Date:         Thu, 4 Aug 2005 15:17:33 -0400
Reply-To:     terrapincampers@OPTONLINE.NET
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jim King <terrapincampers@OPTONLINE.NET>
Subject:      Re: Vanagon In Autoweek Magazine - August 1, 2005  (damn hippies!)
In-Reply-To:  <6da5793405080411473f139dc2@mail.gmail.com>
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

You no doubt have not attended many music festivals recently.

The going joke with my group is:
"We'll meet you onsite, just look for my popup".

Good luck... there are literally a "sea" of Westys to choose from.


Jim King "still freaky after all these years"
86 Syncro Westy (Terapn)

PS: The new crop of "Psudo-Hippies" are now just called Scammers


----- Original Message -----
From: John Bange <jbange@GMAIL.COM>
Date: Thursday, August 4, 2005 2:47 pm
Subject: Re: Vanagon In Autoweek Magazine - August 1, 2005

> > this brings to mind a question:  how many of us are "hippies"?
> i don't
> > think of my syncro as a "hippie van", it's a 4wd brute that i
> use for
> > hauling stuff on mountain trips.  but i also use it to camp at
> festivals> and tailgate at red rocks.  i listen to a lot of hippie
> music (i was in
> > high school in vermont at the beginning of the phish era) and vote
> > green, but i work 9 - 5 and shop at the gap.
> >
> > it seems like most vanagon owners are utilitarian german van
> > enthusiasts, not dead-following, nader-voting vegans.  am i right?
>
> I bet that at this point, what with all the rear-engined VWs being at
> LEAST 14 years old and the traditional air-cooled ones now in their
> third decade, most of the "impractical wild-eyed dreamer" type hippies
> have been forced to move on to vehicles requiring less mechanical
> vigilance and technical knowledge. It seems to me that the "original
> hippes" contained a sizeable minority of folks who weren't just
> outraged college potheads, but seriously competent self-sufficiency
> types. I used to tag along with my friends to Dead shows back in the
> early 90's (they were vendors, usually selling jewelry) and I'd say
> that hardly 1 in 50 of those tie-dyed long hair folk I met were of the
> "competent hippy" variety. Instead they seemed to be mostly just
> itinerant beggars walking around holding a finger in the air.
>
> Personally, I was forced into it by some bizarre inherited VW disorder
> from my father (and him from his father before him). Being the first
> US-born, non-German-speaking member of my immediate family line I
> thought I could avoid it, but apparently all that did was delay the
> inevitable.
> --
> John Bange
> '90 Vanagon
> "Keine Bange, wir holen die Zange!"
>