Amazon Ray just sent me this shot that he took yesterday in a field near McMinnville, Oregon. This is a fine example of a classic hippie bus, and from the early period. The bus is the preferred International (like the original hippie bus Further), and it’s sporting the classic hippie VW bus on top, in this case a fine old 23-window Samba (those are worth something now). Not content to leave it at that, there’s the rear greenhouse section of a ’53-’54 Chevy Bel Air. The only thing missing is a clear plastic bubble on the back end of the roof, like a surplus one from a B-17 or such.
I should start a series of the old hippie buses in the area here; there’s a lot of them. In my neighborhood, there’s a couple of them that are in back yards, when their occupants were finally ready to settle down and buy a house. The problem is that they’re so overgrown now, and hard to shoot. But there’s more sitting out in fields like this one. Will it get restored or sent to the crusher?
Plenty around here too Paul and plenty of old House trucks still on the road go on i dare ya.
That 23 windows barn door bus sure worth a lot these days, but quite sure the title of it is long lost.
It is surprising how many of the penthouse buses are the now highly desirable 23 window versions. Of course when most of them were done they were just another old VW bus that likely had a bad engine and were likely pretty rusty around the bottom.
This one is interesting in the rake of the VW bus’ cut line as well as that sedan back room extension that still has it’s door handle.
For better aerodynamics!
Because aerodynamics are so important on a vehicle like this.
You know how hippies are: these guys obviously spent days making detailed calculations, and then built a model which they tested in their bicycle-powered wind tunnel…
Spacious enough to transport the entire Youth International Party, with room left over for the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Manson Family. Charlie’s already called dibs on the crow’s nest spot in the Microbus.
Yes, but once the brownies start making the rounds it’s all peace, love and understanding.
Feeling a bit bitter because the hippie movement totally changed the world? Wishing it was still 1958? My sympathies….
http://badum-tish.com/
ROTFL! I’ll be linking to that site often.
Just my contrarian side getting the better of me. I’m genetically disposed toward the cynical and the sardonic. Also, a brief backstory…
As a child of the ’70s, I was too late for hippiedom. My early exposure to them were the older brothers and sisters (mostly brothers) of my childhood buddies. They were quite condescending to us for having missed the ’60s, told us all the ’70s groups we liked were crap compared to their ’60s groups, and that “If you weren’t at Woodstock, man, it’s like you’re not even alive, man! You don’t even know what living is, man!” They really laid it on pretty thick.
Maybe my school-chums’ obnoxious older siblings weren’t typical, but what I just described is something a lot of kids of my generation resented about those a half-generation before them. In fact, this sentiment helped to beget Punk Rock, which began as quite explicitly anti-Woodstock Generation, both in its music and also in its clothing and fashions.
That said, I wouldn’t mind at all riding in Ken Kesey’s “Fuuurther.” I watched Magic Trip last year on the recommendation of this site. (And I suppose an Oregon-based site is a good place to declare that I regard the extremely-Oregonian Sometimes a Great Notion as The Great American Novel.) So, for me: a hippie bus filled with Merry Pranksters? Yeah baby! A hippie bus filled with Yippies, SLA, and Squeaky Fromme? Not so much.
Hope this clarifies.
It does, in spades. The problem with your original comment was conflating SLA, YIP and Manson with hippies. I actually started writing a comment to point out that those three were most definitely NOT hippies. Yes, the word “hippie” is one of the most over-used words ever, and the original use of the word was once pretty narrowly limited.
FWI, Manson was a serial convict and psychopath who happened to have long hair (like many others at the time); the SLA was actually a radical black-power political group (despite the many whites in it), and the Yippies were a theatrical political group whose leaders (Rubin and Hoffman) were obviously looking for as much attention as possible.
Anyway, sorry for the little lecture, but when someone drops those four names into a discussion about hippies, it’s like tossing a stink bomb. The hippies had plenty of pros and cons, but they don’t really deserve to carry the burden of those three as well. It comes across as…well…as it did 🙂
The real issue is that the core original hippies saw what was happening already in 1967, and publicly killed “Hippie” (“The Funeral of Hippie”) in October of 1967. There was so much publicity, hype, and kids spilling into SF, that they technically pulled the plug. So really, everything after October of 1967 is all an explosion of ideas, music, fads, culture, politics and hype in every possible direction. An explosion that is conveniently called “hippie”, but really was way too vast to be credited just to them and that name. How about “The 60s/70s cultural revolution”…..in all its myriad manifestations, for better or for worse.
End of lecture. 🙂
Maybe in Oregon a hippie bus is considered pacifist, but here in Kentucky where I live, guys living in buses in fields usually means – DO NOT APPROACH…
I wouldn’t say no to any one of those three vehicles…separately. Like Bryce said, plenty of house buses (and trucks) here, although I’ve never seen one with the top of another vehicle on it. Folks here usually just lift the existing bus roof higher and fill in the gap with aluminium sheets. Generally they look pretty terrible aesthetically, and I just don’t get the whole concept of such exterior modifications on buses – especially the pictured one which successfully ruins three classic vehicles. Gee I sound cranky, I must be getting old!
When this was likely done decades ago none of the vehicles used in this project were classics nor were they worth more than scrap value, which for the VW would have been maybe $20 and for the bus maybe $100.
I scrapped a car or two back in the late 80’s and they brought a whopping penny a pound.
As Eric said, this was undoubtedly built in the late-sixties through the seventies. Later buses became much more elaborate, with raised roofs like you describe.
I do like the rake of the penthouse… If this bus could only talk!
I’d really like to see photos of the interior, to see if the inside of the Bus/Belair serves as a sleeping loft, or does it just provide a cathedral ceiling and skylights, or . . . ?
You wouldn’t; this bus is ancient, and was probably abandoned decades ago. Lots of mice and spiders.
Hippies… They say they want to save the world, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad. Eric Cartman
Yeah, like these guys.
I haven’t seen it for 15-20 years, but there used to be a house boat made from the fuselage of a PBY Catalina around when I was growing up. Stood out from the rest I can tell you, and a lot more interesting than another made from putting a large caravan (travel trailer) on a simple raft type platform.
Paul, I turn into grammar police when modern day editors in newspapers spell the word hippy.. it’s hippie !!
This bus was parked on my father-in-law’s Farm 38 years ago. I became friends with the occupants and partied in that upper portion back in my party days.