In this way I managed to drop in on the principal events of the encampment, right up to the final Saturday, July 29, 12:30 p.m., when I attended a Lakeside Talk whose giver was, intriguingly, the only one not identified in the program of events. There were owl figures everywhere, notably a silver owl ice bucket on the bar whose head tilted off cleverly. He said it was a big shot in the arm for Monte Rios ailing economy. Other Lakeside speaking is more indulgent. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. LOL that is some good fucking eyes wow he was so skinny then. Indeed, when confronted with a sex-discrimination suit a few years ago, the Bohemians indignantly asserted that theirs had to be a Men Only institution precisely because any woman entering the clubs precincts would see nothing but men occupied in this crude pastime. The mood was American and bellicose. I asked him whether it was true that it was at the Grove in 1967 that he, then the new governor, had assured Nixon that he wouldn't challenge him outright for the Republican nomination in 1968. The Bohemian Club 's mascot is an owl, here cast in masonry, and perched over the main club entrance at 624 Taylor Street in San Francisco. George Shultz, the former secretary of State, wearing hiking boots, had listened while sitting under a tree. Why, for example, areat least 80 percent of the Bohemians in a state of intoxication so advanced that many of them had fallen insensible among the ferns, gin fizz glasses gripped firmly till the last? Moore's answering machine message asking friends not to call her at her vintage-clothing store in the town of Sebastopol included a denunciation of the Cremation of Care. Throughout the skeet-shooting, the domino-playing and the museum talks, right up through the "afterglows" that follow each evening's entertainment, everyone is perpetually numbed and loose, but a clubbish decorum prevails just the same. Individual melted into group, but what a group: George Shultz was seated below me, and word in the camp was that a year and $75,000 or so had been spent for a production that would be seen just once, just by them. The deck's railing posed a dilemma. No one inside acted suspicious, but paranoia about the Grove seemed justified, and I brought along my own version of cyanide: Interol, a tranquilizer used by actors to counteract stage fright. When one character; a PR executive, expressed a desire to make his mistress an honest woman, she objected, reminding him of an old Bohemian saying: "If it floats or flies or fools around, don't buy it, rent it." He did take a crack at toilet humor: "You know, I got to take a second to do something naughty here, since this is an all-stag arrangement. But if publishers are allowed in, reporters are kept outan irony considering the club's antecedents. I love this tree as the most sound, upright and stately redwood in the grove. When the wheeling and dealing was over, the club owned 2,700 acres of redwoods a grove of the mightiest of thou-sand-year-old Sequoia sempervirens: We are grown men now, a piece of club literature announced in the early 1920s, but each year in the hard procession of our days there comes, thank God, to us Bohemians, a recess time it is upon us. It took place at the Waldorf-Astoria, in a room piled with redwood bark and branches shipped to Manhattan from the Grove. (The CIA agent denies involvement first in a calamitous ship disaster, then in Chernobyl." But a long, hard look at the Bohemian Club, its members and appurtenances, sug-gests that behind the pretense of Secret Government lies the reality of a summer camp for a bunch of San Francisco businessmen, real estate plungers and lawyers who long ago had the cunning to recruit some outside megawattage (e.g., Herbert Hoover, a Rockefeller, Richard Nixon) to turn their mundane frolicking into the simulacrum of Secret Government and make the yokels gape. "His method was to seize a large horse bucket, throw a hunk of ice into it, pour in several bottles of gin and a half a bottle of vermouth, and slosh it all around," goes one Grove recipe. The Owl Hoots, which are poster-size cartoons racked up each day near the Camp Fire Circle, are filled with pissing pictures. Many an empire has of course been run by drunken men wearing make-up. Colin Powell pictured at the Bohemian Grove in a photo hacked by Guccifer The brewer finished tearily, his arms high above his head, fists clenched, "Take me back to Mandalay-ah. The fairy unguents were wearing off; after two weeks the place stopped looking so magical and began to seem as ordinary as a tree-house. Politicians say there is no place like the Grove to help get a campaign rolling. Henry Kissinger? In the first 50 years of the club's existence the Bohemian Grove was comparatively accessible to outsiders, but in the 1930s, as the club gained influence and its redwoods provided a haven for Republican presidents, it grew quite secretive about its rituals and membership -- you won't even find the Grove on public maps. Jimmy Carter is a Liberal Saint Now, Was a War Criminal Then. On hikes I'd taken, my impression had been that the only people patrolling the ten miles of Grove perimeter were a guy at the Guard House on Smith Creek Road who spent a lot of time whittling a walking stick and ancient Bohemians taking the daily 10:00 a.m. open-backed bus tour. Just as you have to be sponsored for membership, you have to be sponsored for a camp. A visitor once said of it: You don't just walk in thereyou are summoned.. William F. Buckley Jr. and Malcolm Forbes held court. Fifty people were arrested. -- GWD.] And membership comes dear. ", "Come out Bohemians! The physical aspect of Bohemian male bonding can't be overlooked. Kissinger was sharing his turtleneck with Rocard, for nights amid the redwoods grew surprisingly cool. From time to time law enforcement has tried unsuccessfully to bring cases against local procurers, and the Bohemian Grove Action Network circulates testimonials by a former paid mistress of a club member ("I only saw him troubled by one thing," she wrote. Members wash up in dormitory-style bathrooms and eat breakfast and dinner collectively in the Dining Circle, a splendid outdoor arena with fresh wood chips covering the ground and only the sky above. To be quite frank, replied the Bohemian Club member who had disclosed that Mr. Ford had spoken, he put me to sleep.. The sexism and racism of the Jinks were of a peculiar sort. Secret World rulers spend a good deal of time in the air, whisking from Davos to APEC meetings somewhere in Asia, to Ditchley, to Sun Valley, Idaho, though mercifully no longer to the Clinton-favored Renaissance Weekend in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Dole wasnt even a member and with Bill and Hillary in office, journalists dashed off each year to the Carolina coast to write about the Renaissance Weekend at Hilton Head where the idiom was of the 1990s self-awareness, being in touch with your inner self, networking rather than the 1890s making merrie, getting drunk and us-ing the Old Boy Net. The non-famous hard-core Bohemians were more in evidence now, men who wore owls in various forms -- owl belt buckles, brass owl bolo ties, denim shirts embroidered with owls. The scene was permeated by a kind of kitsch Black Forest imagery, and the setting seemed very Wagnerian -- though the music was sometimes undercut by the soft drumming of tinkling urine off the edge of the porch, where the beer drinkers went one after the other. Simon was Treasury secretary in the Ford administration and today is a major savings and loan conglomerateur, active in takeovers. And they do talk to each othersometimes ignoring the injunctive to leave business behind. "He really put the balls into it. He sneered at nearby Abbey, a lowly place equipped merely with tents and believed to have a tradition of unmentionable prac-tices. When they got up to go to dinner, one hugged another around the middle from behind and trudged up the bank with him that way, laughing. 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But here we are in the Bush II era, and the Bush Clan is pure Secret Government, all the way from the old Rockefeller connection, to Skull and Bones and the Knights of Malta. Another camp is aptly called Lost Angels, for it is made up of members from southern California, including Norman Chandler, publisher of The Los Angeles Times, and Andy Devine, an actor. Scenting power, press lords skip in from all over the country: Joe Albritton, former owner of The Washington Star; Charles E. Scripps and Otto Silha of Cowles Media; the McClatchys of the McClatchy chain; and David Gergen of U.S. News & World Report all obey the Bohemian command of keeping the goings-on from their readers. I heard a 50-ish Bohemian, the "captain" of Pow Wow camp, call out one day as young George went to pee off the deck. . "Oh, I've had my hand off it for two minutes now," Richard protested. There's a feeling of both great privilege and rusticity. Every year there are new wrinkles on the cremation ceremony. Why so many games of dominoes? The girls were all played by men, and every time they appeared -- their chunky legs and flashed buttocks highly visible through tight support hose -- the crowd went wild. You know how many times we've been in someone's home, and we've wanted to go to the powder room, and we've maybe said, 'Excuse me, I've got to powder my nose.' Jeffrey St. Clairis editor of CounterPunch. The guest list can be revealing as well. Kissinger at the Bohemian Grove in 1991 with A-1 Steak sauce right behind him. Bohemian Grove Dates 1991 Container box 778, folder 5 Physical Location Library of Congress Conditions Governing Access. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. While president he had avoided the Grove, a custom Nixon cemented in 1971 when he canceled a speech planned for the lakeside in the secret encampment after the press insisted on covering it. Among other things, it permits alcoholic failures to feel equal for a few days with their workaholic cousins. (Another rule forbade cameras outside one's own camp. "My father said if you have a choice between an angry woman and a rabid dog, take the dog," Jason Jones Jr. said. (This joke is funny because Kissinger was famous for saying that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."). "That Indian is here, Bajpai." "Do it counterclockwise, Dickie, that's best," the captain called out. Bohemian Grove is an Elite men's Only! The first, called Cremation of Care, is a bizarre production on the opening night of every encampment, a ritualistic ceremony involving hundreds of participants. This morning we went bird-watching." Because the regular members require entertainment, "men of talent" pay greatly reduced fees. The country was still steeped in the aw-shucks authoritarianism of the Reagan years, and if there is any place to study the culture of our ruling class it is here among the Grove's benevolent, string-tie aristocracy. The Bohemian Club, founded in 1872, was originally composed of journalists and musicians ("bohemians"). At 33, 1 was one of the youngest Bohemians, but I was welcome almost as a policy matter. Like all such institutions the club has its rituals, its ceremonies, its hallowed rules. Of course there are gay waiters and gay bohemians too, discreetly cruising River Road, but it seems that it was back in the 1970s things got somewhat out of hand. "Oh, Rocard is having a ball." "Bill Simon had room on his plane." Meese, by the way, is about the only major Reaganite who didn't end up as a member. Its only landmark is a kick-ass bar called the Pink Elephant, but a half-mile or so away from "the Pink," in the middle of a redwood grove, there is, strangely enough, a bank of 16 pay telephones. Bohemian Grove: Cremation of Care Ritual by Infinite Chariots, released 01 March 2023 1. . Also, he's not as tall as he looked in office. During the day, idleness is encouraged. One of them seemed puzzled -- the friend wasn't the sort to get going at 7:45 a.m., he noted. Rex Greed, an effeminate gallery owner who sells toilets ("a counterpoint of mass and void"), tries to convince artist Jason Jones Jr. that his future lies in sculptures composed of garbage. (Then the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, who had copies of his newspaper shipped up every day.) "It's already got a fur coat and the license is a lot cheaper." There's no end to the pee-pee and penis jokes, suggesting that these men, advanced in so many other ways, were emotionally arrested sometime during adolescence. He never invited the chum back. Here Henry Kissinger made a bathroom pun on the name of his friend Lee Kuan Yew, who was in attendance -- the sort of joke that the people of Singapore, whom Lee rules with such authoritarian zeal, are not free to make in public. And inside the Grove the guest list was well guarded. Meanwhile, Kissinger had been offering Rocard advice: "I told him, 'Do anything you want, hide in the bushes -- just don't let them see you.'" He got the pa-pers San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, New York Times. Q33. Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller all stopped in as they geared up for their respective presidential campaigns. This summer, for example, attendees saw several plays. When all is said and done, the way the beleaguered American male asserts his personhood, defies convention, hails the American dream, is to piss against a tree. ", It was in the phone circle that Henry Kissinger alienated some brother Bohemians on the middle weekend. There's all the redwood talk. Over the years the Jinks has become the leading entertainment at the encampment, surpassing the mannered and ponderous Grove Play, which is performed the next weekend. In years past speakers at the lakeside chats have included Dwight D. Eisenhower, before he was President; Robert F. Kennedy, when he was Attorney General; Arnold Palmer, the golfer; Nelson A. Rockefeller; former Chief Justice Earl Warren; David Sarnoff, former chairman of RCA; Herman Wouk, the writer; Dr. Wernher von Braun of the space program; Neil Armstrong, an astronaut, Richard M. Nixon, who is a club member, and Mr. Kissinger. [ link to imgur.com (secure)] Quoting: Ninbit. I might last three hours before they put me in the Santa Rosa jail for trespassing. Reagan also came out in favor of four-year terms for congressmen. There were laments. When Gerald R. Ford, Henry A. Kissinger and A. W. Clausen joined 2,000 of the richest and most powerful men in the country at the annual ritual known as the "Summer Encampment" at Bohemian . Some of the notable members of the Bohemian Club include former presidents Richard Nixon, George H.W. The Bohemian Grove is unique in American clubdom because it puts 2,000 to 3,000 mostly elite men together in the forest for up to sixteen days every summer, Phillips wrote. Then, eerily picked out by torchlight, robed tycoons move slowly into a clearing with a bier supporting the effigy of Care. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, who spoke on the history of the state water problems and the creation of such programs as the Central Valley Project. This year Rocard's visit went unreported. Also, I'd tried to grab one of the free Bohemian Club walking sticks from the museum, something I could lean against my office wall with the B/C shield turned out to remind myself that this right-wing fantasia had not been just a dream. There are few rules, the most famous one being "Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" -- in other words, don't do business in the Grove. They all got a big kick out of this. In its obsession with the encampment, BGAN has unwittingly taken on Bohemian traits, becoming a kooky mirror image of the Grove. The camp Tom lived and worked at was thick with real estate tycoons and had a reputation for good food and comfortable appointments. The club's "men of talent" (i.e., artists and writers) included writers of a populist bent: Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Henry M. Stanley. The participants seem to enjoy the isolation and the opportunity to let their hair down in some way. Wheres the fashionable rendez-vous for the Worlds Secret Government? But comes next July 14 and every self-respecting member of the Secret World government will be in a gloomy grove of redwoods alongside the Russian river in northern California, preparing to Banish Care for the 122cnd time, prelude to three weeks drinking gin fizzes and hashing out the future of the world. No radios or television sets are allowed. If he fails, he must wait three years to try again. Early club menus offered dolled-up western dishes such as "boiled striped bass au vin blanc" and "cafe noir." A Bohemian I overheard on the beach one day said that the man's genius had been in keeping vacationing families in the motel ignorant of the other business going on there, "Now, that's good management," he declared, capturing the robust laissez faire spirit of the Grove. Bohemian Club literature is pious on this score. But by 1985 BGAN's energies were ebbing. But what, in the end, does the member get for his pains? Was there one secret government or two? It was the sort of analogy I was to hear often in the nearly 60 hours I spent inside the Grove. The long tables are lit by gas pipes that spring from the ears of wooden owl silhouettes three feet above the table, a half dozen of these per table. The club says it serves as a "refuge" from the strivings of the marketplace, and though it's true that actual deal-making is discouraged, I heard business being done on all sides.