Gypsy Boots (August 19, 1915 – August 8, 2004), born Robert Bootzin (also known as Boots Bootzin), was an American fitness pioneer, actor and writer. He is credited with laying the foundation for the acceptance by mainstream America of "alternative" lifestyles incorporating elements such as yoga and health food. He is also known for his vegetarian guide Bare Feet and Good Things to Eat and his memoir The Gypsy in Me.
Life and career
Bootzin was born in San Francisco, California, to Russian Jewish immigrants. His father, Max, worked as a broom salesman. His mother, Mushka, raised Bootzin and his four siblings in a vegetarian household,
By 1933, he had dropped out of high school and left home to wander California with a group of self-styled vagabonds. In the 1940s, Bootzin, along with ten to fifteen other "tribesmen," lived off the land in Tahquitz Canyon near Palm Springs, slept in caves and trees, and bathed in waterfalls.
The 1948 Nat King Cole hit "Nature Boy" was inspired by Bootzin and his fellow "tribesmen" and was composed by eden ahbez.
The original Health Hut, located on Beverly Blvd. just west of La Cienega Blvd., had an authentic "tiki" style to it, being made with leaves and bamboo.
Bootzin personally advocated never eating meat, drinking alcohol, or smoking tobacco. He was an early believer in the health properties of organic foods. One of these organic foods was garlic—and he later became a spokesperson for the "Kyolic" variety. He also did work for a Sonoma cheese factory. He would often have a garlic-spiced cheese, "Sonoma Jack", at his booth at health festivals and fairs in Sonoma Valley, along with his all-natural, sugar-free "Boots Bars", wheat grass, spirulina, and kyolic garlic, as well as "honey-sweet" Medjool dates from his grove.
His childhood vegetarian lifestyle was something Bootzin continued with his own family, as his son Daniel Bootzin corroborated: