Why the Boho Hippie Outfitter? Vintage better times. Because it's a throwback to when some of us tried to do the right thing, even if it was hard. Because we're still around, and there are more of us now than then. Because stores shouldn't be just about profit, they should exist for the good of the community, because they live in that community. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
I’m one of the few people my age that didn’t go to Woodstock.
True, a friend asked me if I was going, and I asked him what it was and where it was. At the time, I just wasn’t up for going camping some place in New York I’d never heard of, so I said No when he asked if I wanted to go with him. Thanks for the invite anyway.
So he went, had a good time, came back, and later opened up a Head Shop.
A Head Shop, for those of you who don’t know, is a shop where you go to feed your head, a term straight from White Rabbit by Grace Slick with the Stone Pony’s and later Jefferson Airplane.
You fed your head with music, posters, paraphernalia, clothes, incense, various underground comics and newspapers and books. Books ranging from The Anarchist Cookbook to The Whole Earth Catalog to Ken Kesey or Alan Ginsburg. Tolkien. Castaneda. The I Ching. Maybe some Tarot cards and Occult literature too. The Firefox series for people who wanted to get back to the land, or at least read about it. Raise people’s consciousness about Women’s Rights and Black Power and Social Injustice causes, the Population Bomb, nuclear proliferation and Mutual Assured Destruction, pollution. Firesign Theater.
You’d take your time, listening to the music, talking, hanging out, and just enjoy the place. And come out with something that just called out to you, and new ideas rattling around your head.
So when looking to start my own on line business, I wanted to somehow make that feeling available. Because there’s a lot of old hippies (and maybe beatniks) out there who remember that feeling. And there’s a lot of new hippies, and all the Boho people who came before and came afterward, that want and need that experience.
So that’s what this blog is about. Creating that online store. How easy and hard it is, what I didn’t know and had to learn, how it meets some of the ideals of that time (The Hippies Were Right!). Trials and tribulations. The struggle is real, the struggle goes ever on.
I’ll talk about product sourcing as it relates to reducing our carbon footprint, doing the least amount of damage to the environment as possible, and why shopping online is a surprisingly good way to do it. Earth Day reduce-reuse-recycle and all.
Shopping can be consciousness raising. Welcome to...
the Saga of the Boho Hippie Outfitter. Opening April, 2023. Stay tuned.
