Ibiza, Spain
Mission Title: Hippie Chic
Mission By: Patrick Mcentaggart, Paul Wilson
Mission Finished on Date: 06-06-2008
SCRIPT
- Visit Ibiza and document the last vestiges of the hippie scene that have been purchased crate and barrel by the rich.
- Start at Las Dalias, especially one ether Wednesday or Friday nights as the first site of the change to wealthy hippies from working class British alcoholics. Talk to the owner about the changing face of Ibiza and the changing habits of the clientele. Be sure to document the people you see in the market, their clothes, style, and manner.
- Next got to the Sunset Ashram and interview the owner, the ex
- male model, about life on the island, who comes to the ashram, and how he ended up there.
- Interview Serena Cook, Jade Jagger’s former private chef who run Deliciously Sorted, about the services she provides to wealthy pseudo
- hippies that use her services, which organizes all the details of housing and feeding an entourage.
- Throughout document the faux
- hippie imaginary in action from stone buddhas to healing crystals, especially as used to create atmosphere.
TRAVEL BAG
How can a bankrupted imaginary be purchased by the wealthy?
Ibiza’s history reads like the sad tale of any tourist trap in the late twentieth century: naturally beautiful spot broken in by freewheeling hippies tolerated by a laid-back local populace, the network gets a hold of the laid back place and tourists start overrunning it, investors build giant hotels and discos to accommodate the population, natural beauty completely ruined, tourists move onto to the cheap and beautiful spot ripe for “authentic” experiences.
Everything but the last line is true of Ibiza. The final chapter of the 12-by-8 square mile island resembles the first one, freewheeling hippies both open and close this story. The undeveloped northern part of the island has long been a hippie enclave, but the hippies have changed a little. Instead of middle-class Americans and English rock stars turning on, tuning, and dropping out, we now have soul searching ex-stock brokers in flip flops and tanned ex-models in floor length caftans ordering around their Indian chefs to play didgeridoo after a few glasses of sangria. Instead of unwashed and unshaven burnouts, you have upper class house fraus with penchants for incense on global tours of the beautiful parts of the third world, tattooed with some vaguely Buddhist or tribal design that shows nicely during their kundalini sessions.
This is to say Ibiza has become a watering hole for the globe-trotting upper class, the only ones left who can afford the solitude and beauty that came free in the ‘60s. Paradise lost, Paradise regained, but only if you can charge it on your black American Express.
Visit Ibiza and document the last vestiges of the hippie scene that have been purchased crate and barrel by the rich.
