Like Cool Man

Illustration of a character wearing glasses with an ice block on its head and yellow text on a blue background

In April, 1958 Herb Caen, a columnist at San Francisco Chronicle, coined the term “Beatnik” to satirize the Beat Generation; the word was meant to invoke Sputnik, the Russian satellite. Beatnik fashion trends —black turtlenecks, leggings, straight cigarette pants, dark glasses, goatees, berets, horizontal striped shirts, and loose sweaters—gained in popularity throughout the early 1960s. In popular culture, silly, chill, and indifferent characters represented beatniks; they typically frequented coffee shops, played the bongos, and used drugs. Beatnik lingo also influenced the 1960s American popular vernacular, with words such as "cat", "chick", “cool”, “like”, “crazy”, “dig”, and “rad”

In reality, though, the Beat Generation was a literary movement that began in the 1940s and was centered around a rejection of capitalism, materialism, and conformity to the status quo. Writers like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac referred to themselves as Beats, meaning “weary” and “beatific”. They worked on their craft, and explored spirituality by experimenting with drugs, jazz, sensuality, and Eastern religions.