The hippie movement was at its height in the late 1960s. The July 7, 1967 issue of TIME magazine had for its cover story: 'The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture.'
The touristic influx that accompanied the highly-publicized San Francisco Summer of Love did nothing to intensify counterculture. By the end of 1968 the real "hippie" movement was dispersed. The last publication of the Diggers was the anthology of street news, manifestoes and articles titled The Digger Papers, that came out in August 1968. Co-published as an edition of The Realist, the Diggers distributed 40,000 free copies.
By 1970, a lot of the hippie style had passed into mainstream culture, but little of the substance. The mainstream press lost interest in the hippie subculture as such, though many hippies made and continue to maintain a long-term commitment to it. Because the hippies have tended to avoid publicity since the Summer of Love/Woodstock era, a popular myth has arisen that hippies no longer exist. They may be found in Bohemian (or merely openminded) enclaves throughout the world, as wanderers following the bands they love, and elsewhere in the interstices of the global economy. Many have been rendezvousing annually at Rainbow Gatherings since the early 1970's to celebrate and pray for peace.
As a group, hippies tend to have longer hair and more/fuller beards than has been generally fashionable. Some people not associated with the counterculture find such long hair offensive, in part because of the iconoclastic attitude it bespeaks, and in part because they see it as unhygienic, or feminine. When Hair moved from off-Broadway to a large Broadway theater in 1968, the hippie counterculture was already diversifying and fleeing traditional urban settings.
Other traits associated with hippies include:
Clothes having bright colors, and certain unusual styles (such as bell-bottompants, tie-dyed shirts, peasant blouses, and Indian-inspired clothing)
Performing music casually, in friends' homes, or for free at outdoor fairs such as San Francisco's legendary "Human Be-In" of January 1967, Woodstock (a famous gathering attended mostly by hippies) and today, for example, the Burning Man festival.
The term is also associated with participation in peace movements, including peace marches such as the USA marches on Washington and civil rights marches, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. However, hippies were normally not antiwar protesters, since they were traditionally apolitical, preferring to drop out from society rather than change it. Philosophically, hippie thought drew upon the earlier Beat Generation.
