Did I Actually Twice Attend Bohemian Grove?
Google says I did.
I used to be able to use Google to look up what I’ve written about various topics over the decades.
But lately Google has taken to hallucinating a more interesting life for me than the one I’ve actually led.
Nah, I haven’t actually been to Bohemian Grove, a private club in San Francisco that runs a summer camp for aged male big shots on the Russian River north of the Bay Area.
It started out as an an artists’ and actors’ club in the 19th Century, but eventually turned into a CEO and Big Law-type summer camp, with a little of the slightly camp Bohemian flavor left over from the original attendees: the senior executives put on shows for each other.
The membership was influential enough in Republican circles that Richard Nixon chose it to launch his 1968 campaign there in 1967 with a foreign policy tour d’horizon speech. But as Nixon recounted to his staffers afterward, no doubt with comic exaggeration:
It’s not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time — it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine, with that San Francisco crowd. I don’t even want to shake hands with anybody from San Francisco.
My vague impression is that the theme of the Bohemian Grove summer camps is that the executives have chosen for themselves to take on a life of grave masculine responsibility, but for a few days each summer they get to play at an alternative life in which they pretend to have followed their boyish interests in the arts and entertainment, as symbolized by the Cremation of Care allegory.
Or something.
Various lists of the Bohemian Grove membership (around 2,200) have lately been circulating.
The latest was posted by a guy with the improbable name of Daniel Boguslaw. His 2023 list is organized by the camps within Bohemian Grove, but the San Francisco Standard’s version of the list is in simple alphabetical order.
I know one guy who I know is a member and, despite being obscure, he’s on the list. So, yeah, this list seems pretty credible.
If you are into a conspiracy theorizing, this is a
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