Vashon Island’s last hippies have sold their shack to yuppies and will be leaving the island for good. Fountain and Rainbow have lived in their cabin on the shores of Puget Sound since 1970.
Fountain recalled their story with a tear in his eye, “We met at the Human Be-In in 1966. We danced on Haight Street to the Grateful Dead and fell in love the day we met. We were married in the parking lot of Ernie’s Burgers on Van Ness a mere two weeks later. We hitchhiked up the coast, and landed on beautiful Vashon Island, a short ferry ride away from Seattle. Rainbow sold belt buckles at the Pike Place Market. I drove her to the ferry every day in our Volkswagen van. Vashon had birds, bees, honey, patchouli, alfalfa sprouts and beautiful people who all cared about each other. It was a free festival of love and trips on Purple Microdot.”
Rainbow added, “Fountain was the creator of the ‘Everybody’s Peoples Food Co-Op’. He made leather belts and raised raspberries on our property. Slowly our hippie friends sold out and went back to the city. Many of them went to work in skyscrapers for the ugly multinational corporations.”
Fountain and Rainbow sold the cabin to a couple from Seattle for $1.7 million. Fountain said, “The new owners both work for a big software company based in Redmond. They plan to build a nine bedroom mansion on the two acre lot. They said they might only come over here a couple of times a year.”
Fountain and Rainbow will relocate to Costa Rica where they plan to continue living as hippies for the rest of their lives.