No, that is not a co-working space in NYC or SF you are looking at. It is a cafe in Kathmandu.

Low tables, bare feet, lumpy cushions and black lights. The Grateful Dead, Neil Young, The Doors and Bob Dylan plays non-stop on the radio. Smoking indoors is allowed and occasionally cannabis is mixed with tobacco, the European way. The boys have long hair and beards, the girls all wear some sort of breezy polyester pants.

There are 5-6 conversations going on all around me.

Meditation, Constrain of Society, Karma, Re-incarnation, Vibrations, Gaia ….are words stuck on repeat, passed on from one conversation to the next. I don’t disagree with fundamental ideology behind the conversations except it feels terribly hallow. It feels like play-acting, a dress-up game of identity searching.

I didn’t think the hippy cliche is still alive and well in Kathmandu, or anyone still come searching for it, much less actively living it. The only difference between then and now is the addition of Apple products and the constant need for wifi. Do they come here and adopt the cliche or do the cliche recruit young to maintain stasis?

Live. Live the hippiedom into an active passionate wonder and turn the cliche into index headlines! I want to shout at them.

The good food lured me in. The stable and fast wifi made me stay. If I didn’t have an onward ticket and an agenda of mine own, it might be all too easy to live the cliche.