hippie capatalism

Sometimes nothing is more enjoyable than a good broken stereotype.

I've spent a good deal time following the jam band Phish, and always been in love with the parking lot scene. Nothing like getting into a traffic jam when a parking lot opens 5 or 6 hours before a show. Everyone wants to secure a good spot, for a day of lounging in the sun and frolicking in the sure to be unkempt grass. Frisbees flying, beer flowing, charcoal getting lit, and types of people sitting on blankets, lawn chairs, or car hoods. At a good show you can see license plates from half the union, without trying too hard. Just how many VM buses are there in the Midwest, and how did they all get started this morning?

Every lot, had a "Shakedown Street" ... vernacular left over from Grateful Dead tours ... or it least it did until concert venues and local law enforcement got lame.

This is where the serious "vending" goes on. Nearly everything for sale is contraband of some sort from lot style T-shirts that break trademarks as a rule, tickets (not to be sold at the venue), to delicious food (no permits), cold beer (no id check or distribution license), lovely glass pot smoking devices, and the stuff fill them with.

The vendors are almost exclusively hippies. These industrious wookies (think Chewbacca with dreadlocks), spinner girls, and glass artists need a way to fund getting to and in the next show on the tour. All that gas, sustinence, swill and narcotics has a cost ... and though many might see hippies eschewing the capitalist system they are just playing by their own rules.

The open market keeps customers happy, they get what they want and prices stay low. The hippies get to use their creativity in order to support their vagabond lifestyle, and in the end everyone is happy.

Everyone but the veune (lost sales), the local law enforcement community (drugs), and lawyers/politicians (parents for adults) was happy. The bad news is the good guys lost.

The good news is ... this sort of thing is alive and well across the world. When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin (West Africa) I was amazed at what you could get in the markets ... anything from smuggled gas to children.

The key for freedom loving people like me is there is a line ... and we need to realize that and respect it. I'd rather not fund the coffers of East Troy, WI by giving out $500 tickets for hippie kids selling water ... but realize the selling of severed albino heads is a problem.

Sometime in the near future ... Americans are going to start questioning the paternalism practiced in our land, in my mind the sooner the better.