For a time while I was in college, I used to hang out with my cousin in Lake Forest. (I mentioned in an earlier entry that this is a rather moneyed area.) I went to a lot of parties (think the party scenes in Sixteen Candles) and met a lot of his friends.
One of the things that struck me was the fact that almost everyone I met there was into The Grateful Dead and other bands of that genre. Very few of them had jobs, yet they had access to a lot of really cool stuff like cars and stereos. I even dated a girl who lived in Lake Bluff whose dream was to follow The Dead on a summer tour. I was among a lot of tie-dyed, long haired, unshaven people who had, for all appearances, brought hippiedom into the 1980s.
My first question after seeing all this was “How can you afford to do all this when you’re not working and going to school?” It remained officially unanswered for many years (of course, I knew the real answer).
Today I learned not only that this phenomenon still exists, but that there’s a name for it: Trustafarians.
Courtesy of KEXP in Seattle, here’s a description of these folks:

Trustafarian is such a great term. As a recovering Dead Head (yes I will admit it) I have seen more then my fair share of the type. The basic description is a person, (usually in there 20’s but some of the more well established ones will continue until their later years), who pass themselves off as an earthy liberal as indicated by Tie-dye, excessive body hair (“natural” legs and pits in the case of women and scraggly beards preferably with some woven beads in the case of men), conversation beginning with umm you know and revolving around some mystic experience at Red Rocks, the Himalayas, or a porta pottie in Eugene. However they are not making their living off of veggie burritos, Nitrous or T- Shirts but the checks coming from Mommy, Daddy or the executor of their estate. If in doubt the scent of Patchouli oil is a give away.

I realize that as the years go on, more of life’s mysteries are revealed to me.