That’s heavy, man – Heavy is something profound.
Boss – something really cool, but fell out of fashion around 1965.
Bra – sometimes uttered instead of the word “good” or “fine”. Not to be confused with something women burned in the park.
Brodie – what you laid when you popped your clutch.
Gnarly – rough sets of waves, chaotic surf, or a dangerous bottom—rocks or reef bottom. Originally, it meant something NOT cool A gnarly situation is a situation wrought with danger.
Mavericks, south of Carmel, with 35 foot waves and rocks above and below the water surface, is notoriously gnarly. The Pipeline, with a shallow coral bottom, is notoriously gnarly.
Far Out – something weird .
Far fucking out – something really weird.
Bitchin’ – something unusually cool.
I’m hip – I understand
Hippie – considered derogatory among the hip crowd. Hippies called themselves “Heads”, as in “cool head”. Hippie is what Time and Life Magazines called Heads, or Freaks and they got it all wrong.
Head – see above
Freak – same as Head
Yippie – a radical leftist into chronic civil disobedience.
Like a redneck on acid – an exaggerated, completely off-the-wall action or sentiment, a tantrum, a never-ending rant, behaviour which is totally uncool. Charlie Manson was a redneck on acid. See Freak Out, below.
Funk, funky – originally this meant something low, or fundamental, but really cool. Dressing down in a cool way was funky. Wearing a Brooks Bros. suit was not. It has come to mean something noxious , filthy or seedy. Among blacks, it is still used in its original meaning.
Hep cats in the jazz section – used to describe the older hip generation, the beatniks, or leftist rads from the ‘30s, the guys who were chased down in the early fifties as Communists, usually jazz aficionados and into classical music, not rock. Beats weren’t hip, they were hep and they would point this out to you and what the difference in the two are. The confluence of hipness and hepness was Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books in San Francisco. There you could meet the young, contemporaneous artists and radicals of the period mixing with the older beats, including American Spanish Civil War veterans, victims of the HUAC Communist witch hunts. There were many hep cats in the jazz section still hanging out at City Lights.
Dad,/Daddy-o – picked up from the Beats. Used like the word Bro, or Bra is used today.
Head – as in there are heads in the Haight with good weed.
Rad – originally it meant unusually good surf, an excellent surfer, but mainstreamed as anything good or exciting.
Rilly – a bastardization of “Really”, used as a mindless filler, like “Like” is today.
Very – waaaaay overused back then, to emphasize the superlative, rilly.
Radical – see Rad.
Right on – something on point,
Straight – an adjective to describe someone who didn’t take part in the hip lifestyle. Didn’t smoke weed.
Brother – a guy sympathetic to the cause—usually the anti-war or into searching for alternative ways of living other than the mainstream.
Sister – the female counterpart of the above.
Thongs – flip flops
Boo, ganja, keef, hash – weed or weed derivatives.
Spliff, joint, bogie – a marijuana cigarette. There were thousands of terms for this.
Bogart – a guy you pass a joint to and that is the end of it. You never see that joint again. He smokes it down to a roach, then pops it into his mouth. And rarely has he his own weed. He is someone to avoid at all costs.
Roach – a roach is a sad thing.
Mexican Dirt – shit weed, seeds and stems, smelled like dirt.
Redbud ; premium sticky orange buds from the Blue Mountains in east Jamaica.
Lid – one ounce of marijuana sold in Flying Dutchman pipe tobacco tins. The were like big shoe polish cans with the little thingy on the side that popped the lid. Exactly one ounce of marijuana could be packed into a lid. If you kept the original paper liner, the weed would stay fresh and potent for a very long time; From the early fifties to the the early seventies, the going rate of one lid was ten bucks.
Robert Crumb – an extremely famous author – illustrator of underground comics and graphic novels such as Mr. Natural, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Pinhead, Mountain Girl and originator of the Keep on Truckin’ logo. His illustrated adventures defined the times. He first arrived on the San Francisco hip scene as a designer/artist of concert posters for the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison, Boz Scaggs and many others. He is a nerd, a bit pervy, obsessed with thick, full-bodied women, and has been living with his wife of forty years in France for the past few decades.
Sporty – nickname for a dork
Dork – Jerry Lewis made a good living playing a dork in many of his films with Dean Martin.
That is a dork. But Jerry Lewis was not a dork in real life.
Spunky – nickname for a dork.
Wahini – term for a female surfer, used on the west coast and Hawaii.
Greaser – a dude that used a lot of Brylcreem or Butchwax. Usually wore pointy-toed black leather ankle boots and bragged about his hot rod and switch blade. Often disarmed easily with one uppercut to the ballsack. See fuckball.
Ghost – someone who did waaaaay too many drugs, usually hallucinogens. Sadly, Charles Manson never become a ghost. We would all have been better off if he had.
Freak out – when someone totally loses it. When something happens that causes one to lose their composure in a big way, sometimes resulting in a complete melt down and sometimes escalating to violence. Drugs are often involved.
Fuckball – a complete asshole, fifferent that a dork in that a fuckball practices either passive or full frontal aggression, often causing people to freak out.
Narc – a fuckball who can’t keep his mouth shut.
Ball – to fuck.
Ball ‘n Jack – to use the overdrive in a vehicle.
Fuck n A – an expression of disgust or frustration often accompanied by a headshake.
Ball ‘n Chain – A lover you can’t tear yourself away from no matter how obnoxious the become because the sex is too good.
Gunner – a person that was totally up for anything, the riskier, the better.
Happening – a huge party in the park. Everyone was welcome.
Digger – the guys with the best marijuana. They were Beatniks who formed mutual aide societies in various needy neighborhoods in large cities. They fed and clothed the hippies in the Haight during the Great Misguided Migration running up to the Summer of Love. They supported their orgs with marijuana sales. They always sold quality weed in lids (see above). The doctor who organized the famous Free Clinic in the Haight was a Digger. Diggers were famous for organizing the best Happenings.
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