Hippies are synonymous with the ’60s.
This photo from a 1968 New York “Be-In” captures what these events were all about. Out in California, the bigger ones drew some major counterculture names like LSD guru Timothy Leary, poet Allen Ginsberg, and bands like Jefferson Airplane.
The Beatles started the British Invasion.
The Beatles are probably the most important band ever, and in the 1960s they were way more than just music, they were a full cultural revolution. They started out in Liverpool, blew up in America after appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, and kept evolving with the times to become one of the defining symbols of the entire decade.
JFK brought the promise of Camelot.
The early years of JFK’s presidency had a real sense of hope and excitement about them. A young, good-looking president and his fashionable wife in the White House made the whole era feel almost magical, which is why people started calling it “Camelot.” His pledge to land on the moon before the 1960s were over also played a big role in pushing the Space Race forward, making his 1963 assassination all the more shocking to the world.
There were more and more leisure activities.
Skateboarding actually got its start in the ’60s, even though it really blew up in the ’80s and ’90s. The earliest boards were just wooden planks with roller skate wheels bolted on, but once urethane wheels and boards made specifically for skating came along in the mid-’60s, the whole thing took off and became a big part of surf culture.
Elvis married Priscilla Presley.
Elvis Presley blew up in the 1950s and stayed a massive star well into the ’60s and beyond. He met Priscilla back in 1959 when she was only 14 and he was in the Army, and they ended up getting married in 1967 in a small ceremony, though being famous made it pretty much impossible to keep the photographers away.
Hair salons were social hubs.
In the 1960s, a growing middle class meant more people had money to spend on looking good, and new technology was changing what hair salons could do. Women would hang out and socialize while waiting for their bouffants to set, making salons a real social scene. The big styles of the day, like the towering beehive and the bouffant, were everywhere.
London was the swingingest place to be.
London in the 1960s had its own thing going on, completely separate from American pop culture. That’s where the mod style came from, born out of a fashion-forward scene with a real energy to it.
Carnaby Street was the epicenter.
Carnaby Street was the heart of Swinging London, drawing artists, musicians, and fashion designers from all over the world. The music scene was huge too, both in London and across England, with bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, and Gerry and the Pacemakers all coming up during this time.
Twiggy was a fashion icon.
Twiggy, shown on the right, was born Lesley Lawson in 1949. She got her big break at just 16 when a photographer discovered her, and she quickly became the defining face of ’60s fashion. Her pixie haircut became her signature look and her most lasting mark on the fashion world, making her something of a blueprint for the supermodels who’d come along in later decades.
Civil rights were a major issue.
Probably no theme defined the ’60s more than civil rights. This photo from the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington captures thousands of people gathered along the National Mall. The march was organized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to take on poverty and economic injustice.
Beach culture was huge.
The 1950s got the ball rolling on modern beach culture, but things really took off in the 1960s with bold new swimwear styles. This model is wearing a bikini-style swimsuit decorated with artificial pink hyacinth petals, not exactly the classic “itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie yellow polka-dot bikini,” but it definitely turns heads.
The Rolling Stones were a counterpoint to the Beatles.
The Rolling Stones and the Beatles both came out of England in the 1960s, so it’s easy to throw them in the same category, but that’s not really fair. The Beatles, at least in their early 60s days, had this clean-cut, wholesome image that was pretty much the opposite of the Stones, who were always grittier and more rebellious.
Surfing was the thing to do.
A group of surfers hanging around a vintage Mustang is about as 1960s as it gets. That decade was when surfing really took off as a mainstream hobby, with California and Hawaii at the heart of it all in the US. New lightweight fiberglass boards made it way more accessible than it had ever been before.
The Beach Boys helped fuel surf culture.
The Beach Boys in the 1960s were basically impossible to separate from their beach and surfing image, and their promotional photos reflected that completely. They built a sound that still screams 1960s California to this day, mixing those rich harmonies with lyrics all about surfing, fast cars, and sunny beaches.
People were hitting the slopes as well.
Skiing got a lot more popular in the 1960s, even if it doesn’t get the same cultural credit as surfing from that era. New technology made it easier for more people to get into the sport, just like with surfing. The whole après-ski scene also took off, with cozy chalets and hot toddies becoming a big part of what a day on the slopes looked like.
Some iconic TV shows made their debuts.
The Batman TV show starring Adam West and Burt Ward as Robin gave Batman a colorful, campy image that stuck around until grittier movies came along years later. The series was full of over-the-top villains and cartoonish action.
The old guard was still around.
Frank Sinatra was already a legend by the 1960s, even as the decade’s new musical trends pushed stars from the 40s and 50s to the sidelines. He still had serious pull though, spending much of the decade performing with the Rat Pack to packed Las Vegas crowds.
Hippies could be considered an extension of the beat generation.
The Beatniks of the 1950s pretty much gave way to the hippies of the 1960s, and it’s not hard to see the connection between the two movements. Both were into alternative entertainment, experimenting with substances, and living outside the mainstream.
Disneyland was flourishing.
Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California in 1955, so by the time the 1960s came around, it was already a major attraction. The park basically flipped everything people thought they knew about amusement parks, bringing together rides, themed attractions, and new technology across a massive complex.
The golden age of the automobile continued.
The auto world stayed pretty similar from the 1950s into the ’60s, with a lot of the same trends carrying over. The biggest shift was the rise of the muscle car, which was all about raw speed and power.
People loved to entertain.
Postwar building trends pushed more families toward bigger, open-concept homes built for entertaining. These spaces had flowing layouts that put comfort and informality first. While this photo doesn’t actually show a conversation pit, it gives you a good sense of what these living spaces were all about.
New York was a cultural hub.
New York City in the 1960s was the same kind of cultural powerhouse it was in 1900 and still is today. Independent cinema was thriving in Greenwich Village, the beatnik and later hippie generations were taking over the Lower East Side, and all kinds of artistic, social, and political movements were popping up across the city. It was absolutely a place to be.
Protests were widespread.
A lot of people who lived through that era actually look back on those big protests with nostalgia, even though the demonstrations came from a place of real frustration and discontent. The issues being fought over were often matters of life and death, but there was something powerful about people coming together as a community to demand change.
Road trips were all the rage.
The classic American roadside motel with a swimming pool became a thing in the mid-1900s, mostly because more and more people were hitting the road for trips. The amenities were pretty basic, but for tired travelers, those places must have felt like a total lifesaver.
Rebellious or not, everyone wanted to party.
Both square and hip young people in the 60s loved getting together socially, even if they had very different ideas about what that looked like. The more rebellious crowd was drawn to hippie love-ins and be-ins, while kids with more conservative tastes had plenty of dances and gatherings to choose from.
Sonny and Cher became iconic.
Sonny Bono wrote and produced music alongside his wife Cher, whose voice and looks made her a star right away. Their first big hit, “I Got You Babe,” became one of the defining songs of the decade, and they eventually rode that success into hosting their own variety show.
Hotels became a gathering place.
Many hotels back then put real effort into creating shared spaces like lounges, bars, and lobbies so guests had somewhere to hang out besides their room. This social room at a New York State hotel is a good example, showing people getting together for cocktails and conversation, which was pretty typical for the time. It was definitely a step above the cheaper motels of the era, which usually skipped that kind of thing entirely.
Supermarkets became a cornerstone.
Grocery stores as we know them today really took shape in the 1960s. That’s when chains like Safeway and A&P expanded fast, pushing out the old neighborhood markets in the process. Those big supermarkets were packed with pre-packaged convenience foods, and TV dinners were a huge craze during that era.
Christmas gatherings were a time of warmth.
Christmas has been around forever, but it wasn’t until the mid-1900s that enough people had enough money to turn it into the shopping frenzy it is today. A lot of what we consider classic Christmas staples, like A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, both came out in the 1960s.
They were all going to San Francisco.
Scott McKenzie’s song “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” pretty much summed up what the hippie movement was all about in the 1960s, that feeling of having somewhere to be, and that place being San Francisco. Around the time of the 1967 Summer of Love, young people poured into the Bay Area and turned neighborhoods like Haight-Ashbury into the heart of counterculture.
The nuclear family was still alive and well.
Most people in the 1960s weren’t tie-dye wearing hippies. Plenty of older and more traditional folks just kept living the way they had in the 1950s. Car culture was big, and families took full advantage of it, with picnics being a popular way to spend the day, just like in this classic family photo.
Pools went from public to private.
The photo of the huge pool at Jones Beach State Park on Long Island pretty much says it all about why people love a public pool on a hot day. Public pools were still going strong, but the big trend of the decade was the backyard pool. What used to be a symbol of luxury was becoming more and more of a normal thing in newer suburbs.
Greenwich Village was an LGBTQ+ hotspot.
Greenwich Village in New York became a hub for a lot of different movements over the years, but its biggest lasting impact is probably its role as a gay village. At a time when social attitudes were still pretty conservative, LGBTQ+ people found a real sense of community there.
Body painting was a hippie hallmark.
Body painting was a big part of hippie culture in the 60s, fitting right in with all the bright, colorful, psychedelic vibes of the era. It showed up on clothes but also literally on people’s bodies, and a lot of it was tied to LSD use.
Families went on more vacations.
In the days when people were moving up in the world but before all-inclusive resorts took over, the road trip became America’s go-to vacation. Powerful cars and efficient freeways made it easier than ever to reach places like Disneyland or the Grand Canyon.
The Monkees were made for TV.
The Monkees were put together for a TV show, but they ended up becoming a genuine pop culture sensation in the late ’60s. Sure, plenty of snobs looked down on them for being a manufactured band, but songs like “Last Train to Clarksville” and “I’m a Believer” made them hard to ignore.
Computers existed, but they were huge.
Home computers started showing up in the late ’70s and early ’80s, which was a big shift from the giant business mainframes that dominated the 1960s. Those older machines were enormous, but improvements in semiconductors and integrated circuits gradually brought down both the size and the cost.
The moon landing was a proud moment for America.
The looks on these NASA employees’ faces pretty much sum up how most Americans felt when the moon landing happened in 1969. It wasn’t just exciting because landing on the moon is obviously incredible, it was also a huge deal because NASA had pushed through so many setbacks, tragedies, and intense competition from the Soviet Union to actually pull it off.
Woodstock capped off the decade.
A small dairy farm in Bethel, New York turned into the site of one of the most famous events in history when Woodstock happened there in 1969. Hundreds of thousands of hippies showed up, and the lineup included some of the biggest artists of the era like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.