "Sex, Drugs, and Rock'n'Roll".

The heroes of the Boomers were Dylan, Hendrix, and Joplin.

The heroes of my generation were Motley Crue, Iron Maiden, and Slayer.

I'm 40 - just last week I broke my old bench press record I set when I was 27. Not too bad for a former dope fiend!

[warsaw44]

And, boy, do I hate those Ameriprise ads that generally assume we all look back so longingly. BARF !

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Dont forget the American Express boomer ass kissing ad campaign they had running for some time. What dreck.

[Hacksaw]

Cartman also had music that drove hippies away:

[Steve_Seattle]

"It was a very special moment of optimism and idealism,"

I was there, and it was no such thing. Like everything associated with the Left, it was a time of cynicism, self-centeredness, and hate. The left knows nothing of idealism. It is, and always has been, crude materialism.

[Steve_Seattle]

The best band from the SF hippy scene was Jefferson Airplane, and they were a**holes. But they had a good sound, interesting guitar work, and a good lead singer. From the get-go, I was aware of the hard, nasty, pagan quality of the SF hippy scene. They were haters and cynics, almost all of them. Kerouac saw it, and drank himself to death.

[Chi-townChief]

Jack's comment in an interview with The Paris Review at the time:

"I’m pro-American and the radical political involvements seem to tend elsewhere . . . The country gave my Canadian family a good break, more or less, and we see no reason to demean said country."

[Chi-townChief]

You got that straight; those commercials are nauseating and Dennis Hopper is only slightly better.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

From my fave BOC album!

[thulldud]

Seems like every ten years (when the year ends in the number seven), the Boomers engage in an orgy of self-congratulatory garbage.

Note, that statement properly applies to the boomers who work in the media. It happens that these are precisely the ones who were stoned out of their gourds in '67. What they think they remember likely has little resemblance to anything in the real world.

Conservative boomers thought then, as we do now, that hippies stink. For my part, I spent the Sixties wanting to go to the moon, but the unreconstructed Summer-of-Love nostalgia freaks currently running the media hardly noticed the space program while it was underway, and apparently the only mission they know anything about now is Apollo 13.

Houston, somebody's got a problem.

[CSM]

I saw a special on “The History Channel” this weekend about SF during this time. It was amazing how quickly that “free love” atmosphere devolved into a nightmare.

[AngryJawa]

My parents got married that summer. They are still together.

I was conceived that summer. They are still together - and as liberal as ever.

They are not pleased with their offsprings' politics. 8^)

[Moleman]

Wow, I will be 40 this year...OMG...

[FierceDraka]

Conservative boomers thought then, as we do now, that hippies stink.

My Boomer parents were too busy providing a decent home and living for me and my siblings to have anything to do with "free love" or "consciousness expansion".