Hippie Towns

Just like competitive brothers arguing about who has the best athletic skills and the girlfriend more closely resembling Miranda Kerr, hippie towns similarly try to one-up each other. Growing up in Boulder, Colorado, I constantly felt my resident city took the cake as far as havens for free lovin' hippies dancing in their hemp skirts with flowers in their hair. Then I drove through Ward for the first time and realized my error when I stopped in the grocery/knitting store. 

Whole Foods and other markets whose shelves house the latest hard-to-pronounce health fad sprout up in Boulder like Raid-resistant weeds. Seaweed and tofu replace mashed potatoes and pork as main staples in meals, causing children to consider this the norm of all families. When a health magazine publishes an article touting the benefits of kombucha, Boulder eagerly snatches up the product. Yet little did I know, Vashon Island in Washington State overshadowed Boulder’s lifestyle with a vegan leather shroud imported from Nepal.

As I enjoy personifying places in addition to inanimate objects, I am going to take that direction with this post. I imagine some sort of “hippie town debate” where Vashon Island, Boulder and Nederland go up against each other to determine who is truly the most hippie-friendly, gluten-free, vegan, Earth loving, animal loving town and who best sweeps their pretentious attitude under the rug. Boulder, oozing confidence, steps up to the podium and announces that its markets stock seven different brands of locally-sourced Kombucha, causing Vashon to snicker in its seat and retort that it has Kombucha on TAP at its local coffee shop where bluegrass musicians congregate on the front porch for daily jam sessions. Nederland, silent until this point, stands up and, bearing a smug expression, reminds the audience of its yearly Frozen Dead Guy festival. Boulder, feeling slighted and defensive after losing the Kombucha argument, quickly retorts that it is home to Pearl Street, a haven for an eclectic collection of street performers like contortionists and dijerido players.  Then chaos insues- a messy squabble breaks out amongst the towns and cities, indiscernible shouts of who has the most vegan restaurants per capita and who does the most to educate its citizens and visitors about seal clubbing and the uptick in glacial melt echo throughout the hall. The mediator is forced to intervene in a futile attempt to calm the riled up participants. The judges deem them all immature and unfit to participate in the rest of the competition. Vashon, Boulder, and Nederland sulk off in opposing directions, each muttering to themselves as they exit.