Bohemian Club

The Bohemian Club is a private club with two locations: a city clubhouse in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, California, and the Bohemian Grove, a retreat north of the city in Sonoma County. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journalists, artists, and musicians, it soon began to accept businessmen and entrepreneurs as permanent members, as well as offering temporary membership to university presidents (notably Berkeley and Stanford) and military commanders who were serving in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, the club has a membership of many local and global leaders, including artists, musicians, businessmen, and politicians. Membership remains restricted to men only.

Clubhouse

thumb|left|upright=1.2|The Bohemian Club's City Clubhouse, from the corner of Taylor Street and Post Street

The City Club is located in a six-story masonry building at the corner of Post Street and Taylor Street, two blocks west of Union Square, and on the same block as both the Olympic Club and the Marines Memorial Club. The clubhouse contains dining rooms, meeting rooms, a bar, a library, an art gallery, a theater, and guest rooms.

Bohemian Grove

thumb|The club's mascot owl cast in masonry perched over the main entrance at 624 Taylor Street. The owl is flanked by the letters B and C and surrounded by words of the club's motto.|alt=

Every year, the club hosts a two-week-long (three weekends) camp at Bohemian Grove, which is notable for its illustrious guest list and its eclectic Cremation of Care ceremony which mockingly burns an effigy of "Care" (the normal woes of life) with grand pageantry, pyrotechnics, and brilliant costumes, all done at the edge of a lake and at the base of a forty-foot "stone" owl statue (actually made of concrete). In addition to that ceremony, devised by co-founder James F. Bowman in 1881, there are also two outdoor performances (dramatic and comedic plays), often with elaborate set design and orchestral accompaniment. The more elaborate of the two is the Grove Play, or High Jinks; the more ribald is called Low Jinks. More often than not, the productions are original creations of the Associate members, but active participation of hundreds of members of all backgrounds is traditional.

Nathanial Brittan Party House

Nathaniel J. Brittan co-founded the Bohemian Club of San Francisco in 1872 and by 1892 was the president of the club. He built the Nathanial Brittan Party House in San Carlos, California, in order to entertain his friends from the club and to use as a hunting lodge.

History

Bohemianism

In New York City and other American metropolises in the late 1850s, groups of young, cultured journalists flourished as self-described "bohemians", until the American Civil War broke them up and sent them out as war correspondents. During the war, reporters began to assume the title "bohemian", and newspapermen in general took up the moniker. "Bohemian" became synonymous with "newspaper writer". Mark Twain called himself and poet Charles Warren Stoddard bohemians in 1867.

Journalists were to be regular members; artists and musicians were to be honorary members. The group quickly relaxed its rules for membership to permit some people to join who had little artistic talent, but enjoyed the arts and had greater financial resources. Eventually, the original "bohemian" members were in the minority and the wealthy and powerful controlled the club. Club members who were established and successful, respectable family men, defined for themselves their own form of bohemianism, which included men who were bon vivants, sometime outdoorsmen, and appreciators of the arts. Despite his purist views, Sterling associated very closely with the Bohemian Club and caroused with artist and industrialist alike at the Bohemian Grove.

Membership

thumb|right|Future San Francisco mayor [[James D. Phelan as club president, 1891]]

A number of past membership lists are in the public domain, Many of the club's artists were nationally recognized figures, such as William Keith, Arthur Frank Mathews, Xavier Martinez, Jules Eugene Pages, Edwin Deakin, William Ritschel, Jo Mora, Maynard Dixon, and Arthur Putnam.

The club motto is "Weaving Spiders Come Not Here", a line taken from Act 2, Scene 2, of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The club motto implies that outside concerns and business deals are to be left outside. When gathered in groups, Bohemians usually adhere to the injunction, though discussion of business often occurs between pairs of members. They once put on a production of Macbeth, with Colin Powell as the lead.

Despite this motto, business was still talked about in the Bohemian Club. According to a memo from Edwin Harper, one of Ronald Reagan's assistants, to Alan Greenspan, Reagan's 1983 cuts to social security were planned at a Bohemian Club meeting two years prior in 1981. This led to a heavily armed fan of Jones to attempt to break into Bohemian Grove and kill everyone there because of his belief that they were committing human sacrifice. Bechtel has billions of investments tied up in Venezuelan oil, and has also been floated as a potential leader for rebuilding Gaza, further tangling the Bechtel company and the United States governmental activity.

Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's Husband, is on the Bohemian club list, as well as their nephew, Laurence Pelosi, who works for Harlan Crow.

References

;Notes

Bibliography

Domhoff, G. William. Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats: A Study in Ruling-Class Cohesiveness, Harper & Row, 1975.
Dulfer & Hoag. Our Society Blue Book, San Francisco, Dulfer & Hoag, 1925.
Garnett, Porter, The Bohemian Jinks: A Treatise, 1908
Parry, Albert. (2005.) Garretts & Pretenders: A History of Bohemianism in America, Cosimo, Inc.
Watson, E. H. "The Bohemian Club Legacy." The English review 62.3 (1936): 289–306.

Primary sources

Bohemian Club. Constitution, By-laws, and Rules, Officers, Committees, and Members, 1904
Bohemian Club. Semi-centennial high jinks in the Grove, July 28, 1922. Haig Patigian, Sire.
Bohemian Club. History, officers and committees, incorporation, constitution, by-laws and rules, former officers, members, in memoriam, 1960
Bohemian Club. History, officers and committees, incorporation, constitution, by-laws and rules, former officers, members, in memoriam, 1962

;Archival Sources

Finding Aid to the Bohemian Club Collection 1872-2009 (bulk 1890-1970) at the San Francisco Public Library, Book Arts and Special Collections Center
Finding Aid to Bohemian Grove Photographs, 1890 to 1950, at San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco History Center