Hippie Alert! Vancouver Folk Music Festival @ Jericho Beach Park July 19-21

  Parking at the Jericho Sailing Centre this weekend will be as rare as deodorant on a hippie. If you don’t dock your land yacht in the usual stall before 1300H Friday, or 0900H on Saturday and/or Sunday, you may as well hitchhike a magic carpet ride in a rusty old, eight track equipped, flower child laden, VW van with a groovy paisley paint job and have them drop you off in the vigorously defended Jericho Sailing Centre Loading Zone. The annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival is flip flop flocking its way back to Jericho Beach Park.

  Not long after the formation of Jericho Beach Park in the early nineteen seventies the first Vancouver Folk Music Festival here featured full on flower power, love beads, incense and peace: it was a celebration of freedom, political activism, and a love revolution fueled by cannabis, marked by random sporadic bare foot dancing, hoola hoops, arts & crafts and, oh yeah, music- a mountain filled ocean vista of mind melding mystical music to back up all that free speech in a magical Vancouver “Summer of Love”-it was a major “Be In”. If you visit this year’s Vancouver Folk Music Festival you’ll notice, not much has changed.

If the wind blows from the west, other than the “up tight” parking situation, Jericho Sailing Centre users won’t notice anything unusual this weekend except for some interesting retro hippie fashions and a few more strangers than usual bathing in our washroom basins and drinking water out of our hoses. If the wind blows out of the east it will carry a potpourri of disjointed sound permeating from 5 stages of bongo laced alternative music and the accompanying supporting aromas to sustain your psychedelic, transcendental, paddling, sailing, rowing or windsurfing weekend.

In a public park nobody, including the JSCA, gets reserved parking. The only thing we are able to do is make our users aware, advise them to arrive early or use alternative methods of transportation and have vehicles which park too long in the Jericho Sailing Centre 20 minute loading zone efficiently serviced by Buster’s “valet parking”. From there, we just have to hang loose and go with the flow.

Non-conformists, alternative lifestylers driving “road less traveled” ideologies, ever more liberal thinkers further pushing social envelopes, surfers on waves of new consciousness – did today’s users of Jericho Beach Park evolve from 1970’s hippies? There’s certainly a good chance this weekends users did, and if you can’t beat ’em, you might as well join ’em. What could be so bad about a little more peace, love and happiness in your world?

For info. on the 2019 Vancouver Folk Music Festival trip over to: