I’m old enough to remember hippy “culture,” and to have spent a little time in my youth in a New Mexico commune. Hippies didn’t ride bicycles. Their numerous longhaired, barefoot, seldom-washed kids rode bikes like crazy, hippies themselves slept all day, partied all night, and drove into town to swap food stamps for beer and cigarettes. Needless to say, hippy children didn’t suffer from obesity. To this day the smell of patchouli oil makes me sick.
A hippy car was anything which was at least as old as the hippy, ran on bald tires, seldom had more than a quarter tank of gas, and reeked of stale tobacco smoke. The bicycles laying around the commune were mostly kids Schwinns, with lots of patches on the tubes.