This question may make some people feel old; especially since I was born and raised in Northern California…
Anyway, I was wondering: what exactly is a “love-in”? As in the Hippie/Summer of Love sense. I’ve heard them referenced in the occasional film, song, or History Channel documentary, but I recently realized that I have little idea what they actually are. Some kind of orgy? Or a protest orgy?
In the '60s there were ‘sit-ins’ on college campuses that were political and/or social protests. In 1967 there was a ‘happening’ called the Human Be-In in San Francisco. This pretty much kicked off the Summer of Love. I was in single-digits at the time, so I don’t know what went on. My guess is that while there was probably a lot of ‘free love’ happening at the ‘happenings’, ‘love-ins’ were supposed to be more of an altruistic nature. Remember that protests agains the war in Vietnam were going on. Many people believed that we should love each other instead of killing each other. So a ‘love-in’, as my guess goes, was a display of altruistic love that showed people of different backgrounds coming together peacefully and having a good time. There was a lot of belief in ‘the power of love’ at the time, and it was thought that this power would change the world.
Usually, people just listened to music and basically were nice to each other and did little things to make the participants enjoy themselves. Some sex, of course, and that was what was played up, but mostly you just enjoyed the music and the company.
Don’t forget drugs. That was part of the action too.
Boomer to Gen-X translator: It’s a rave. Instead of taking Ex and sitting around listening to The Orb and giving strangers backrubs they took acid and sat around listening to The Dead and gave strangers backrubs.
Wow, that sounds…strinkingly lame.
Still, thanks for the info, all! Now I can die content.
::: Sigh:::
Former love in attendee here.
What is a love in? Picture a renfair in tyedye. And live awesome music. Sitting at the fence ten feet from the stage watching Janis Joplin or Grace Slick do their thing.
Time magazine describes a hippy wedding in 1967 as “a real love-in.”
And another love-in in 1968:
Damn! I was hoping it was one of those wall-to-wall orgies that Eldon Dedini made a career out of drawing.
I didn’t experience those till the '70s.
Were Rowan and Martin standing off to the side offering color commentary?
I recall that one of the integral parts of a ‘love-in’ was that you responded with ‘love’ to any authorities who were called to the scene. You did not resist or fight with them.
Thus if you had a ‘love-in’ in a college office, and they called the campus police to remove you, you behaved nicely to the police. Smiled & talked pleasantly with them, and tried to persuade the police that you were not doing anything wrong. “Don’t fight 'em, convert 'em.” Offer them a flower or some beads. (One widely distributed picture illustrating this is here: http://leekottner.typepad.com/blogorrhea_ii/files/flower-into-gun.jpg)
This also meant not fighting with the police if they did try to remove you. At most you might refuse to cooperate, by going limp and forcing them to carry you out. But you did not resist or try to fight with them.
