The Mermaid Cafe
Matala, Greece
For the hippies on the continent, there was no better place to hang-out and attempt to create a community of sorts. It went the way of the hippies, of course.
The Mermaid Cafe no longer exists, except in the Joni Mitchell song, "Carey". However, it is represented by a collection of rather similar tavernas in the seaside village of Matala on Crete which, in the 1960's, were popular hangouts for the counter-culture of the era.
While the hippies aped the vagabond life of no money and simple virtues, they tended to be from comfortable families with formal educations. Obviously, the truly indigent of the era could not afford to fly to Athens, ferry over to Crete, and live a life of hedonistic leisure without some sort of wherewithal to accomplish it. So, there was a sameness to the travelers of Crete as there was in the blandness of Ivy League dorms.
There were, though, some original characters. One of whom caught the attention of the young Mitchell when she was traveling through Greece after a painful breakup with Graham Nash [he used to be in a band with David Crosby and Stephen Stills; sometimes Neil Young].
Most of the hippies who had traveled there slept in small caves carved into the cliff on one side of the beach. After we arrived, Penelope and I rented a cinder-block hut in a nearby poppy field and walked down to the beach. As we stood staring out, an explosion went off behind us. I turned around just in time to see this guy with a red beard blowing through the door of a cafe. He was wearing a white turban, white Nehru shirt and white cotton pants. I said to Penelope, ‘What an entrance—I have to meet this guy.’ … He was American and a cook at one of the cafes. Apparently, when he had lit the stove, it blew him out the door. That’s how Cary [Raditz] entered my life—ka-boom.Certainly, the area was known for extreme behavior, even in its antique mythology. After all, this is where Zeus, in the form of both a white bull and an eagle, was said to have serviced the goddess Europa.
The quiet tavernas learned that there was money to be made from the hippies, however outre their style of life, so they began to encourage, if not the cave-dwellers, then those who came from the U.S. and Canada and the U.K. to pretend to be hippies or at least stare at them. Zoos make money, after all, so why not?
It didn't take too many years for the police and the Greek Orthodox Church to get tired of the cave-dwellers, though. The more functional members of that community had already left the area for other hang-outs in the world or even for gainful employment. That left just the acid casualties who had run out of money and clothes and were becoming a nuisance, so they were driven out by the early '70's, with the owner of the Mermaid Cafe arrested and tortured for...ready for this one?..an illegal kitchen addition. He, too, would later seek employment in SoCal.
The caves would empty, the Mermaid close, and the other tavernas shift their marketing towards tourists instead of travelers, but the counter-culture ambiance of the area is still lively and it's as good a place as any in the world to hide from one's cares and responsibilities, at least temporarily.
One shouldn't speak of the Mermaid and Matala without letting Joni sing of it: