“No milkshake for you!” What happens at the Bohemian Grove


When people refer to the ‘old boys network’, they usually think of gatherings in boardrooms, country clubs, and the like. But there is a weird variation of it that is less well known and that is the Bohemian Club that takes place for two weeks annually at a place called the Bohemian Grove. A sociological study of the club suggests that at these gatherings very little plotting and scheming takes place. In fact, such things are actively discouraged. What is encouraged is drinking and playfulness bordering on the downright gross and ridiculous. What that does is build social cohesion among the movers and shakers in society, because when men (and it is open only to men) let their hair down and act silly in a group, it apparently creates bonds among them.

The Bohemian Grove is a 2,700-acre virgin redwood grove in Northern California, 75 miles north of San Francisco (map), where the rich, the powerful, and their entourage visit with each other during the last two weeks of July while camping out in cabins and tents.

It’s an Elks Club for the rich; a fraternity party in the woods; a boy scout camp for old guys, complete with an initiation ceremony and a totem animal, the owl. It’s owned by the Bohemian Club, which was founded in San Francisco in 1872. The Bohemians started going on their little retreat shortly after the club was founded; it became big-time by the 1880s, and it continues today.

However, it is not a place of power. It’s a place where the powerful relax, enjoy each other’s company, and get to know some of the artists, entertainers, and professors who are included to give the occasion a thin veneer of cultural and intellectual pretension. Despite the suspicions of many on the Right, and a few on the Left, it is not a secret meeting place to plot, plan, or conspire. The most important decisions typically happen just where we might expect: in the boardrooms of corporations and foundations, at the White House, and in the backrooms of Congress. Yes, as I show later, some wanna-be and has-been Republican politicians sometimes visit the Bohemian Grove, including future and former presidents of the United States, but they are there to demonstrate what wonderful human beings they are, to cultivate potential financial backers, or to brag about their past exploits.

The secretive club requires workers to staff it and from time to time some of them report on what happens there. Some of them are reporters who used this avenue to infiltrate the place while others are young people who actually needed the summer job and later wrote about what they saw. Sophie Weiner belongs in the latter category and her description of her experience makes for interesting reading.

For Bohemian Club members and their guests, the Grove is a place where they can be themselves, fraternize drunkenly, pee on trees and otherwise engage in behavior that doesn’t usually fly for people of their stature in the regular world.

A boy’s club since the beginning, the Club barred women from even working for the organization until a lawsuit in 1978 went to the California Supreme Court, where its employment practices were judged discriminatory. By the time I made my way to the Grove in 2009, the summer after my freshman year in college, this was ancient history, but my employment options were still limited to valet parking and the Dining Circle, a charming clearing surrounded by old growth redwood trees and filled with enough picnic tables for several hundred members. A literal red line on the ground defined the area past which females were not allowed. More lucrative jobs, such as maintenance and employee driving, were beyond that line.

Because of the limitations on women’s movement in the camp, employees who worked in the Dining Circle were shuttled through the camp to our workplaces. After making it down a twisty driveway, past the security gates into a huge dusty parking lot, we’d line up to be carted in packed vans, 15 at a time, up an internal dirt road. If you got there late, a line would form and you could look forward to an unpaid forty minutes or so of waiting time.

My high school friends, with our pimply faces and food service frustrations, didn’t even register on the power scale at work in this space, and likely never will. Ultimately, the reason there’s no real vetting process for Grove employees is that nothing happening there that is all that damning—if you accept that the world is a capitalist hegemony controlled by old white men who can piss wherever they want.

She provides a telling anecdote told her by a co-worker that reveals once again the sense of entitlement of the Bush family.

Devon, remembered a night when she had to break it to the ex-Republican presidential candidate that she couldn’t get him a milkshake. “The pastry chefs are busy making dessert for everyone, so there are rules about when you can order milkshakes,” she said. “One night, Jeb Bush is there, and he flags me down and asks for a milkshake. I give him my spiel about why you can’t get a milkshake before 8 pm. He’s like, ‘No, I really want a milkshake.’ I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t get you one.’ So he asks to speak to my manager.” Like his presidential campaign, Bush’s milkshake confrontation would end in defeat. “So I find a manager and tell him what’s going on. He goes back over to the table and tells him basically the same thing I did,” Devon says. “Jeb Bush gets kind of angry. He says something like, ‘Do you know who I am?!’ My manager bends down and says, ‘Yes, sir, I know who you are. But the milkshake rule still applies to you.’”

Remember the rule: However nice a person is to you, if they are not nice to the wait staff, they are not nice people.

Comments

  1. moarscienceplz says

    The Bohemian Grove is a 2,700-acre virgin redwood grove in Northern California, 75 miles north of San Francisco

    One sad little irony is that these powerful men are helping to destroy the very grove they love so much. Coastal redwood trees depend on fog for much of their moisture supply. The amount of fog in the Bay Area has been decreasing year over year, probably due to global climate change. Way to go, guys!

  2. Pierce R. Butler says

    … it is not a secret meeting place to plot, plan, or conspire.

    Reportedly, it was at BoGro in 1967 that Nixon convinced Reagan to wait for his turn at the White House.

    But generally, yeah, having a bunch of drunks making whoopee provides a poor environment for high-level scheming.

    I suspect the no-women rule exists primarily to exclude sex workers.

  3. lanir says

    I’d never heard the rule about the wait staff but I have something similar with regards to pets. People don’t have to like pets but if they behave poorly around them and show a notable lack of empathy I start taking a long, hard look at whether I want to deal with this person or not. Anecdotal evidence led to that idea being pretty firmly lodged in my memory.

  4. Mano Singham says

    lanir,

    Interesting. Our family has noticed that if a visitor to our home recoils from our dog, we respect their feelings and keep Baxter away from him/her, but the warmth of our feelings towards that person definitely is less than for others.

    Unfortunately, it is precisely towards such people that Baxter keeps going back to, trying to make friends and not giving up despite the rebuffs.

  5. marypoppins says

    Don’t think badly of all people who recoil from dogs. My child loves dogs but is very allergic. Saliva causes a quick and painful skin reaction. Meeting a dog usually entails backing away quickly because there are usually traces of saliva on the fur.

  6. Mano Singham says

    marypoppins,

    I can well understand people who are allergic to, or are frightened of, dogs. The people that recoil in dislike or even disgust are the ones who I find myself a little cold towards.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *