Hippie Culture Just Keeps Truckin' On

May 23 -- The Grateful Dead are gone, the original Woodstock is ancient history, but the hippie movement just keeps truckin' on.

In one corner of New York's Central Park last weekend, it looked like 1969 never left, as the New York Rainbow held its local "Gathering of the Tribes," complete with a drum circle, incense, and 150-odd people sporting the shoeless, tie-dyed look that is synonymous with hippie culture.

"We're everywhere," Aron Kay, the "Yippie Pie Man," said with a grin as he listened to eight drummers pound out a syncopated rhythm.

"We're still everywhere."

Kay has been an activist and self-proclaimed hippie since the mid 1960s, and he says the movement is still alive and well.

Although most will admit hippies' ranks have thinned considerably since its 1960s and 1970s heyday, there are still thousands of flower children in America.

There are few hard statistics on the number of new and aging Aquarians, and estimates vary wildly.

As many as 50 million Americans are broadly sympathetic to hippie values, say Paul Ray, a business consultant, and Sherry Anderson, a psychologist, in their 2000 book The Cultural Creatives.

"I'd have to say it's somewhere down around 5 to 10 percent [of the general population]," says Albert Bates, a New York University Law School graduate who has lived at The Farm, a several-hundred-member commune in Tennessee, since 1972.

Tie-Dyed Diversity

The annual Rainbow Family of Light Gathering of the Tribes draws some 20,000 people for a weeklong backwoods celebration of '60s values.

This year's gathering is expected to draw fewer people, perhaps 15,000 total, due to the group's legal battles over the need for permits for the event. It is scheduled for the first week of July, somewhere in the Great Lakes Region.

Last week's New York Rainbow gathering was an offshoot of the main, national event.

Attendees come from every age group and diverse background, says Rob Savoye, a computer programmer, former Deadhead, and Rainbow Family Gathering regular.