The residents of Yellow Springs greet each other with the naturalness of old acquaintances, because many are, and those who are not, as if they were.
This corner of Ohio, with 4,000 inhabitants, the so-called “last hippy stronghold,” was not on the electoral route. The passage begins in a market in Dayton, 30 kilometers away, and the origin is in a display case with three croissants and the sign: Sold out. Sold. Behind the counter, Mariano Ríos, the author of those pastas, the new adventure of this chef born in Argentina, 48 years old, with experience in European restaurants and the United States, a country where he arrived with the help of his wife Luisa. In front of the croissants, the idea of Yellow Springs, current home of the pastry chef, arises.
Founded as a utopian colony in 1825, the experiment failed. But the emergence of the railway facilitated visits to this attractive enclave for its flow of yellow-orange water given its richness in iron.
“This place is special. It has a very powerful energy. It is a watercourse that creates its own energy field and people respond,” emphasizes George Bieri, Luisa’s father, who offers as a card a CD, the recording of a concert with his band at the Emporium, a key venue in this city. alternative.
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Bieri is 72 years old and this place has been his home since he was five. He resides in a house away from the center, on the edge of the Glen Helen forest. He has been an adventurer, a park manager in this Ohio area until he retired, knows how to work wood, cultivates his garden, and is a composer and blues performer. It touches on a couple of comforting themes.
He explains that the countercultural legend arose from the influence of the students of Antioch College, founded there. It gained fame as an enlightened and communist place. “When I was young, in the sixties, there were a lot of hippies,” recalls the bluesman .
Antioch entered into crisis. The counterculture gave way to tourism starting in the 1970s. Wealthy people made housing more expensive. “Those who work at the Emporium live outside because they can’t pay the rent,” Bieri emphasizes.
So this is a gentrified community with the highest average age in the state.
“This thing about America being great again, when has the US been great?” says George Bieri
The artistic, open-minded streak and generational milestones of racial and gender tolerance still endure, however.
Already in 1979, legislation was passed to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, which means, as Bieri highlights, that there is vibrant activity by the LGBTQ community.
“I am very averse to nostalgia because it was what Hitler liked. That thing about America being great again, when has the United States been great? “It never was,” he remarks. “Everyone can imagine their own little epic. For me, the sixties were incredible in this town, but now I am only interested in its nature and the trees,” he insists. And Trump is “corrupt, a liar” and more.
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That free spirit is reflected on the main street by the colorful storefronts, the decoration and the calm of the residents. The hardware store transforms into a concert hall on Fridays.
“This is a city very proud of itself,” says Steve Cheney, who settled in Yellow Springs almost half a century ago, where he met his wife, Paula, who was born here. “I was a hippy, but true hippies can’t afford to live in this place,” she says. Cheney, who was a mechanic in Detroit, came for a bid on a solar-powered real estate project around that time. “Although it is a unique place, I would not still be in this city if I had arrived 45 years ago,” he acknowledges.
He does not hide his concern about the upcoming presidential elections. “Donald Trump is a fascist, everything he says points in that direction. The fact that I can win makes me surprised by the drift of this country,” he laments.
The conversation takes place on the terrace of the Emporium. Its owner, Kurtz Miyazaki, joins in. This American of Japanese origin, specialized in political philosophy, reinvented himself when his wife was offered a job in this area. “It is a small city but not provincial. There are creative people in their second profession after leaving a successful first one,” he says.
He started working in this place and bought it in 2005. Inspired by coffee shops in Madrid, he tried to make “a poetic space” in which to express his three passions: wine store, coffee shop (“it is not a Starbucks that simulates a place public”) and bookstore.
The city preserves its open and liberal mind, but is prohibitive for those hippies who made it famous.
He tells from his platform that this town of “free thinkers” is progressive and diverse. “Gays and transsexuals, especially young people from other areas who do not find their place, come and find that there is a place in the world for them,” he adds. 90% vote Democratic in a conservative state, he says.
He confesses: “I am scared by a possible Trump victory. It’s the worst thing that has happened to me in my life. “I’m not trying to be melodramatic, but it is.” Trump never liked hippies, nor their legacy of love and peace.
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