There’s a lot of hippie towns in Massachusetts and Turtleboy would probably lose his mind in all of them. So we compiled the official top 10 for the enjoyment of turtle riders. 

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Alright so we were gonna write a blog on the top hippie towns in Massachusetts, but before we get started we have to define what a hippie is, because we use that word rather liberally around here. And upon further review we have decided that we need to do TWO blogs for this – 1) top hippie towns, and 2) top hipster towns. Because there’s a big difference. Ideologically they’re on the same wavelength, but there’s a lot of differences in the lifestyle. Keep in mind, hippies aren’t how you picture them from the 60’s. There’s no more slobs walking around in tie die t-shirts with flowers in their hair. A lot of hippies are older now and they’re harder to pick out. But you can tell you’re in a hippie town based on the environment.  Therefore, here are some common things we were looking for in hippie towns:

• Prius’s per square mile
• “No pipeline” signs
• Coexist bumper stickers
• Bernie Sanders yard signs
• Yard signs about solar energy
• Rainbows on everything
• Organic food or any food that’s locally grown or where people care about the process in which the food was made
• Random people doing weird things in the middle of town
• activism
• people sitting on grass
• petitions
• craft sales
• people with long, gray hair
• non-chain, ethnic restaurants from countries you would never wanna try food from
• vintage book stores
• art galleries
• antique stores
• herbal medicine shops
• anything with “hemp” in its name
• people who use cross walks without looking both ways
• old bicycles (extra points if they have a basket in the front)
• Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Chipotle, Panera Bread, Starbucks
• cleanliness

The more the better. Some hippie towns are more urban and thus have become bigger sellouts. Nine of our top ten are in Western Mass. But the spirit of a hippie never changes. You can take a hippie out of the commune but you can’t take the commune out of the hippie.

 

10. Great Barrington

Located down in the Southwestern portion of the state, this place is kind of like a hippie’s paradise…..if they’ve gone corporate. Because it’s got everything a hippie needs, but the downtown is a little too bustling for true hippies.

You’ll find all your hippie needs in downtown GB, including antiques

 

a gypsy joynt cafe

Books for “transformation,” such as Buddhism art therapy

Because no hippie book collection would be complete without a book about buddhism art therapy.

You’ll also find tons of terrible food that you’ll eat in order to stick it to the man:

I don’t even understand what organic food means. All I know is hippies love that shit. They even have organic pizza.

 

There’s plenty of crafts, because hippies are always looking for crafts.

And just like Worcester, they have a lamplighter in Great Barrington. Except instead of the Vernon Hill GED express parading around in thongs, they actually sell lamps at their Lamplighter.

 

There’s also an area of GB called Housatanic, where hippies can spend another productive day sitting on a bench.

Oh yea, and their churches all come with hippie vans.

 

9. Hadley

A turtle rider explained why Hadley is on this list:

Hadley is the cream filling of the Northampton and Amherst shit sandwich. Activists love to set up little tables outside these locations to obtain signature for hippie causes. Anyway, this haven was once a farming community but it’s currently basked in more BO than the cows can handle. Their farts and manure are no match for the odor coming off of these hippie bastards. Now, because of it’s extremely low tax rate of 10% hipster businesses have popped up on every stitch of land they could buy. I’m talking about your surfire hipster magnets like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Target, Starbucks, Chipotle, etc. There is also a Walmart that they protested but now steal from in a reported effort to “get back at big business.” To the dismay of local law enforcement, they have never stolen deodorant products … never.  In sum, Hadley has been overlooked for decades because most of these dopes are usually so high that they think they’re still in Amherst.

 

It’s true, the whole place smells like shit. Hadley is one gigantic farming community, and they even have a farm museum.

Hippies love produce right off the farm because they think they’re sticking it Big Farming. It’s probably the worst town in the state to visit. If you’re not breathing in cow shit then you’re sitting in traffic on Route 9.

 

Or watching some hippie do the Amherst to Noho shuffle on his bike.

 

 

 

8. Wendell

Located near the lovely dumps of Athol and Orange, Wendell is a hippie throwback. Not much to it at all. No shops, nothing really downtown except the library. But it’s a great place to move to if you’re a white hippie going through a Buddhist monk phase.

 

It’s also a rule in Wendell that you have to put up a Bernie Sanders and/or a No Pipeline sign in front of your house.

Although having a broken down schoolbus in your yard is optional.

 

And you know those donation boxes in Worcester that Grafton Hill lowlifes use as their trash receptacles? In Wendell it’s called a “Free Box” and it’s painted with a rainbow.

There’s no stores or anything like that. But don’t worry, you can get all your hippie needs at the Farmer’s Market!!!

 

7. Stockbridge

Stockbridge is a lovely little hippie town to visit. Norman Rockwell was from here and they make sure you don’t leave town without having his finest work shoved down your gullet. It would be ranked higher but the problem is that there’s too many rich people here. It’s kind of like the mecca for the Berkshires. Sure you’ve got your hippies with the Coexist bumper stickers

 

But there’s too many BMW’s around to put Stockbridge higher on the list. Although there’s no shortages of Prius’s and hippie bikes.

As far as the town, Stockbridge is one gigantic hippie magnet. You can find antiques and Chinese herbal medicine on Arts Lane.

 

No hippie pilgrimage would be complete without peace, love, AND chocolate

And a bunch of other random stuff that hippies like to buy.

 

World famous hippie Arlo Guthrie’s world famous hippie song “Alice’s Restaurant” was based on an experience he had at Alice’s Restaurant in Stockbridge. Today they just sell coffee there, but the hippie spirit lives on, so you know this town is legit.

 

 

 

6. Leverett

John Calipari used to live in Leverett. He must’ve stuck out like a sore thumb. Tons of New York hippies bought second homes here to get away from it all. According to the hippies that live there, Leverett has an “emphasis on health food, yoga and nature, “is the health and healing center of the world.” Hippies are obsessed with healing. Hospitals are too mainstream. So are showers, deodorant, grocery stores, and stores in general. That’s why Leverett has a “co-op” instead:

Whatever that means.

And while they might not have a Subway or a Price Chopper, you’ll never run out of crafts and/or arts while living the Leverett life.

They’ve also got a vibrant Quaker community.

Quakers are the hippies of the religious community. It’s like Buddhism for white people.

And Leverett is home to some of the greatest hippie-mobiles you’ll ever see.

I guarantee that guy has an ample supply of tofu in his house.

 

 

5. Williamstown

This is a college town in the Berkshires, so there was a 150% chance it was gonna end up as a hippie village. There’s a congregational church in the middle of town that’s really involved in hippie activism. Lately they’ve been really into black lives matter. The ironic part is that everyone in town is white. That’s why it’s so hilarious reading some of these things on their website:

“If you are not listening, not exposing yourself to unfamiliar perspectives, not watching videos, not engaging in conversation, then you are perpetuating white privilege and white supremacy. It is exactly your ability to not hear, to ignore the situation, that is a mark of your privilege. People of color cannot turn away. Race affects our lives every day. We must consider it all the time, not just when it is convenient.”

Priceless.

Williamstown has been the home to many legendary Western Mass hippie protests:

They don’t have a McDonald’s or a JC Penny, but they do have a Nature’s Closet, where you can find your finest brands, such as Rainbow.

 

And you don’t have to bring coupons either, because they have a wheel of discounts instead.

 

 

 

4. Shutesbury

Shutesbury has your basics for the Massachusetts hippie. Prius’s and signs bragging about solar energy as far as the eye can see.

 

But what pushes this town higher up on the list is they actual have a makeshift hippie commune called the Sirius Community Center.

Everything you need to know about this place you can tell from the cars outside. It’s a collection of Elizabeth Warren, Coexist, and Support Local Organic Farms bumper stickers on a bunch of Prius’s in the middle of the woods.

 

And I assume this is where they go to get high and make, sweet, delicious hippie love.

This is their mission statement: Our foundation is spiritual, but in a non-sectarian manner that allows for each person to find their own way to the heart of all beingness and reality. The shared expression reflects reverence for all Life and willingness to live in accord with this intention as much as possible. We thus employ ecologically sustainable methods of living and a consensus-style governance process, striving to honor all that is.

Good God. It’s like a hippie’s paradise. I don’t speak hippie but if I did I’d probably love this place. They have it all.

Only a hippie lunch would last an hour and a half. What I wanna know is, who has time for this? I wanna reach the point in my life where I can afford to give up days of my life to take classes on organic gardening and meditate with my hippie friends from Vermont. I mean, this place has to cost a lot of money. What a scam. I gotta open up one of these places. Turtleboy’s Organic Hippie Paradise Healing Commune. All you have to do is serve them a bunch of spinach, hire some hippies to teach some bullshit classes, and then use them all as slave labor and call it “community projects.”

 

3. Cambridge

 

The only municipality to make the list east of Worcester. It’s where hippies go when they need a job as a college professor. It also helps them keep their social justice warrior street cred by saying they live in a diverse environment. They’ve got hippie banners hanging from their homes.

Hippies meditating in the middle of town.

 

Hippies getting people to sign their petitions to save the whales.

Books. But not just regular books. Revolution books. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of parking for your Prius.

 

Or whatever car you drive that runs off of love and granola.

If you’re driving through Cambridge, be warned – hippies don’t fuck around with crosswalks. They don’t look. They just walk. They have the right of way and they know it.

 

There’s also plenty of local farms where you can get together with your hippie friends, sip coffee, eat banana squash, and discuss how much student loans are ruining our economy while collecting $300,000 to teach one class a week at Harvard.

 

 

 

2. Northampton

If you don’t like hippies then I wouldn’t recommend moving to Northampton, because you’ll probably kill yourself. It’s jam-packed with wall to wall hippies. There might be a Dunkin Donuts in there somewhere, I dunno. But when you go down Main Street all you see is Moroccan coffee shops, hippie cigar bars, hemp shops, art studios, old gray hippies with long hair, and other random hippie shit.

 

Travel over to Smith College and there will be no shortage of Prius’s or Coexist bumper stickers on Urkelmobiles.

There’s hippies everywhere walking across the street without looking both ways while they mosey across the rainbow colored crosswalks.

 

And of course no hippie experience would be complete without social justice warriors trying to get your signature to stop the pipeline, or some other hippie cause.

 

 

 

1. Amherst

A lot of people think Northampton is the hippie hub. They’re wrong. It’s Amherst and it’s not even close. Let’s start with downtown. There are veteran hippies walking around everywhere.

 

And unlicensed hippies peddling their gypsy crafts on Main Street.

Then there’s UMass. A lot of people think UMass is a party school, which it is. But outside of Southwest residential area it’s a hippie school. Take a walk through campus and head towards the Campus Center, where you can grab a bite to eat at the Earth Foods Cafe:

No fried food there, just a bunch of random green shit some hippie from Leverett grew in her garden last month. Yummy!!

At the campus center you can sign up for hippie activities like the naked mile run, or the next poetry slam.

After finishing your spinach with a side of good vibes you can head out and watch other hippies do custom solar engravings.

Whatever those are.

Are you a high school senior going through a hippie phase? Well then UMass is the school for you. Just make sure you live in Central and you can draw your art on this wall.

Just don’t paint “all lives matter” or all hell will break loose. 

 

And Amherst has no lack of hippies lying down on the grass. 

If you really want the hippie experience in Amherst head south to Hampshire College. The parking lot there is filled to the brim with hippiemobiles.

 

And classes are held outside so you can learn the most efficient ways to grow organic cabbage.

And finally you can head into the campus center where you can find out what all those microagressions you’ve been saying REALLY mean to people who can’t get over their own butthurt.

So there you have it. The Top 10 Hippie Towns in Massachusetts. Honorable mention for: Aquinnah, West Stockbridge, Greenfield, Shelburne, Bernardston, Northfield, Williamsburg. What did we miss?

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