Droppers: America’s First Hippie Commune, Drop City - Softcover

Matthews, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806140585 ISBN 13: 9780806140582

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010

Synopsis

Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. In popular imagination, these words seem to capture the atmosphere of 1960s hippie communes. Yet when the first hippie commune was founded in 1965 outside Trinidad, Colorado, the goal wasn’t one long party but rather a new society that integrated life and art. In Droppers, Mark Matthews chronicles the rise and fall of this utopian community, exploring the goals behind its creation and the factors that eventually led to its dissolution.

Seeking refuge from enforced social conformity, the turmoil of racial conflict, and the Vietnam War, artist Eugene Bernofsky and other founders of Drop City sought to create an environment that would promote both equality and personal autonomy. These high ideals became increasingly hard to sustain, however, in the face of external pressures and internal divisions.

In a rollicking, fast-paced style, Matthews vividly describes the early enthusiasm of Drop City’s founders, as Bernofsky and his friends constructed a town in the desert literally using the “detritus of society.” Over time, Drop City suffered from media attention, the distraction of visitors, and the arrival of new residents who didn’t share the founders’ ideals.

Matthews bases his account on numerous interviews with Bernofsky and other residents as well as written sources. Explaining Drop City in the context of the counterculture’s evolution and the American tradition of utopian communities, he paints an unforgettable picture of a largely misunderstood phenomenon in American history.

About this title

About the Author

A former wildland firefighter and freelance journalist, Mark Matthews is the author of Smoke Jumping on the Western Fire Line: Conscientious Objectors during World War II and A Great Day to Fight Fire: Mann Gulch, 1949.

Reviews

One of the first utopian communities to emerge in the 1960s, Drop City, Colorado was founded as a self-supporting artist's enclave. In this entertaining chronicle, author and journalist Matthews (Smoke Jumping on the Western Fire Line) recounts Drop City's story as told to him by a number of its inhabitants, including co-founder Eugene Victor Debs Bernofsky, whose plan was to "own the property, build A-frame houses, pay no rent, make films and art and... put our trust in dose sic Cosmic Forces" (influenced by "Bucky" Fuller, the A-frames became the commune's iconic geodesic domes). As much a look at the sex-and-drugs counterculture as it is a cautionary tale about the problems of utopia-building, the story of Drop City almost comes to an early end over a mysteriously depleted can of government commodity peanut butter; ultimately, it would devolve into a disillusioned, dilapidated slum. Matthews's attempts to contextualize (or perhaps elevate) the narrative with historical notes on other U.S. communes and the hippie stomping grounds of Haight Ashbury distract from Bernofsky's tale, which is fascinating, inadvertently hilarious, and very telling. B&w illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Drop City, arguably the first 1960s intentional community, inspired imitators through the mid-1970s before the whole commune ideal ran out of steam among inevitable personal differences and theoretical quibbles among core members. Artist Eugene Bernofsky, interviewed in depth for this book, was a driving force during Drop City’s brief flourishing. He and a cadre of like-minded artsy-craftsy folks built the commune’s various buildings by using “the detritus of society,” otherwise known as debris and scrap materials. Architecturally, the Droppers favored the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller, tricked out with colorful and inventive exteriors and eccentric interior decor. In 1967 they won Fuller’s Dymaxion Award for their efforts. Eventually, Drop City devolved as the communards went their separate ways, but Matthews digs deeply to create a comprehensive study of its occasionally wacky progress that is rather short on wackiness itself. Much more sociological account than sex-and-drugs memoir, this is a unique contribution to knowledge of an American period now receding in the mangled short-term memories of many who lived it. --Mike Tribby

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806140585
• ISBN 13: 9780806140582
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248