3alarmer 

.
...I was a hippie, from about 1970 when Zumwalt let us grow beards and longer hair in the Navy, until about the end of that decade, when I left the organic farm in Forest Lake to get a real job. The only bikes I ever recall having in that ten year span were all old Raleigh three speeds, not always branded Raleigh. But if you got far enough out in the country, in your pursuit of a return to the land, it was mostly motorized travel.

I'm not trying to pass myself off as some sort of authority on hippieness, but if you are stoned enough, you will stop worrying about which bike is appropriate.

Deal4Fuji

Don't VW's and hippies kind of go together ? It'd be better if it was a microbus

BlazingPedals

In the end, Sheldon rode a recumbent trike. My idea of a hippy bike would be an old beat-up department store single-speed bike with loosely-spoked wheels and ape-hanger bars added.

rsbob 

you might want one of these for your new lifestyle

1989Pre 

No self-respecting flower child would ever mount bicycles that nice. Find a Schwinn Suburban and paint it something unusual, like "over-ripe banana" scheme.

Gyro

[size=13px]Check out a James Garner movie called "Marlowe 1969". Tons of hippy stuff inside.There's even a poster on a wall I had on my bedroom wall at the time. I had a Stingray, but was going the mini bike route.[/size]

Schweinhund

The back bike with the drop bars.
Loosen the bar clamp and rotate the bars back until the horns are pointing at 230. There you go. it's a hippy bike.

mtnbud

TiHabanero

Kids these days have zero idea what a hippie was. It cannot be relived or borrowed by today's youth. They really need to come up with a different term that defines their "way of life" rather than using the term "hippie" as they insult the people that lived the hippie lifestyle.
I can tell you that those of us that really were hippies were messed up inside and out, didn't have mom or dad's basement to return to, or parents to beg for money. That was not the hippie movement, man. It was life on the road, communes that worked the land, independence at a great price. Most of us grew up and out of it, those that didn't got more lost.

Oh yeah, if we had a bike it was likely a Murray, Huffy, or an old English three speed.

rsbob 

For the first time I used an AI image generator and plugged in ‘bike decorated by a hippie’ or it more looks like a children’s parade bike.

Wildwood 

Hondo
Your off-roading needs to make you smile.
Maybe get a mountain in your future?


edit: What is Foo content? Foo-lish? Foo-like? Foo-lhardy? Foo-Foo?

zandoval 

WOW... They look so familiar...

beng1

Hippies were young adults living back in the 1960s and early 1970s, and buy far the most popular bicycle for young adults in that time period was the ten-speed racer, that is why there are so many old ten-speeds laying around everywhere today. The chopper bikes were what kids rode back then before puberty. Cruisers were for nerds and old people, or people with no money. So given a choice the hippy would go for the ten-speed, but if they were poor they would settle for any old adult-sized used bike they could get their hands on.

thumpism 

Get your nomenclature straight.

Hippie =


Hippy =

cjenrick

You need a recumbent for a hippy machine. String some Christmas lights, add a sound system, get 26 tail lights all blinking randomly, full rain fairing, tow a trailer with your old lady in it and have a lb of rag weed hidden in the frame and a jug of red mountain between your lips.

6door74

+1 for hippy

LeeG

Go find a free bicycle and make it rideable. Done.
All that other stuff bugging you might benefit from therapy.

PDKL45

The hippies never really rode bikes, cycling really became a thing with that generation in the post-hippie zeitgeist of the 1970s, when the ideas of the hippies were becoming mainstream so that people were being active and the oil crisis was hitting home. A certain bunch of ex-hippies in Marin country took old balloon tire cruisers and invented a little thing called mountin biking at about that time. The Steves were busy inventing the PC in a garage not too far away and there was generally an extraordinary amount of creativity being unleashed in the Bay Area. Kinda makes you wonder if the machines we're using to communicate about and the machines we are using to do it are at least partially a result of the creativity unleashed by the psychedelics they'd been ingesting in the years previously. Also, in 1976, the year a small PDKL45 was being born half a world away, the Bikecentennial tours were underway, and the organization established to organize them was to live on and become the Adventure Cycing Association. The hippies weren't crazy about bikes, but the adults they became were in many ways.

Still, look to the orange beast. Maybe find a front porteur rack, use P-clamps if there are no mounts, or go the bag route. Single speed is versatile, but the orange bike is not really hippie. What you're thinking is a utility/urgan/bikepacker, so you could also throw a Surly KM fork on one of the hardtail 29ers. Bikepacking, to my mind isn't a hippie thing, but it does fit with the post-hippie ethos of the 1970s. Oh, and whoever said Surly, it's more of a punk thing. No hippie ever came up with the Surly font, it's amphetamine psychosis-schitzophrenia-punk, rather than Filmore Theatre band poster and I would argue that the modern hippie bike is the Rivendell, the whole brand ethos fits perfectly with that of the hippie generation as they are in the present day in many ways.

PDKL45

Did anyone ever see one of these in person? They were not uncommon in certain circles at a certain time in the 90s.

rossiny

groovey man...

50PlusCycling

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.

PDKL45

Fellow Gen-Xer? This is so accurate to my own childhood, half a world away, it's almost scary. Incense does it for me, though.

RubeRad

I'm also a fellow Gen-Xer. Fun fact, I was once kidnapped from a commune.

rosefarts

There is not a way for someone to mention being institutionalized without me just wanting a Pepsi.


I digress.

Burnout is a real thing. Sometimes it requires a break. Sometimes it takes a change of scenery/trails. For me, having a wide range of things I’m not very good at works.

I may ride my bike for the first time in 2023 today. I may go skiing again though. I’ll decide soon.

Fun fact. I went from 40+ starts a year (March-September season and nearly every weekend + weekday crits) to zero, and basically went rock climbing for a little over a decade.

Came back to cycling for long rides, weird objectives, and it’s still fun to nerd out on gear.

We’re all doing this for fun, make it what you want it to be.

As for the beer bike, how about a gas powered cruiser? Cause **** the hippies. https://www.bikeberry.com/products/2...ch-cruiser-diy

PDKL45

The porteur rack works well for beer and various other stuff, like tents etc.