The Bohemian Grove

Back and forth through generations

A generation is 30 years, and 30 years ago JFran and I bought a house. That house was old and it smelled bad. Our agent assured us it had ‘good bones,’ so we made up in energy for what we couldn’t afford, replacing every wall, every ceiling, every counter, every floor. It was 900 square feet and the bones were redwood.

This is a Google street view of our house from 2008, it was worse when we bought it:

We got it for $165K and sold it for double 5 years later. It’s for sale again, this time for a million. This picture is from Redfin/MLS:

Today that house is 100 years old. It was originally built as a bungalow getaway for San Franciscans, looking for a break from the hustle and bustle of the big city.

When we moved in 30 years ago, the world was at the edge of the computing explosion that led to today’s rise of the machines. Silicon Valley, just south of us, was growing fast as companies like Apple, HP and Intel built up over orchards of apricots and plums. I’ve written a lot about the subsequent rise of AI.

A lot changes with each generation, let’s keep going.

60 years or two generations ago, I was born in Los Angeles at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. LA was peak California fantasy with Disneyland opening and the Beach Boys California Girls. There were cracks in the facade; 1965 was the same year the Watts riots exposed LAs deep racial divide.

Cedars of Lebanon became Cedars Sinai, and the hospital where I was born became cult HQ central for The Church of Scientology:

Three generations or 90 years ago my mom was 9, growing up with a close family in Vienna. Two years later she was on a train fleeing the Nazis:

90 years ago, my dad was growing up in Pittsburgh during in the Great Depression. He lived with his mom, dad and his older brother and sister upstairs above their combo grocery store/tailor shop.

A cool picture of my Grandpa the tailor working the shop would go here. My sister is on the hunt for it, and it will be featured in a future post. Sniderman is derived from the Yiddish word for tailor, Schneider.

Back in California, where my dad would soon run off too, it was the golden age of Hollywood starring Clark Gable and Shirley Temple. Up in San Francisco the Golden Gate Bridge from SF to Marin county was nearly finished:

Four generations or 120 years ago, and now we’re back in 1905 and here’s where I start to lose my family bearings. Maybe I figure more of this out, but right now, all I know is on my mom’s side, my grandpa was a young man in Vienna, and soon he would fight for Austria-Hungary in WWI.

I do know Freud was my great-grandpa’s doppleganger:

On my dad’s side, his family had just emigrated from Poland and Russia and they were trying to get established in a rapidly expanding and industrializing US.

Back on the west coast, San Francisco was the jewel, buzzing with fancy hotels on hills crisscrossed with cable cars. In a year, San Francisco will be leveled by the 1906 earthquake.

Five generations ago and now we’re back in the 19th century, it’s 1875. The transcontinental railroad has just completed, linking east coast to west; manifest destiny achieved. Crossing the Sierras via tunnels through Donner Summit up where we lived for a year, was the final hurdle.

The most formidable tunnel was this one, #6. The length of five football fields, it took 15 months to complete, carved by hand through granite and snow by Chinese laborers:

Last one—six generations back, and now it’s the gold rush. 1850. The US gets California as spoils of war from Mexico, gold is found at Sutter’s Mill and San Francisco is born, rising up from the mud flats of Yerba Buena, built atop the hulls of boats deserted by a crush of miners arriving to seek their fortune.

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A secret society—some would call it a cult—grew up along with San Francisco and it’s still going strong in my backyard.

The Bohemian Grove emerged from the energy of the miner-Forty-Niners. San Francisco became a haven for journalists, poets, writers and artists, and they formed the Bohemian Club. 150 years ago they had their first party in the woods at what is now Samuel P Taylor state park, site of the Amazing Spider-Van’s first big adventure:

Levi Strauss wasn’t the only one to build an empire not on gold, but by miner commerce. Samuel P Taylor didn’t make blue jeans, he baked pies. He bought a parcel of land north of San Francisco with his pie money. There he built a paper mill that grew into a company town he called Taylorville. This is where the Bohemian club had their first males-only, whisky fueled, ritual in the redwoods. It was a goodbye party for Henry George, social philosopher and future author of Progress and Poverty.

Fast forward 30 years, and we’re back to the 20th century where business has bested the bohemians, turning the club from fanciful retreat to power lodge. Railroad barons, bankers, lawyers and mayors have taken charge and the now named Bohemian Grove has acquired a redwood forest off the shores of the Russian River.

Alongside Guerneville, just outside the town of Monte Rio, the Bohemian Grove parties on to this day across a vast tract of nearly 3,000 acres of redwood forest:

By Brianhama - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Bohemian Grove’s charter and structure will endure the next 100+ years up until today. Secret membership. Men only. Themed ‘camps.’ Opening ritual: Cremation of Care. Motto: Weaving Spiders Come Not Here.

The motto is ironic, because the Grove nurtures the idea that they are a bastion of power, a place where backroom deals are made, political plans hatched, corporate alliances cemented.

The decision to build the atomic bomb is the first of these deals. In 1942, Ernest Lawrence, Nobel prize winner and Grove member, invites a bunch of top industrialists, scientists and government advisors to the Grove. A few weeks later, the Manhattan Project gets the green light.

In 1967, Nixon was at the Grove along with Reagan aligning Republican strategy and election plans. Nixon didn’t like it much, from the Watergate tapes:

The Bohemian Grove… it is the most faggoty goddamn thing you could ever imagine.

Clinton, as an outsider and a Democrat:

Bohemian Grove? That’s where all those rich Republicans go out and stand naked against redwood trees, right?

One thing is undisputed: excessive day drinking plus aging prostates means lots of nature pees on redwood trees.

Alex Jones of Infowars and Sandy Hook fame, started his conspiracy cred by infiltrating the Grove and filming the Cremation of Care ceremony. In his two hour documentary full of scary music, he says:

We saw the ‘Cremation of Care,’ a pagan sacrifice to Moloch. These are the world’s elites worshipping at a Druidic altar.

Going full full conspiracy, Jones equates the 40 foot Owl statue that presides over the ritual with a dark god of sacrifice.¹ Turns out the owl is full of AV equipment, booming out poetry in Walter Cronkite’s voice.

ChatGPTs take from Jones’ grainy footage:

A few years later, Richard McCaslin must’ve watched that video on a loop, because he snuck into the grove heavily armed and wearing a blue jumpsuit emblazoned with “Phantom Patriot.” When he couldn’t find any trace of satanic rituals, he fell asleep in one of the camps and ended up in prison.

We’re a pretty liberal bunch up here, and the Grove has had lots of protestors over the years:

When Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas’s many luxury vacations came out, courtesy of his patron Harlan Crow, guess who was a long-time Bohemian Grove member? Yep Harlan, and yep him and Clarence are regulars at the Grove.

So, as I enter my 3rd generation, I’m reclaiming my cult birthright and I’m off to pee on some trees with Clarence. I accepted Harlan’s offer to become a Grove member at the Guerneville Pee Wee Golf camp:

1. You can watch Dark Secrets: Inside the Bohemian Grove on YouTube