This column was published in the Santa Barbara News-Press coming up one year ago.
July for the USA’s power elite means hanging out at the annual Bohemian Grove encampment along the Russian River, a secluded site within the redwoods 60 miles north of San Francisco.
Grove glamping is a summertime extension of the San Francisco-based Bohemian Club, founded in 1872 by a group of artists, musicians, actors and writers including Mark Twain and Jack London. But as often happens, artsy clubs (and neighborhoods) become trendy and ultimately get corrupted by high prices, which push artists and writers out of the ‘hood to make way for wealthier folk.
Our research and investigation into the power elite decades ago quickly led to Bohemian Grove, which, within a few decades, got hijacked from writers and artists by industrialists, bankers, lobbyists and their pet politicians.
President Herbert Hoover once called the Grove encampment “The greatest men’s club in the world” and bequeathed upon it a quaint tradition: Republican politicians always disclose their intention to run for president at an off-the-record “lakeside chat” within the Grove’s grounds before making it official with a public announcement.
The bigwigs come mostly to enjoy a good time among their fellow bigwigs—a fraternity party for men-only, whose hijinks include costuming themselves in drag for musical skits (long before it became trendy).
“MIDSUMMER SETS US FREE!”
To set the right tone, these old boys—or BoHos, as they like to call themselves—enact a pagan ritual called “Cremation of Care” to unburden themselves from everyday concerns.
Here’s how that works: Standing before a 40-foot shrine featuring the club mascot, an owl (symbolizing wisdom) named Moloch, grown men wearing robes ceremonially chant “Begone dull care! Midsummer sets us free!” Then they sacrifice an effigy named “Dull Care” upon a large bonfire to symbolize their freedom to quaff martinis at ten in the morning and wander around in pajamas all day long.
If they need to take a whiz, well, they are encouraged to consult Mother Nature, which is why this place is known as “the pee on a tree club.”
BoHos are not supposed to talk shop, hence this Grove motto: “Weaving spiders come not here.”
Nonetheless, the Manhattan Project, which gave birth to the atomic bomb, was woven at the Grove, summer of ’42.
And this: A 1994 doctoral dissertation by Peter Phillips (A Relative Advantage: Sociology of the Bohemian Club) reveals that in mid-1945 “the Bohemian political network played a significant role… in the original formation meeting for the United Nations.”
Conspiracy theories therefore abound about the Grove and its BoHos, about power elite machinations. But the Bohemian brotherhood is ultimately about social bondage and networking on a super scale. Even the socially awkward Richard Nixon bonded with these misnamed pseudo “bohemians.” About the transvestite productions, President Nixon was tape-recorded as saying, “It is the most faggy goddamned thing you can ever imagine” and he wrote in his memoirs about being at Cave Man camp in 1950 with General Dwight Eisenhower.
Two years later the general was elected President with Mr. Nixon as his VP. Upon his departure from the White House in 1960, President Eisenhower warned the nation about the “military-industrial complex”—a phenomenon he witnessed up close and personal at Bohemian Grove, where top defense contractors party with those in high finance and others cherry-picked to ascend the highest levels of government.
“CROSSING THE RIVER”
The grounds are divided into about 125 camps—with names such as Wild Oats, Woof, and Toyland—of 20-50 members each. One such camp—Poison Oak—would throw an annual “rocky mountain oyster” luncheon, courtesy of a cattle baron.
Perhaps this helped elderly Bohemians “cross the river,” which is BoHo code for decamping and taking their love to town.
There are two such towns—Monte Rio and Guerneville—whose inns and motels swell with ladies (and gentlemen) of the night, in from Nevada and elsewhere for three bustling weeks of liberating BoHos from whatever dull care they’ve been suffering.
Decades ago, when I investigated Bohemian Grove, the tricky trail led to Manu Kanani, the manager of Northwood Lodge in Monte Rio, who confirmed to us the presence of hookers and their camper clients, the names of which were mind-blowing.
It resulted in my front-page story in Globe, the weekly tabloid, with this headline:
This was, of course, during the Grove’s heyday when just about everyone senior in the Reagan Administration—George Shultz, Caspar Weinberger, James Baker, Donald Regan and Bill Casey—unburdened themselves in the redwoods.
Question: Will BoHo regular and centenarian Henry Kissinger manifest himself in the redwoods this year to pee on a tree, jump the river—or both?