I hadn’t fully recovered from the shock of waking up to a naked Clint Eastwood when all those Republican governors started singing “Happy Birthday” to me.
I was spending the better part of July as head waiter and bartender to a small group of rich, white Conservative men up in the redwood forests of the Russian River at a secretive little sanctuary named Bohemian Grove or, as I liked to call it, Billionaire Sleep-Away Camp. It was a fascinating mix of people, where one might see Henry Kissinger in Bermuda shorts or Jimmy Buffet rubbing shoulders with Warren Buffet or just about anyone peeing on anything that didn’t move of its own accord.
I ran the dining room for one of the older groups called Roaring Camp. The bar I tended there was once owned by the author and workers’ rights advocate Jack London, who carved his initials on one of its inside mahogany panels. I wondered how depressed it would have made him to know that his socialist ideals and manly diet of beer and whiskey had been supplanted by the club’s present members preference for John Birch conservatism, Ramos Fizzes and overpriced, oaky Chardonnay.
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