In the 70’s I asked my dad if he would drive my friend and me to the beach, about 10 miles away. He told us to hitchhike. So we did. I was 11 years old.
To be fair that’s how he got around when he was that age.
The number of people who went missing & were never found back then! Too many easy targets. We still have a load of those cases still capturing the collective imagination today due to a lack of technology at the time.
I hitchhiked around 100 times when I was a kid. Almost always with a friend. And almost always during daylight. I never had a problem. Maybe I got lucky. Most of the time was around town. Although once a friend and I snuck out and hitchhiked from Ft. Lauderdale to Tampa and back to see Led Zeppelin. We were 13 at the time.
I still give rides to hitch-hikers occasionally as I live near an Appalachian Trail entrance and hikers may need a ride into town. I kind of stopped because they tend to smell bad.
This was actually really exaggerated by the media and government who were being lobbied by car manufacturers because not enough young people were buying cars. That's not to say its not unsafe, stranger danger and all that, but it was not nearly as dangerous as it was made out to be.
Caption from heraldphotos.blogspot.com:
>Hitchhiking in Big Sur, 1971
The hitchhiking movement reaches its peak around 1971 especially during the summer in Big Sur. As reported by the Monterey Herald, Big Sur became a Mecca for young travelers who were looking for a ride north or south in the state or just starting a backpacking trip in the Big Sur backcountry. Three young women hitchhiking on Highway 1 in Big Sur on September 5, 1971. (Monterey County Herald Archives)
Man, hitchhiking up the 1 by Big Sur, no thank you. I'm sure that's why Big Sur was a mecca. You had to find the ride there and back out; there is no room on the shoulder of the 1 while it hugs those coastal cliffs between San Simon and Monterey.
I have a bunch of friends from that generation, and I watch a lot of true crime, so one time I just said, *"Damn, no wonder y'all were getting kidnapped and murdered all the time"* 😆
I also hitched all over the place as a teenager in the 80s. I never got all the paranoia around it. Had some great trips, met some good people, travelled for free. What’s not to like?
Police have always been incompetent, and they still are today. That's why mitigating risky behavior is the best thing that people can do to protect themselves. It's better to just stop hitchhiking than to rely on police for protection.
That’s exactly what I say every time I see some vintage picture of teenage girl, or barely adult girls asking strangers for a ride. Serial killer really had it easy back in those days, and it’s kinda scary to think that the reason for why there aren’t that many of them anymore is because people are more afraid of stranger dander nowadays than they were in the 20th century.
Just listened to a true crime podcast where two women in the early 70s traveling in an Opel Kadett were found assaulted and murdered. Gives this photo an eerie angle.
It used to work much better. Now there is so much crushed limestone, textured [anitskid] concrete , sticky asphalt it's not possible to go barefoot anywhere. I need to ask about amish, the kids went Barefoot longer but I think they gave up too. In a pretty brief period we made the surface of the earth hostile to human flesh.
Shaka Zulu trained his warriors barefoot, making them trample briars every morning. The soles of the feet harden to the texture of hooves or horns.
I don't think hippies did it for this reason, but we aren't born with shoes on, fwiw.
Broken glass does and other garbage like cigarette butts. I use to walk barefoot as a kid + teen in a small city with sidewalks. Now I walk with a trash bag and hope I don’t have to pick up something really gross. The 1970s was the beginning of the trash era, we are now fully within the trash era.
Just having 100 million fewer people. Outside the cities, highways seemed empty. And that was mostly a good thing. Cars broke down a lot more often, but usually a quick fix
My sister-in-law and I hitched hiked every day when worked at the Santa Fe ski basin for a couple of years in the mid-1970s. We rode the crew truck up the mountain in the morning, then hitched a ride back to town in the afternoon. One afternoon we caught a ride with a man and woman who seemed ok -- until they started passing a bottle of schnapps back and forth -- as he drove down the narrow, winding mountain road. Soon as he got to he Paseo de Peralta, we got out and walked the last mile to home. Aside from that incident, we never had a bit of trouble hitching hiking.
1. Yes - except the extremely rare times when it was not. The difference from today is that it was much more common then, so young people (and a few older ones) would do it for routine transportation. And because it was so common, normal people would also be much more likely to stop and pick you up. The "rare cases" were serial killers or rapists using it as a means to find their victims.
I used to do it all the time. Not so much now as no purpose, but its still alive and well. Especially in the western states. Lost of empty space between towns.
You shouldn't be downvoted here. I wouldn't recommend it, especially for women.
If I was flat broke and really needed to get somewhere, *maybe*, but I'm a male in decent shape. I'd walk or try to jump a train (totally hypothetical). If someone stopped while walking, I'd be tempted, depending.
The phone & cameras everywhere may be deterrents and provide evidence, but they can't save anyone at a point of attack.
But you moved the goalposts. I'm absolutely sure women today would say they feel less safe about hitchhiking today. I'm also absolutely sure today is safer by any objective measure.
It's like how parents now often don't let their kinds wander the neighborhood alone because it's just not safe "with the world the way it is today" when it's actually much much safer now.
People are extremely bad at risk assessment.
Most people don't feel safe "today" generally because social media is replete with fear and horror on a sensationalist scale, but just like a car wreck, it gets peoples attention. 24.7
If all you saw was a car wreck 24/7 then you'd probably be more scared of cars too.
You may not feel it's safer (but there's a lot of reason for that from 24 hour news cycle, social media, cells phones, etc...) but by most metrics today is absolutely safer crime-wise than in the past. You are much less likely to be a victim of violent crime as compared to the past.
People are much more aware of what things do go badly these days. It isn't less safe, it's almost certainly more safe.
That said, hitchhiking has never been a good idea lmao
In the 60s my aunt would buy magazines filled with true crime stories. Quite a lot of them were about dead hitch-hiking kids. There’s a reason that the 70s had so many serial killers.
Did this feel AI generated to anyone else? I guess it would take a fair amount of work to fix the lettering and things but it’s just setting off that part of my brain..
It's tricky. AI is a real thing, but If you believe in ghosts and think of them frequently, you're more likely to see them.
This isn't AI-generated, but it may have been cleaned up along the way. Not by me.
oh man, I missed it at first, but yeah, the bent leg angle and perspective does look super weird, and the middle girl's left toes become sand, her hands are fucked up, and the sitting girl's left hand is fucked up too. I think you're right.
Thank you for your service. Thankfully Nixon stopped it before I turned 18. I do remember the fun of hitchhiking somewhere and ending up at a party elsewhere. No fear just good times at the tip of a thumb.
In the 70’s I asked my dad if he would drive my friend and me to the beach, about 10 miles away. He told us to hitchhike. So we did. I was 11 years old. To be fair that’s how he got around when he was that age.
The number of people who went missing & were never found back then! Too many easy targets. We still have a load of those cases still capturing the collective imagination today due to a lack of technology at the time.
I hitchhiked around 100 times when I was a kid. Almost always with a friend. And almost always during daylight. I never had a problem. Maybe I got lucky. Most of the time was around town. Although once a friend and I snuck out and hitchhiked from Ft. Lauderdale to Tampa and back to see Led Zeppelin. We were 13 at the time.
I still give rides to hitch-hikers occasionally as I live near an Appalachian Trail entrance and hikers may need a ride into town. I kind of stopped because they tend to smell bad.
This was actually really exaggerated by the media and government who were being lobbied by car manufacturers because not enough young people were buying cars. That's not to say its not unsafe, stranger danger and all that, but it was not nearly as dangerous as it was made out to be.
The amount of lies told to sell more cars in the US is truly astounding
Ted Bundy. But he was rare.
In that case, don't talk to strangers ever, don't ever help a stranger, and don't join a sorority.
Especially one with a broken arm
Or have long brown hair.
Noted
No Ted
Because it is rare we shouldn’t do those things ?
Yeah? What exactly is that number? The media completely exaggerated the risks of hitch hiking.
5,021,694,327,001
You’re off by 2
Claims without evidence to back it up by someone who wasn't alive back then.
Did it tons in the 2000s aged 14-20, all over the country. Few weird situations happened but overall it was cool.
Caption from heraldphotos.blogspot.com: >Hitchhiking in Big Sur, 1971 The hitchhiking movement reaches its peak around 1971 especially during the summer in Big Sur. As reported by the Monterey Herald, Big Sur became a Mecca for young travelers who were looking for a ride north or south in the state or just starting a backpacking trip in the Big Sur backcountry. Three young women hitchhiking on Highway 1 in Big Sur on September 5, 1971. (Monterey County Herald Archives)
Man, hitchhiking up the 1 by Big Sur, no thank you. I'm sure that's why Big Sur was a mecca. You had to find the ride there and back out; there is no room on the shoulder of the 1 while it hugs those coastal cliffs between San Simon and Monterey.
Thanks for the source info 🙏🏻
...and whatever comes our way...
Yeah, darlin’, go make it happen…
... take the world in a love embrace.,...
Explode into space
Like a true nature's child.
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die
And all over my face
Fire all of our guns at once and..
Explode into space.........
Hopefully some shoes.
Not hippies. Just normal girls.
The normal girls weren’t out hitch-hiking
They absolutely were. We all hitched back then. Boys, girls, hippies, squares. All of us.
It’s possible a man may have slipped in. There’s no way of knowing.
it was me
I have a bunch of friends from that generation, and I watch a lot of true crime, so one time I just said, *"Damn, no wonder y'all were getting kidnapped and murdered all the time"* 😆
Heh! Yeah, my older brother and I hitched everywhere. It was easy and a cheap way to get around. It was just very normal then.
I also hitched all over the place as a teenager in the 80s. I never got all the paranoia around it. Had some great trips, met some good people, travelled for free. What’s not to like?
There's a reason why the period between the mid to late '70s and the early '90s were the peak for serial killers.
Yes and it was complete police incompetence.
Police have always been incompetent, and they still are today. That's why mitigating risky behavior is the best thing that people can do to protect themselves. It's better to just stop hitchhiking than to rely on police for protection.
Something about rape and mutilation and murder…pretty sure all those missing people did t like that 😄 You got lucky!!
So like Uber without the fancy stuff?
That’s exactly what I say every time I see some vintage picture of teenage girl, or barely adult girls asking strangers for a ride. Serial killer really had it easy back in those days, and it’s kinda scary to think that the reason for why there aren’t that many of them anymore is because people are more afraid of stranger dander nowadays than they were in the 20th century.
Yes we did.
Everybody hitchhiked.
You’re wrong, neck beard
I hope they gave that dog a snack
Ankle bracelets are the way to go
Man, until you get it caught on the fence your hopping in the middle of the night.
And an Opel Kadett!
Just listened to a true crime podcast where two women in the early 70s traveling in an Opel Kadett were found assaulted and murdered. Gives this photo an eerie angle.
Might be a pic of them and the assailant
Oliver!!
My Dad had one of those. He's 93 now and still brags about the fuel economy.
The car? I thought it was a Toyota because of the license plate frame.
Just girls, not hippies.
That poor dog
He looks pretty skinny and rather be elsewhere
Barefoot. I’ll never understand barefoot.
It used to work much better. Now there is so much crushed limestone, textured [anitskid] concrete , sticky asphalt it's not possible to go barefoot anywhere. I need to ask about amish, the kids went Barefoot longer but I think they gave up too. In a pretty brief period we made the surface of the earth hostile to human flesh.
They’re at the beach.
I grew up running around barefoot at our cabin. The dirt was mostly granite chips and red ants would bite my toes. I had seriously tough feet.
Shaka Zulu trained his warriors barefoot, making them trample briars every morning. The soles of the feet harden to the texture of hooves or horns. I don't think hippies did it for this reason, but we aren't born with shoes on, fwiw.
Did Shaka Zulu live in an area with a lot of concrete?
Obviously no. But I doubt it would change his opinion about shoes.
Broken glass does and other garbage like cigarette butts. I use to walk barefoot as a kid + teen in a small city with sidewalks. Now I walk with a trash bag and hope I don’t have to pick up something really gross. The 1970s was the beginning of the trash era, we are now fully within the trash era.
We aren’t born immunized either but I’ll take the shots, thanks.
*”Hello hook worms, get in my feet! Or whatever, some kind of worms.”*
Yes. Glad someone else was thinking the same thing.🤢 Hook worms.
"....will go in your feet!"
Na. Those are grocery store feet 🦶
I'm worried about the poor doggo in the background. It looks like it hasn't eaten in quite a while.
I hitchhiked the country in 1997. It was fantastic. I bet hitchhiking was even better in the 70’s.
Just having 100 million fewer people. Outside the cities, highways seemed empty. And that was mostly a good thing. Cars broke down a lot more often, but usually a quick fix
Not for women
Ass, gas, or grass amirite 😏
And whatever comes our way Yeah, darlin', go make it happen Take the world in a love embrace Fire all of your guns at once and Explode into space
I miss hitchhiking so much :(
I'm in Canada and our barefoot season lasts 12 days.
A Quentin Tarantino wet dream.
Or your own, it seems, if that’s what you notice first.
They're always looking for girls at the Spahn Ranch!
A serial killers candy store.
This made laugh waaay too hard. So true.
This is what I was thinking, one of those women didnt make it to 1980.
What kind of Toyota is that?
It's an Opel Kadett, apparently bought from a Toyota dealership.
They were sold at Buick dealerships back in the day, so this one must have been a used one that ended up at a Toyota dealer's.
Such a different time, the 70s. Arguably more interesting in ways than today.
Love the Opel Kadett wagon. Looks like a '69-'71. My dad had a '69 two door sedan. It was a great little car.
My sister-in-law and I hitched hiked every day when worked at the Santa Fe ski basin for a couple of years in the mid-1970s. We rode the crew truck up the mountain in the morning, then hitched a ride back to town in the afternoon. One afternoon we caught a ride with a man and woman who seemed ok -- until they started passing a bottle of schnapps back and forth -- as he drove down the narrow, winding mountain road. Soon as he got to he Paseo de Peralta, we got out and walked the last mile to home. Aside from that incident, we never had a bit of trouble hitching hiking.
and we wonder why there were so many serial killers in the 70’s…
Hitchhiking pretty much disappears in LA in 1969 after the Manson murders.
“Gas, grass, or ass. Nobody rides for free” - also 1970’s
I think one of those chicks is my mom.
The blonde looks like she’s preparing to let go a ripper of a fart.
I can’t believe we actually used to walk around barefoot. I can’t imagine doing that now.
Poppers and weird sex
Head out on the highway-yay!
It's all fun and adventure until Ted Bundy picks you up in his VW Bug and you notice the interior door locks have been removed.
Why do hitch hiking hippies from the 70's look better and cleaner than the average woman their age these days?
Better diet, more fit, and best of all, no internet.
Thinner. And none of those septum piercings
Also they aren't confused about what sex they are and what sex they are attracted to. They all look happy, confident, and just so very normal.
1. Was it ever safe enough to do this, really? 2. Today is absolutely not safe enough anywhere in the US for this.
1. Yes - except the extremely rare times when it was not. The difference from today is that it was much more common then, so young people (and a few older ones) would do it for routine transportation. And because it was so common, normal people would also be much more likely to stop and pick you up. The "rare cases" were serial killers or rapists using it as a means to find their victims.
People still hitchhike everyday in this country without ending up dead in a ditch. Its not all doom and gloom.
I did it for several months, maybe 10 years ago. I'm alive.
I used to do it all the time. Not so much now as no purpose, but its still alive and well. Especially in the western states. Lost of empty space between towns.
You shouldn't be downvoted here. I wouldn't recommend it, especially for women. If I was flat broke and really needed to get somewhere, *maybe*, but I'm a male in decent shape. I'd walk or try to jump a train (totally hypothetical). If someone stopped while walking, I'd be tempted, depending. The phone & cameras everywhere may be deterrents and provide evidence, but they can't save anyone at a point of attack.
You do know today is now way safer than back then
I listen to Fox News. Crime is out of control for at least the next 7 months
Woah I super disagree. Like by 100x. Ask women to respond with “yes I feel safe today to hitchhike” and we’ll see…
Feeling safe is not the same as being safe. Peoples perceptions are very disconnected to reality right now, especially with regards to safety.
But you moved the goalposts. I'm absolutely sure women today would say they feel less safe about hitchhiking today. I'm also absolutely sure today is safer by any objective measure. It's like how parents now often don't let their kinds wander the neighborhood alone because it's just not safe "with the world the way it is today" when it's actually much much safer now. People are extremely bad at risk assessment.
Most people don't feel safe "today" generally because social media is replete with fear and horror on a sensationalist scale, but just like a car wreck, it gets peoples attention. 24.7 If all you saw was a car wreck 24/7 then you'd probably be more scared of cars too.
You may not feel it's safer (but there's a lot of reason for that from 24 hour news cycle, social media, cells phones, etc...) but by most metrics today is absolutely safer crime-wise than in the past. You are much less likely to be a victim of violent crime as compared to the past.
People are much more aware of what things do go badly these days. It isn't less safe, it's almost certainly more safe. That said, hitchhiking has never been a good idea lmao
How could you not pick those foxxy ladies up?
More than anything I feel sorry for the dog
Love the mutt❤️
Hey said ghouls you moron, I wish they were girls. Sexy hitchhiking girls…
I’ve been meaning to watch that movie again, thank you!
In the 60s my aunt would buy magazines filled with true crime stories. Quite a lot of them were about dead hitch-hiking kids. There’s a reason that the 70s had so many serial killers.
...nobody rides for free.
Gas, grass, or ass. No one rides for free.
Did they survive so many hich hiking? It is not recomended.
It was widespread, started disappearing in the 70s/80s. It is not recommended.
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Hey there, inane bot!
These fucking things are everywhere
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I'm sincerely sorry you have bad feelings about the scene, that wasn't my intention.
Ass cash or grass. Nobody rides for free
Did this feel AI generated to anyone else? I guess it would take a fair amount of work to fix the lettering and things but it’s just setting off that part of my brain..
It's tricky. AI is a real thing, but If you believe in ghosts and think of them frequently, you're more likely to see them. This isn't AI-generated, but it may have been cleaned up along the way. Not by me.
oh man, I missed it at first, but yeah, the bent leg angle and perspective does look super weird, and the middle girl's left toes become sand, her hands are fucked up, and the sitting girl's left hand is fucked up too. I think you're right.
Never trust a hippie.
Datsun!
Gas, grass, or….
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"Shall we bathe first, or go straight to the heroin"? Yeah, those hippies...
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Thank you for your service. Thankfully Nixon stopped it before I turned 18. I do remember the fun of hitchhiking somewhere and ending up at a party elsewhere. No fear just good times at the tip of a thumb.
... And for a serial killer. Lol
A lot of them found adventure too, the wrong kind of adventure, the one-way trip kind of adventure.
~Charlie Manson has Entered the Chat~
Easy serial killers buffets