Beatnik
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jaques (talk | contribs) at 02:35, April 8, 2007. It may differ significantly from current revision.
Beatnik is a term for an anti-materialistic culture of people in the late 1950s analogous to hippies a decade later. The term was coined by Herb Caen on April 2, 1958 in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. He modified an earlier, more positive term Beat Generation and added the -nik suffix from Sputnik, which had launched in the prior six months.