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An Encyclopedia of Rainbow Camps & Kitchens

Photo by Ali Parkhurst Here “annual gathering” means the Rainbow Gathering held every year from July 1 - 7 in the United States of America. Unlike most gatherings held in Europe and other countries, where there is only one central kitchen, the American annual has many kitchens feeding the Family, each with its own traditions and culture. Many of them send food to the Dinner Circle in the main meadow every evening, and almost all of them serve in their own camps the rest of the day. All places are described with third person pronouns by a person who is not normally a worker or resident in the place described. (Input from insiders is still welcomed.) This is a work in progress. If you know more about any of these places, or see any errors, go to this page and write in the submission window. You are also welcome to write a new entry. (You will be edited for clarity, if necessary. Even if you think you can’t write, your input can be valuable.) A list identifying the authors is at the bottom of this page. This page was last updated on December 14, 2014. Make a submission

A-Camp

A-Camp has traditionally been the one place in the gathering where drinking is tolerated. Here it is mostly in the form of beer – in a keg if they can get one, or in aluminum cans when they can't. Liquor bottles are always welcome, but relative rarities. Some years there is a food serving kitchen near this camp, other years not.

The first A-Camp originated at the 1985 Missouri annual. Tho it is widely believed that the "A" stands for "alcohol", most A-Campers deny that this is the case. At that time it was known as a kitchen, and named by Kegger Dave's wife, Charlene. She was asked what their kitchen name was and she told them it was just "a kitchen". Bible Bob was the cook, and at that gathering they actually sent pots of food to the main circle. It wasn't until 1989 Nevada annual that it actually became known as "a camp", where they became established in the parking lot area. Thus the name "A-Camp" was born.

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Inside the gathering, someone seeing you drinking out of a beer can might even go so far as to take it out of your hand and dump its contents on the ground in front of you. At American gatherings this prohibition is strict, and enforced spontaneously all gatherers around where any open consumption in a public place occurs. Drunken behavior usually ends up either in Shanti Sena calls, or gentle voiced people slowly trying to escort the offender out of the gathering. Some international gatherings are more permissive, and many American gatherers will not interfere with discreet consumption in a private camp. The reasons for this intolerance can sometimes be observed in the behavior of the inhabitants of A-camp: rowdy talking and screaming, loud arguments filled with cussing and name calling that one can't help but hear when passing by, and sometimes physical fighting. The camp is usually located on the road coming in so that it's easy to go to the nearest town to buy more beer, and it is often the first sight seen by people making the final drive in. They sometimes stop these incoming cars and ask for money, and sometimes react threateningly if you turn them down. The reasons for the tolerance of this place at the gathering are many, and any organized attempt by one group of gatherers to drive them out of the gathering runs into opposition from others who come to their defense. Some people say that they are some of the few gatherers willing to be out at the front gate for long time periods handling the parking. Some say they act like a filter; drunken local visitors stop at A-Camp instead of taking their carousing into the gathering. Others say that most of the A-Campers try to act responsibly and it is only a small minority that is causing the trouble. (There has been some lamenting in recent years over some of the elders in that community, such as Kegger Dave and Little Hawk, passing on and the new young people not getting any more guidance.) And others point to the ideal of the gathering being open to anyone who has or has ever had a belly button, and that everyone should be reacted to with love and a desire to aid the healing of any person in distress. And the A-Campers themselves like to point out how everyone else in the gathering has their pot, but they can't get high in their own way. So they remain as an ever controversial presence at the gathering. Many years there have been active attempts to have a continuously operating Welcome Home kitchen by Front Gate to counteract the negative impressions that A-Camp can give to first time visitors, but this has not happened continuously. In recent years there has been concern about alcohol appearing in anarchist kid kitchens further inside the gathering. (There is a historyof A-Camp written by Plunker on this site, and a story by Carla Newbre about her interactions with them.) BB LG Hide

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Bees on Earth

Bees On Earth Kitchen comes from Missoula, Montana, and serves the main circle whenever the gathering is in the west. They started at the Wyoming annual gathering in 2008. They often team up with Instant Soup Kitchen (the difference being that they serve the main Dinner Circle while Instant Soup serves 24/7 at their kitchen). A lady named Susan spearheads this kitchen.

RiS

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Bhagwan Village

Bhagwan Village was founded at the 2013 annual gathering in Montana. The camp is named after Bhagwan the puppy, who was attending his first gathering. Soon after setting up camp near Medicine Warriors and Green Path, The camp formed spontaneously when some camping neighbors joined together to make a small bliss fire pit. It is focused primarily on chanting, music, good vibes, and serving healthy tea and snacks around the clock

BB FL

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Bliss Kitchen

Bliss had its start at the Katuah blueberry regional gathering in 1992, and it appeared at annual gatherings until 2002. It started out as the Bliss Hydration Station, and after it became a full-functioning kitchen it continued to place its emphasis on providing safe drinking water. It was the first to use Katadyn filters that were connected inline to water pipes coming from the springs above (hand pump units placed in 5-gallon buckets had been in use since the 1990 Minnesota annual).

Its two main sources of energy were a brother named Gary and his wife Dragonfly. During the heyday of the Usenet newsgroup alt.gathering.rainbow in the late 1990s, they hosted a.g.r. meetings where posters to the group could meet each other and see faces and hear voices to go with the names they saw on the computer.

BB

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Bread of Life

Bread of Life was one of the largest Christian kitchens at the gathering during the decade of the 2000s. The inspiration for their name can be found in the verses that surround John 6:35: And Jesus said unto them, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” The last time they were seen using this name at an annual gathering was in 2011. Since then they have worked in combination with other Christian groups in kitchens with composite names. At the 2014 Utah annual gathering they were part of “Jesus Camp Bread of Life Outer Circle Co-op”.

If you went into their kitchen they never laid any heavy Jesus trip on you or tried to get you to join anything. They had some free Bibles on the counter and maybe a few pamphlets available, and if you stepped over to their bliss fire you would often hear people singing songs with religious lyrics, but if all you wanted was their food, that was something they would say is a joy to provide. You didn’t want to cuss or do any other thing you wouldn't in a regular church, but that was not hard for any sensible person to do.

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Every morning they served coffee and oatmeal and had a meeting at 10:00 (exact time) that lasted for about an hour and a half. They had a structure they set up at several gatherings. It had a top frame made of iron that had eight tubes radiating from a center, which they filled with the whittled off ends of eight logs. The other ends of the logs they set on eight upright posts, then they covered these rafters with a fitted canvas canopy. Outside railings were then lashed to the uprights and big logs are set inside for seating, giving the structure the look of a bandstand in a park. In the center was a firepit dug in the shape of a Swiss cross, and they started four small fires at each of the tips. There were usually more young people than old sitting in that kiosk, many of them parents of preschool kids. There was a large playground area, with ropes and swings and sometimes a seesaw made out of a dead tree trunk carefully balanced on some upright pivots. Much was said about this camp being a "safe haven". This was a place where the only drug done was caffeine; no joints or pipes were ever passed, and the few people you’d see with cigarettes would have the look of outsiders. At the meetings the brothers were advised to look out for the sisters, and the women were told they should not go out into the rest of the gathering alone. If they were not with men, the sisters should always travel at least in pairs. A conch shell was blown, and the meeting started with all of the camp under the canopy There would be maybe 30 people there. A brother named Chuck was usually the one to get everyone's focus and say some words to start off the service. He talked like he was an experienced pastor in Babylon, but he definitely did not stay in the pulpit. They all stood in a circle, and anybody who felt moved to speak was given the freedom to. People shouted out some prayers of petition, or words of praise for prayers answered. There were testimonials of blessings received and difficulties conquered. There were a few people with five minute sermonettes, sometimes quoting Bible verses. It was not unlike a regular heartsong circle in a main meadow. In between the talking were intervals of music. One guitarist or more would sing songs in moderato four-four with lyrics like "God is so good to me", with choruses that everybody joined in on with phrases that ended in long drawn out notes with undulating harmonies beneath. Accompanying them were drummers with djembes and ashikos. The drummers subdued their volume so that they played in balance with and did not drown out the guitars. The guitarist singers also varied their volume, doing many crescendos followed by sudden diminuendos, and all the drummers and other singers followed along with these changes. The songs expressed a very affirming kind of Christianity, with no hellfire and damnation because you are a sinner. They conveyed sentiments like those that were stated in a line of hand drawn signs taped to the bottom of a serving counter, all starting with "I AM": "your strength", "the liberty you seek thru my spirit", "the dispeller of all fear and doubt", "man's friend who sticks closer than a brother", "the healing you seek". This was a warm fuzzy expression of Rainbowly love quite opposed to the condemnatory Christianity many of them had experienced in their childhood churches. After dinner in the evening, where they were not opposed to occasionally serving meat, there would be a general jam session with guitars and drums which lasted well into the night. This kitchen recorded a video in California in 2004. BB Hide

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Brew Ha Ha Tea Kitchen

Brew Ha Ha has been appearing at annual gatherings for many years. The place they locate in they also call Serenity Ridge. The name is based on an old Firesign Theatre joke. When people asked what was in the pot of tea on the fire, the response would often be, “It’s brew ... ha ha”

It is a totally chemical-free space (also excluding caffeine and nicotine) for people in recovery from addictions to share their strength, experiences, and hopes with each other. They hold 12-step meetings in their camp twice a day, at Rainbow noon and dark thirty. All people in recovery are welcomed even if their recovery is not chemically-related.

BB

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CALM

C.A.L.M. is the initials of Center for Alternative Living Medicine. It is the gathering’s first aid center and infirmary. It was originally called MASH, after the TV show about a mobile army surgical hospital, but many didn’t think a term with military origins was appropriate for a peace and love gathering, so it was changed in the late 80s to CALM.

Go in there and you will find cots to lie down on and a table with bandages and containers of antiseptics laid out all over it, and a set of shelves with bottles full of herbal tinctures with droppers in their lids. Several people with MD degrees have regularly helped out, along with nurses and nurse practitioners, but medical training is not necessary to plug in, as there are as many firewood, water, and cleaning chores as in a kitchen. They often maintain a rudimentary kitchen for their staff and patients, but it does not serve the public as a regular one.

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Commonly treated ailments are headaches, foot problems, cuts and scrapes to the skin, heatstroke, poison ivy, digestive system upsets, flu, and colds. If something arises that needs hospital care, they can summon ambulances or transport patients with their own personally owned vehicles. They also spend a lot of time with people undergoing bad trips or other adverse reactions to recreational drugs. At the 1997 annual in Oregon, they had to deal with several people who ate a local plant called false hellebore after being told it would make them high, but which really produced violent psychotic reactions. At the 2006 annual in Colorado, Forest Service LEOs went on a campaign to take out by arrest or intimidation the “leaders of the Rainbow”, with the apparent intention that the gathering would disintegrate when these people were removed. As part of this they did a raid on CALM where they illegally searched the tent of Jane Lightwaryr, a nurse practitioner, and when they found her emergency medical stash they tried to charge her with illegal possession of drugs. Stone, an emergency medical technician, was ticketed while on a run to town with some local EMTs and they were all ticketed for interfering with law enforcement. Stone was also cited for group camping without a permit. All of Jane’s medications were for life threatening situations and as a legal prescriber she was able to present the proper paperwork when she went to court. Stone was found guilty of the interfering but not the camping, since they ticketed him outside the gathering. BB JL Hwk Hide

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Camp Kitten

Camp Kitten is primarily the work of Redwoman, who provides the “home of the lost and not so hungry kitten.” It is a place to take a lost cat if you find one wandering alone, and a place for the kitty to wait for its human. She also has cat food to give to owners who run out. She does not serve dogs or people, only cats.

Redwoman is also an avid trader, so her sanctuary can usually be found near Trading Circle.

BB

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Carnivore Kitchen

Carnivore kitchen was basically a one man operation by a brother named Wade, and he set up for the first time in the parking lot at the 1995 New Mexico annual gathering. He set up inside the gathering at the 1997 and 1998 annuals. As its name says, it was a kitchen that served meat, and only meat, kept before cooking in ice chests which he had to arrange to be refilled constantly, something he voiced his frustration at often. His intention was to provide an alternative to the vegetarian menus of almost every other kitchen at the gathering, and he was able to find many takers when he was able to offer it. He supplied himself from his own funds and the donation can that he set out, and served only at his kitchen, never sending to the main Dinner Circle.

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Casual Encounters

Met each other all on Craigslist (hence the name, which came from a category of personal ads on Craigslist called “casual encounters”). They are a breakfast-focused kitchen that serves eggs and potatoes as opposed to the usual pancakes and oatmeal, but they plan to serve more meals as they grow. They are completely gluten-free for those who have intolerances.

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Chico’s Kitchen

Chico started his first kitchen at the 1993 Kentucky annual gathering and he returned to annuals until at least the one in Pennsylvania in 1999. He was slightly Mexican looking with a thin mustache and hippie-length black hair, but he talked in a white sounding southern accent, and in later years he hung up a large Confederate flag. He didn't travel with any crew, but he recruited help from people who came in from the trail. His first year he expressed a lot of frustration at this, which turned off many potential workers and made his problems worse, but over the years his personality mellowed out and he became much more successful. He was a cook who would accept any donation that came in and figure out a way to serve it, and this could include meat and store-bought pastries. He was also willing to serve food off the grill as soon as it was ready, without any circles or Oms preceding it.

BB

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Death Camp

Death Camp was a birth family of husband, wife, and at least three children who came to gatherings from 2006 to 2010. (The father had additional kids with a different woman, and sometimes they also attended.) The mother was a victim of violence at a regional gathering, and she developed a hatred of hippies. She encouraged the kids to do pranks on other gatherers; some of their alleged acts include going up to passersby on trails and hitting them with sticks, aiming squirt guns that had been filled with urine, and throwing firecrackers in people’s tents as they were sleeping. Her aim was to provoke the hippies into hateful and even violent reactions and expose their hypocrisy when they went on about peace and love.

Any attempts to discipline the kids or reason with them would get replies of “we don’t care about your Rainbow rules”, and attempts at retaliation would make them single you out for future attacks. They attracted some hangers on who were not members of this genetic family, and sometimes other children would act like there had been war declared and engage in skirmishes with them. They were the subject of many Shanti Sena councils held in their absence, and the same dilemma always emerged as in the cases of A-Camp and Trading Circle – some wanted to physically eject them, but others wanted to find a way to heal them with Rainbow love.

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At the 2010 annual in Pennsylvania they came into the Silent Meditation on the 4th talking loudly and playing a tambourine, which prompted several people who were sitting to get up and form a circle around them and try to shush them, but they responded with remarks like, “You’re a bunch of Nazi punks” and “You’re all a bunch of child molesters.” Other people started protesting the attempts to silence them, saying, “Let the children speak”. Finally there was a complete circle around them and someone started an Om. One of the kids said to another, “You’re being Omed over”, and she responded by saying, “This is getting too weird for me”, and she walked out of the circle, followed by all the rest. They came back to the main meadow a second time, and one of the children had a trombone and was making blasts on it. Another threw a smoke bomb on the ground that started a little clump of dry grass on fire which was quickly stomped out. Several people got up and a mob of people formed around them, and the girl who had thrown the bomb was herself thrown to the ground and people piled on top of her. Thruout they cried out mockingly things like, “Get your hands off me!”, and, “You call yourselves peaceful. You’re really a bunch of violent punks.” Another Om started up, and people got up from sitting and started holding hands in concentric circles, starting the big Om perhaps prematurely. The trombone was severely damaged in the melee. There was a long Shanti Sena council near Info that afternoon that for the first time included them, and the mother had lots of things to say about this. "I think this shows what kind of monsters you really are. You talk about peace and non-violence, but here you go attacking little girls." As she spoke further, it became more and more apparent that she had decided to use her children to deliberately provoke some kind of violent reaction to prove what she thought about the hypocrisy of hippies, and she was acting very smug in having succeeded. The kids said things like, "We're just doing this to see if we can get a reaction out of you. If you don't give us one, we'll get bored and stop." Someone from the circle said., "So what is the solution?", one of the kids said again, "Just ignore us and don't give us a reaction" The mother said, "Come to our camp and talk with us an get to know us. You'll find out that a lot of the stories people tell about us aren't true.” (And indeed Fat Kids had managed to achieve a state of being not attacked by them, and some in that kitchen empathized with their anti-Rainbow establishment feelings.) There was contrition among some of the other people in the circle, and a few went so far as to apologize for the severity of the reaction. One person produced a bicycle horn in the shape of a hunting horn, with the rubber squeezer missing, and gave it to the kids to make up for the destruction of the trombone. The mother and father ran into marital difficulties and the family broke up soon after, and they have not appeared at gatherings as a unit since 2010. You can read this for more about Death Camp. BB Hide

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Dirty Kid’s Corner

The popular image of a Rainbow gatherer has long been of a long-haired hippie dressed in colorful tie-dyes, with lots of Grateful Dead and Bob Marley logos. If a woman, she has on a granny dress and shawls with fringes and lots of jewelry. But for many years the gatherings have also been attended by an increasing number of young people dressed in goth and punk rock outfits of black, brown, gray, and olive drab.

They prefer heavy metal to psychedelic rock and reggae, and their concert tee shirts are almost always black. Lots of them are fond of body piercings and tattoos, and Mohawk hairdos are popular. Both the men and women like military pants with lots of cargo pockets, with the legs either full length or cut off. The women often wear just a halter top above, if they don’t choose to go topless. The men also can go descamisado during the hotter parts of this gathering. Men as well as women sometimes wear skirts, but they are always in the same shades of brown or khaki – never in the frilly and flowery patterns that the hippies wear. And many of them will wear the same garments for several days in a row, if not the whole gathering.

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Some of the older gatherers have called these people “dirty kids”, because they are usually young – in their teens, twenties, or early thirties – and their clothes get pretty dirty living in the woods and this doesn’t seem to bother them. This has been used as a derogatory term by some of the olders, but many of the dirty kids themselves have taken this as an appellation of pride. Sometimes the phrase gets shortened to just “kids”, with the tacit understanding that it doesn’t mean the people that Kid Village devotes itself to. Some of the dirty kids prefer “crusty kids”, and some of the olders who really don’t like them call them “gutter punks”, a term more often used for homeless kids who live on the streets in big cities. Becoming apparent by the 2008 Wyoming annual gathering, the two sides have increasingly segregated themselves from each other, with a hippie side and a dirty kid side emerging as the kitchens arrive and choose places to set up. In many recent years three of the largest and longest existing of their kitchens, Fat Kids, Montana Mud, and Shut Up and Eat It, have located themselves near to each other in a place that has been called Dirty Kid’s Corner. Other dirty kid kitchens set up around them, and the whole area is sometimes called Dirty Kid’s Meadow. The names that the dirty kids use for the gatherers that call them that name are several, with “yuppie”, “hippie”, and “high holy” being popular. In the most extreme dirty kid view, yuppies live in houses, have jobs, and only visit the gathering one week a year. Dirty kids are travelers and casual laborers who often live on the road or the street and are free to spend months at gatherings. Yuppies are weekend warriors; dirty kids live the Rainbow life fully. Relative to the hippies the kids tend to be more practical and pragmatic, and not so much inclined to trust in spirits and spend long times in ceremonies. A lot of them like to eat meat some believe that alcohol can be used prudently by responsible people, and don’t feel so much the need for absolute prohibition. Some of the kids can be just as rebellious against their parents’ generation as their parents were against their grandparents’, and both sides complain of not being treated with respect by the other. An increasing amount of time at Vision Council is being spent in discussing ways to bridge this generation gap. In recent years the dirty kids have taking over many of the vital parts of the gathering’s infrastructure, such as the main supply tent, the water pipes, and especially cleanup. Many of them take pride in being the muscles and backs of the gathering, and being able to face dirt that other people can’t. BB Hide

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Doughnut Kitchen

Doughnut Man had a kitchen that only served doughnuts with whatever people brought to stuff inside, and he fried them up in a little pot of oil over a fire. He appeared at the 1990 Minnesota, 1991 Vermont, and 1992 Colorado annual gatherings.

He tended to set up off the beaten path (as it were) so as to not get totally slammed with people on the zu-zu hunt. In Vermont he was not in the main area but up another trail along the creek that ran thru the gathering. In Colorado it was a huge hike to the top of an old volcano to get there. When you got there, all there were to sit on were huge jagged rocks. You perched on the rocks like sea gulls and he tossed donuts at you. He didn't serve you with forks or spoons; he threw donuts at you to catch.

HR Hwk

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Dreem Kitchen

At the 2011 Washington annual gathering only, focalized by two twenty-something women from Santa Cruz that I met a few days before the gathering in Berkeley.

I came across their Facebook event because they coincidentally used a photo of my banner from New Mexico, and I called their number because I was suspicious because they sounded too good to be true to be a rainbow kitchen, and I wanted to find out who was using a picture of my banner. It turned out at the gathering they had an awesome permaculture class-inspired cob pizza oven that my five year old son Dylan helped build. They served French press coffee. There were amazing amounts of friendliness and cohesiveness, enthusiastic young workers, and amazing abundance, like free socks and stuff. Lots of hand holding circles, singing, “kumbaya”, and shouting, “we love you!” Inclusive and playful with an amazing lack of negativity. I was hoping to help it continue on to Tennessee but couldn’t.

SB

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Early Bird Kitchen

Early Bird was the name of an African-American brother who ran a small kitchen that specialized in serving a breakfast of fried potatoes, eggs, pancakes, and coffee, and most mornings was serving early in the morning by Rainbow standards (9:00 or before). He appeared at the 1998 annual gathering in Arizona and continued into the 2000s. He had a boogie pit at the 2008 Wyoming annual gathering that was starting to get as large as the one at O-ji’s until a council with the resource rangers imposed a limit on firepit diameters.

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East Wind Community Kitchen

East Wind Community Kitchen was conceptualized and started in its current incarnation at the 2009 New Mexico annual gathering. It was created by an intentional community in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri called East Wind. The community manufactures nut butters on a commercial scale, and each year the kitchen brings over 500 pounds of peanut butter, almond butter, and cashew butter to donate to Main Supply and to serve through the 24 hour nut butter bar in the kitchen. Often times you’ll hear the catchy trademark - “peace, love, and peanut butter” circulating through this kitchen and will be offered nut butters at any time, day or night.

When you catch them at the right time, you can find incredible vegan and vegetarian food cooked by a myriad of different chefs. In Tennessee in 2012, East Wind kitchen teamed up with Green & Purple to serve main circle with combined resources and the following year in Montana were seen bringing large pots of spicy peanut butter mixtures to main circle.

The crew changes every year depending on who from the community decides to go, but some of the same faces are seen on a yearly basis. The kitchen’s been getting bigger every year with more and more interest in Rainbow developing at East Wind Community and as other intentional communities band together with this kitchen.

DM

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Everybody’s Kitchen

Everybody’s Kitchen started at the Ocala regional gathering in 1992, and they appeared at annual gatherings in the 1990s. Their presence was especially large at the 1995 New Mexico annual. In recent years they have been devoting all of their energies to feeding homeless people in the cities they visit. They have no set schedule; they go from city to city based on collective decision and stay as long as they feel welcome.

They have a kitchen bus that houses a full kitchen with stove, oven, and food storage closet that meet all public health standards in local restaurants across the U.S. They also have a flatbed truck that is used to gather food from wholesalers, restaurants, bakeries and the like, and to serve the food in the impoverished parts of the cities. They also have several vans that provide sleeping quarters for their volunteers.

After Hurricane Katrina they served victims in Pointe au Chien and New Orleans, Louisiana.

BB

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Faerie Camp

The first word in this name is sometimes spelled “Fairy” or “Faery”. (Many in this camp are associated with the Radical Faerie movement.) It is a camp mainly for homosexuals who are out and proud. Usually more of the residents are gay than lesbian, and there are straight people who hang out there because they like the gay vibrations. Many queer folk who maintain their own camps elsewhere in the gathering still come to participate in the activities.

Some version of this camp has been at gatherings since the 1980s. In recent years they have found a home in the dirty kid section of the gathering. It has changed more than any other camp in the last ten years because there have been very few old timers there for that long or longer.

Almost every year they put on some kind of parade around Dinner Circle where they show off some outrageous fashion statements. They have invited the entire gathering community to events such as the Prom at the 2003 Utah annual gathering, where several people showed up in real formal prom dresses, and many of those wearing them were brothers. It is a tradition that on the evening of July 3rd, Fairy Camp does a parade to Granola Funk bearing the Disco Ball, a ball covered in mirrors, and presents it to Granola Funk. This marks the beginning of a pirate war between Granola Funk and Fairy Camp over the ball, similar to the "flag game" played by some younger kitchens.

BB PS

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Fat Kids Kitchen

The Fat Kids are kids, meaning gatherers whose ages are in the teens, 20s, or low 30s (not the kids that Kid Village is devoted to), and they “believe that everyone should ‘live fat’ and enjoy life to the fullest”. When they are not at a gathering, they travel around together in two school busses, named “Big Mama” and “Tiny”. The busses also serve as sleeping quarters. In between gatherings (both annual and regional) they serve food “to communities in need and in areas of crisis”, as they say on their website.

In their earlier years they were known for acts of rebellion against the gathering establishment. At the 2008 annual in Wyoming they repeatedly dismantled and hid a set of pagan poles marking the compass directions that was set up in the main meadow by the Dinner Circle focalizers. Finally there was a council where it was agreed that they would only be set up before the meal and taken in immediately after. They also allowed Death Camp to set up nearby and gave them some support. To this day they celebrate the “official” opening of the gathering on July 1st by gathering in the main meadow at sunrise and having a "Triangle" ceremony where they bring and serve coffee and donuts. Instead of standing in a circle, they stand in a triangle, and instead of saying “Om”, they say “Yum”. Shouts of "triangle" are heard repeatedly in the meadow, and the coffee and donuts are taken to the main meadow by a loud and boisterous parade originating at the kitchen.

But since their first gathering in 2006, they have consistently been among the first kitchens to bring food to Dinner Circle, and just as consistently stayed until the end of cleanup and done a major part of the trash hauling. They have played an increasing part in the gathering's infrastructure. At the 2012 annual gathering in Tennessee, they (with help from Montana Mud and Nic@Nite) took part in laying the water lines, put up the tarps for Info and provided a map, started the banking council and the Magic Hat, set up Main Supply and did most of the supply runs, and had a Dinner Circle on the 21st of June – filling a vacuum created when most of the older people who had usually been the initiators of these things showed up at the gathering much later than usual. They continued to handle most of Main Supply in Montana in 2013 and Utah in 2014.

Several of them respond to an interview inside their bus in a video.

BB

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Front Gate & Welcome Home

Front Gate is where people driving toward a gathering on a Forest Service road first see Rainbow people and activity, and when things are going well there is a dedicated crew of people walking up to vehicles coming in, saying “welcome home”, and directing them to safe parking places or dropoff points. Some years things have gone well, and there have even been time spans of several good years, but some years they haven’t.

A Welcome Home camp for new arrivals to the gathering is also an ideal that has been achieved with extremely varying degrees of success over past years. Ideally it is the one of the first things that newcomers encounter when they are walking in on the main trail, and it provides a place for them to rest from their journey in. They may be offered tea, coffee, or water. They are given printed copies of Raps 107 and 701, and informed of conditions peculiar to the current Gathering.

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Most importantly, it is a place where they are greeted with a “welcome home” and vibrations of love and peace, and not given the impression that rowdy drunks from A-Camp can provide. In some years there has been a strong Welcome Home presence, like in 2008 in Wyoming, where there was a large kitchen at the main trailhead and a satellite in the form of a step van parked on the road before the turnoff to A-Camp. Other years there has not been so elaborate a setup, but there still has been a cohesive Front Gate crew that could keep it covered and get the cars to the right places 24 hours a day, like in Utah in 2003. Other years it has been practically nonexistent, as in Montana in 2013. (And there have been many years where the first thing newcomers encountered was a blockade of Forest Service policemen.) It has always been hard to find people willing to come out of the womb of the gathering and spend long periods of time on the fringes of Babylon, and miss out on all the fun going on inside. To the relief of some and the dismay of others, A-Campers have been the kind of people who would want to do this, and some of them have been able to perform front gate and parking chores responsibly. But some of them haven’t been, and this has been a source of conflict. The ideal has been to have enough sober people at Front Gate, especially the ones going up to cars, to overcome any bad alcohol energy, and pleas are made regularly at Dinner Circle for people to volunteer an afternoon or an evening to help out at Front Gate. BB Hide

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Goat Camp

Goat Camp has been known to greet passersby on the trail with “ma-a-a-a”. But nowadays they are more likely to greet you with, “Pocket trash? You got any pocket trash?” Since 2008 they have specialized in making sure all the cigarette butts, little candy wrappers, pieces of string, and other little things that others overlook get picked up and hauled out. They often roam the trails with plastic trash bags while the gathering is still going on before the start of clean up.

They are always found on the dirty kid’s side of the gathering. Most of them are train-hoppers and regularly use the rails as their means of transportation. It is said that GOAT stands for Get On A Train.

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Granola Funk Theater

Granola Funk grew from the inspiration of Aaron Funk. It began at the Ocala regional in Florida and their first annual gathering was in Wyoming in 1994. At the annual gatherings they look for a place at the lower end of a small meadow that slopes upward to form a natural amphitheater. Then they build a structure that includes a stage, a backdrop, and a place behind for performers to prepare.

Their performance run usually lasts for four days, and has the same schedule. On the first of July they have a Rainbow version of the Dating Game TV show. On the 2nd they present the “Singer/Songwriter Showcase”, where any gathering participant can sign up before the show to get a time slot to perform.

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On the 3rd is the “Gong Show”, where anybody can perform doing anything, and in addition to the usual singing and guitar playing there might be people playing other instruments, stand up comedians, people reciting their own poetry or telling stories, acrobatic acts, even dog tricks. On the stage, or more usually on a perch above it, is a person with a large Chinese gong, and when that person beats it, the performer on stage has to leave. They can be merciless, seldom letting anyone go for more than three minutes. Sometimes the audience groans and boos their disapproval to the gonger, and the act is allowed to proceed a little longer, but more often the crowd heckles the performer. Ribbing, along with occasional calls of “show us your butt” are common. Rainbow Presidential Candidate Vermin Supreme has hosted the Gong Show many times, but in recent years has MCed under protest – there are folks who don’t like the ferocity of the heckling and feel it adds an inappropriately negative tinge to the space. One year the MC was so offended at the crowd’s heckling that he quit mid-show. Usually, however, there is a balance between good-natured catcalls and genuine appreciation for talent.” On the 4th is the “Variety Show” or “Talent Showcase”, and the performers are allowed to finish their acts unimpeded. On the 5th the stage and everything they have built around it is dismantled and disappeared. The shows always start at “dark thirty" which usually means when all of the last of the blue had disappeared from the western sky. The audience always sits on the ground. There is never any electronic amplification, and there is an advantage to showing up while there is still light to get a sitting place near enough to the stage to hear clearly. Their stage structures are known for their elaborateness. At the 2012 annual gathering in Tennessee, they built an Egyptian pyramid framed with logs covered with white cloth. In Pennsylvania in 2010 they built a structure that looked like a cross between the Frontierland fort and the Fantasyland castle at Disneyland – a wooden stockade with a pair of round turrets with conical roofs in the middle, and a wide door overlooking a small stage that resembled a drawbridge. In Wyoming in 2008 it looked like a giant white bird with a long neck extending out over the stage, and in 2006 in Colorado they built a pirate ship with masts and rigging. BB Hide

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The Green & Purple Kitchen of the Living Love & Light

Started by Sky in the early nineties, also focalized by Toke, Green & Purple has a vast crew that spans the country. Their themes are (you guessed it) Green and Purple. Their specialty meals (though they cook everything) include dank zuzus, and Green & Purple stir-fry (with green and purple veggies) with peanut sauce.

Tho they remain one kitchen at annual gatherings, there are two sets of equipment and two crews and multiple focalizers that travel the east and west coast. As a result, there have been 58 gatherings attended by a kitchen flying the Green & Purple banner. Recent gatherings attended by Green & Purple include Washington regional 2010, Washington annual 2011, Shasta Fall gathering 2012, Tennessee annual 2012, Washington regional 2012, Prineville Oregon 2012, Clam Beach council 2012, Spring All-California Gathering 2013, Cumberland 2013, and Montana annual 2013. Gathering #59 is being focused by Amy and will be in Shawnee this fall. The next west coast gathering (60) slated for G&P is the Oregon regional planned for spring 2014.

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Recently, Green & Purple was getting a reputation as a wild party kitchen, but that was not the original intent, and G&P olders are trying to re-steer the focus of the kitchen. They still do not allow alcohol in their kitchen and bliss fire area. Over the last year, the kitchen has been beset by setbacks and tragedies. In September of 2012, Green & Purple lost a sister named Coco Ouden in a bus crash. The driver of the bus is also facing legal charges over the accident. Soon after that, Sky’s mother passed away. Soon after that, a long-time Green & Purple participant, Chu Bbakka, was arrested in Texas for making a wide turn in his bus, and was charged for his pot and paraphernalia. Then a travelling sister who had ridden the bus that crashed, Sparrow, died in Texas to alcohol poisoning. An October California Memorial Gathering in 2012 brought back six of the members of the bus together, including Coco’s ashes. The ashes were spread on the hills at the gathering in a quiet ceremony. Though Green & Purple’s kitchen equipment was borrowed for this gathering, they didn’t actually attend as a kitchen. Green & Purple’s next gathering was a Spring California Gathering in May of 2013, a gathering that some felt was a cathartic healing gathering for the past seasons of hardship. At that gathering Sky was presented with a bundle of feathers tied with a piece of dental floss that Coco had used to sew on a patch, with feathers that had each been gifted specifically to honor her. There was a picture of Coco at the peace pole in Montana on the 4th of July. Fnc Sky Hide

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Green Path

Green Path was formed at the 2006 Colorado gathering, and they continue to return to every annual. Their focus is learning and sharing earth-based living skills, and at gatherings they prepare several spaces for classes and workshops, some of them under tarps, and give them fanciful names like Grasshopper, Firefly, and Lady Bug. They cover a few plywood panels with white paper, and draw a calendar on it with felt tip pen, with boxes for days and hours of events. Some of the subjects of study have been:

Permaculture principles,

Kundalini yoga,

Native awareness games,

Deep ecology,

Science of pheromones,

Composting,

Bowl burning.

Songshare with Shanta and Lady Bird

Sacred cosmic cacao ceremony

What is enlightenment?

They also set up a kitchen that serves vegetarian food.

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Handi-Camp

“Handi-Camp” is a pun on “handicap”, and it is a place for people with physical disabilities to meet each other and find support, and it is for able-bodied people who want to help them. Elderly people are also welcome here.

It appears in the parking area of every annual gathering, and sometimes there is a satellite camp inside the gathering. Some years it has been in a parking place where there is a shorter walk to the main meadow than the bulk of the parking, as in Montana in 2013, but some years such a place has been unavailable and the walk in is a long and steep one, like in Pennsylvania in 2010. Whatever the nature of the walk in, people can be found there to wheel, carry, help walk or otherwise help you get into the gathering and back, and carry your gear.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s a brother named NZane focalized a kitchen there, moving around between the pots and the grill in a wheelchair and putting on an impressive show of efficiency. He died in 2008, and since then some of the especially strong workers have been Old Tom and Water, Singing-on-the Rocks.

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Hobo Alley

Hobo Alley first appeared at the 2013 annual gathering In Tennessee, starting as few people sitting on the side of the trail hollering "Hobo Alley needs your everything!". They appeared as a kitchen at a regional gathering in Oregon in June of 2014, then went to the annual in Utah in 2014. During this time, a major source of energy and focalizing was a sister named Change, and another was a brother named Yoda. Their kitchen has served the main Dinner Circle, they have carried supplies for other kitchens, and they have played a significant role in cleanup.

As their name implies, many of the people in this camp travel around the country by hopping aboard freight trains, like hoboes in the 1930s. It is a place where consuming alcoholic beverages was tolerated, but there was little of the agro energy and sometimes violent behavior that has been so often found in A-Camp. (In 2014 almost all of the A-Campers went to an alternate gathering held at the same time in West Virginia.) Most of the people in Hobo Alley are young, less than 30 years old, and many giggle as much as stoners.

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When you walked into the gathering from the parking areas, you climbed two very steep hills then continued on a narrow trail until you reached Welcome Home and where the trail fanned out into the rest of the gathering. Hobo Alley was one of the first places you encountered after reaching the top of the second hill. On the night of July 4th, three men managed to climb the hills on motorcycles and started to threaten some of the Hobo Alley campers. People came in from surrounding kitchens until about a hundred confronted them and turned them away. One of bikers got into a personal argument with one of the Rainbows and cut him with a knife, but no weapons were brandished by any of the Family, and they were finally chased off only by words. There were threats by them to return with more of their friends, but these never materialized. Non-violence on the part of the Family was maintained thruout. Change and Yoda parted ways shortly after the gathering, and Yoda said he was going to take the name of Hobo Alley with him. Change was gifted a school bus that another kitchen was kicking down after acquiring a newer one, so she is continuing the kitchen by going to regionals, but so far it is now named simply, “The Alley”. BB Fnc Hide

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Hummingbird Cowboy’s Café

Hummingbird Cowboy was a tall skinny man who dressed most of the time in cowboy garb: jeans, vest, and cowboy hat. He had an expressive and sometimes funny manner of speaking in a movie western accent with lots of expressions from his days in the Army and from being a road dog. Most of the years he came to gatherings he spent most of his days walking around carrying a walkie-talkie radio responding to Shanti Sena calls, but at the 1996 Missouri gathering he set up a small kitchen not far from Trading Circle, where he and a brother named Boyscout turned out what they called “the best zu zu's and wam wams this side of the stream, always served late night and always”. The kitchen continued the following year in Oregon, where Chico helped him out.

He had a temper that most of the time he could control into an effective Shanti Sena style, but one day after the Oregon gathering was over he let it get the worst of him when a wife he had wed at the 1996 gathering told him she wanted to leave. He was convicted of aggravated assault and had to go to prison.

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Instant Soup Kitchen

Instant Soup Kitchen was started in 1996 by two brothers named Rich in Spirit and Summer. Before then they used to bring ramen and hang out at Tea-Time to get whatever tea flavor was happening to add to their ramen. At the 1995 New Mexico annual, they were sitting on a hill that led to a shitter above one of the kitchens and joked about having a "half way to the shitter" café. Summer, who owned a health-food store in Key West suggested that he could start a vegetarian kitchen, so he offered to supply some organic vegetarian powdered instant soup if Rich came early and build a kitchen. Next year in Missouri they did, and they stuck to that deal for many years and Rich in Spirit continued after Summer could no longer attend gatherings.

They have no bliss rails or fences, and welcome anyone to come inside the kitchen and help out. They also have no serving counter, instead they from the fireplace that they cook on. From there, they are encouraged to hang out at the bliss fire nearby. They are renowned as a music kitchen, and have many jam sessions. (One of them can be seen in this video.) Every 3rd of July they have a variety show.

When they are out west, they team up with their sister kitchen, Bees On Earth, which serves the main Dinner Circle while Instant Soup serves 24/7 at their kitchen.

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Iris Kitchen

In the religion of the ancient Greeks, Iris was the goddess of the rainbow.

Overboard, Vinny Newman, Isaac McGuinness and Nada started Iris Kitchen at the Ocala regional gathering in Florida in 2004, with members and equipment from the Ananda and Co-op Kitchens of the late ‘90s and early 2000s. At their first gathering they built a bamboo and tarp geodesic “Om Dome”, 20 feet high and 30 feet in diameter. It seated several hundred people during their talent show, poetry night and improv comedy show. Their first annual was West Virginia in 2005, where they happened to arrive just as the people who had been evicted by the Forest Service from the first site were starting to leave, making them the first to set up at the second site at Cranberry Glade and the only kitchen feeding the whole gathering for a few days.

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For the following four years they set up only at the Ocala gathering, where they often served as a kid’s camp, attracting families. In 2006 the kitchen set up with Granola Funk, where a classically trained pianist played on a leopard print, upright piano. Due to vehicle issues, Iris only built the kitchen in Ocala and Georgia in 2011, but its cooks and crew helped out with kitchens at the Apalachicola, Cumberland, Heartland, and Colorado regionals and the Washington annual. In 2012, Iris served at regional gatherings in Ocala and Georgia and the annual gathering in Tennessee, where they had gluten/allergen-free side kitchen, and in 2013 they went to Ocala and the Montana annual. They usually have a heart-shaped bliss pit that they encourage music around, and at some gatherings they have been known to create living room type furniture out of downed logs.. They like to create specialty food like meatless sushi rolls, Greek salad, and Indian food. They strive to be a very open kitchen, friendly to families and folks new to Rainbow. BB Ovb Hide

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Jah Love

Jah Love was a kitchen of mostly young people that appeared at annuals in the late 90s. As their name suggested, they were into reggae and Rastafarianism, and they liked to spice up their food Caribbean style. They also liked nudity, and one of their events was the Naked Lunch, where they wouldn’t serve you unless you were naked. Another was the Naked People’s Parade which started and ended there.

At the 1997 Oregon annual a brother who worked there went from camp to camp announcing that they were going to serve LSD Kool-Ade there six o’clock. When 6:00 came around, he stood guard over a stainless steel pot as a line with more than two thousand people formed behind it. As more and more people arrived and it became obvious to everyone that there wouldn’t be anywhere near enough in the pot to go around, so a few of the kitchen workers asked if anyone had any acid to add to some more pots. Many people finally left as it looked like they weren’t going to be successful.

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Jamba Kitchen

This kitchen first appeared at the 1987 North Carolina annual gathering under the name of Barbarian Camp. They were openly in rebellion against the Rainbow establishment’s vegetarianism and loudly proclaimed that they ate meat. One afternoon they roasted a whole side of beef, and served it to a line hundreds of people long, some of which chanted “mo-o-o-o-o” like it was an Om. A rumor went around the gathering that they had made a show of carrying it thru the middle of the main circle area.

They had barbarian call that they cried out from time to time, “Jamba”.

They toned down their act and changed their name when they returned to the Texas annual the following year, and were serving ice cream and pizza near Lovin’ Ovens when they got to Nevada in 1989. They finally combined with Lovin’ Ovens the next year in Minnesota.

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Jesus Kitchen

Jesus Kitchen has been coming to annual and regional gatherings since Mark Johnson brought seven other people to the 1995 New Mexico annual. They are valued for their pot of oatmeal which is available 24 hours a day, and for their sandal repair service. During especially rainy and muddy times, they offer to wash your feet. They have also been known to walk around at Dinner Circle with a bucket of free Bibles. They offer a kind of Christianity that reaches out to comfort those who have been abused or disillusioned by mainstream churches.

They serve the main Dinner Circle, but they do not take part in the Om. They also regard drum circles as a form of pagan worship and do not take part in them, and they do not allow drugs of any kind or nudity in their kitchen area.

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Jerusalem Camp

This camp has sometimes gone by other names, like Om Shalom and Rainbow Zion. It is a camp that celebrates the Jewish faith. Their main focus has been to bring back into the fold Jews who have lapsed in their practice, but they also welcome Gentiles to most of their activities. On Friday evenings they have a Sabbath service in Hebrew that lasts a few hours, and afterwards they serve a feast of ethnic food. This is usually well attended by people from all over the gathering. Their kitchen also serves thruout the week.

A video of them at worship at the 2008 Wyoming annual gathering can be viewed here.

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Katuah

Katuah is the Rainbow name for the region that includes Georgia and both Carolinas. It is one of the names the Cherokee Indians, who lived in that area before they were exiled by the white men, used for themselves. In Oklahoma today there is the United Keetoowah Band, but it distinguishes itself from the Cherokee Nation, which prefers the name Tsa-la-gi when speaking in their own language.

The Katuah gathering is a local family-focused gathering with an emphasis on single mothers and young children. It is known for its strong sister-focused drumming and chanting. They are one of the oldest families in Rainbow, having started before they were aware of the Rainbow Family, and they put out a newsletter for many years called “HO!” They have a long standing consensus not to post online about gatherings, and they still use the old telephone trees, lightlines, and HO! to announce gatherings.

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Katuah has had only one gathering for many years: the Summer Solstice. They used to have a May Day gathering, Blueberry gathering, and fall gatherings (often called Piedmont). At the 1993 Thanksgiving council they consensed not to have the blueberry gathering anymore since the site was getting heavily impacted and becoming more public – so they haven't held that one since. The May Day gatherings stopped after Raven lost the land they used on Round Mountain, and the fall gatherings ended mostly for lack of energy. At the 2012 Tennessee annual, Katuah was regarded as one of the high holiest of the hippie kitchens by some of the hard core anarchist dirty kids, and they were singled out for pranks, such as breaking the early morning silence by hollering “nigger”. When some kitchen workers objected, the kids argued that it was to help “desensitize” them and get them to the point that it didn’t bother them anymore. The older folks acted like they weren’t very successful. Hwk BB Hide

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Kid Village

Kid Village is one of the oldest kitchens, and at most annual gatherings the largest. As its name implies, it is a special place in the gathering for children and their parents. There are games and arts and crafts and singing and many other activities for them. The main focalizers have been Felipe and his wife Lynn, Joe Braun, Foxfire, and Flower. Tho the youngest people in the gathering are their focus, the adults in Kid Village include some of the eldest of the elders.

Their daily breakfast that usually includes fried potatoes, eggs, pancakes, homemade syrup, and oatmeal with fruit is one of the most opulent offerings at the gathering, and people are willing to stand in long lines for it on the most populous days of the gathering. Children and their parents are told to go to the front of the line as it is forming, and they can always go to the front of the line later. (Sometimes parents have been known to lend out their kids out to accompany other people.) They usually have another meal at about 4 in the afternoon, then continue to offer snacks and zuzus thruout the evening. in the evening of the 4th of July they serve Diamond Dave’s recipe of Rock and Roll Spaghetti.

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There is a handwashing station that you pass in the line just before you are served, and they are strict about you doing it every time before you hold out your dishes. Unless your hands look like they just got wet, the servers are instructed not to let you have anything, even if you are just filling your cup with water. Before serving the breakfast there is a circle where everybody holds hands, and Felipe give a talk of encouragement that is often filled with Native American symbolism (he was born into the Yaqui tribe). He often goes around the circle with a small bowl of burning sage and wafts the smoke over the participants with a feather as a rite of purification. Then they go around the circle clockwise and anyone who has a concern, a prayer, or a heartsong can speak. (No feather or other talking implement is passed.) There are lots of reminders to wash hands, use the latrines and compost pits, and help out with the serving and food chopping. The circle usually lasts about twenty minutes and it ends with a call of “We love you” and finally an Om. The children usually are kept to the same bedtimes they have back in Babylon, and quiet is enforced after sundown. There is no all night drum circle. However this is one place where the silence is not kept on the morning of the Fourth, because it is next to impossible to get small children to understand it. No drums or musical instruments are played, but adults talk at low conversational volume. Kid Village was the scene of a major confrontation with the Forest Service law enforcement officers at the annual gathering in Wyoming in 2008. Some LEOs pursuing a Rainbow brother that they wanted on marijuana charges caught up with him as he was approaching this kitchen at the time the rest of the gathering was at Dinner Circle. When he got there with the cops in pursuit, several gatherers saw what was going on and started yelling insults and threats back at them, while other gatherers tried to do Shanti Sena by moving in between to hold these threateners back. A sister was listening to her Shanti Sena radio and said out loud, "Did you say ‘fire’?", when what she heard was really "shots being fired". Someone else heard her and shouted, "Fire!", and other people repeated the call. It was heard over at Dinner Circle, and many people started to run in the direction it came from, which was Kid Village. Some of the police had riot control guns, which shot paintball-like pellets that released pepper spray on impact. When they saw the mass of people coming in they opened fire, shooting hundreds of rounds before it was all over. There were children present, and some of them got the red welts on their skin that all who were hit by the pellets were afflicted with. Several videos of this were recorded, one of which can be viewed here. This was the high point in what had been a long series of escalating confrontations with the LEOs. The Incident Commander sat in a council with Rainbows two years later and said, “God forbid that we should ever have to go thru something like that again.” It sobered Rainbows and LEOs alike, and all began on the path toward reconciliation that has now gone so far as the Incident commander coming into the gathering to talk with gatherers in civvies with no gun in 2013. BB Hide

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Krishna Kitchens

From the earliest years the gathering has been attended by Krishna devotees. Most have been members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) founded by Srila Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, but some have not been affiliated with that organization. Many times they have been brought by Radhanath Swami from the new Vrindaban community near Moundsville, West Virginia, coming in a school bus lettered with “International Society for Cow Protection”. Other times they have come from an ashram in Seattle, led by a guru named Prithi. At the annual gatherings in West Virginia and Colorado in 2005 & 6, it was a collective effort of several ashrams. Their participation has dwindled in the 2010s; devotees still come, but the kitchens are not as large as they used to be.

They are usually clad in the same saffron robes that they wear in airports and when they were assisting in the serving of the prasadam dinner to the public in their ashrams, but one group from Arizona wears what are civvies in Rainbow terms. Their fare is curried vegetables and potatoes, yellow rice, sweet and picante fruit chutneys, chapatis which are like wheat flour tortillas fried in hot butter, and halvah, a slightly gelatinous mix of wheat flour and honey. From their experience serving in the city they have become practiced and efficient at serving long lines, and they have been lifesavers for many on the most populous days of the gathering.

A video of them at the 2005 West Virginia annual gathering can be viewed here.

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Before and during the serving of the food they practice a form of group chanting called sankirtana. A leader sitting on the ground plays a harmonium, which is like small organ with black and white keys, powered by an accordion-like bellows on the back. He sings the Hare Krishna mantra over and over to any of a variety of Indian melodies, then the audience sings the mantra back to the same tune the leader has just sung. This is repeated over and over again, sometimes changing the tune but not the words. Another devotee might be playing a mridanga, an Indian drum like a conga but with a big head on one end and a little head the other. It is played sideways with both hands. But often you will hear the whole range of Rainbow drums, since the chanting is open to outside musicians. The leader is most often a “he”, but the Arizona group sometimes has sisters leading. That group also uses guitars instead of the harmonium, and their melodies sound more like American jazz than Hindu traditional. The composite kitchen in Colorado was another place that sometimes had sisters at the harmonium. The Arizona group often has devotees roaming the gathering with 5-gallon buckets asking, “Would you like some Krishna cookies?”. There is another devotee named Soaring Turkey who comes by himself to gatherings, sets up a tipi, and gives classes in quitting smoking. BB Hide

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Lovin’ Ovens

This kitchen dates back to the 1980s. At every gathering they go to they build several ovens in the Rainbow way: make a rectangular firepit with walls made from stacked rocks, place on top of the walls a 55 gallon steel oil barrel laid on its side, and then daub mud all over the structure. The barrel has a hinged door cut into one end. Their specialty is baking, and they serve mealtime food only to their workers. At Dinner Circle they walk around with several used flour bags filled with fist-sized bread rolls that they pass out. At dark thirty they do treat baking, like pizza, cinnamon rolls, and other zu-zus (pastries and sweets). On any given night they might specialize one of these things. One pretty much has to be a night owl to be able to sample their wares fully, but sometimes they send special batches to places like Info and CALM.

They usually locate in a place on the fringes far from Main Circle, they usually ask Info not to put them on the map, and there is seldom any big sign saying “Lovin’ Ovens” – but they can be identified by their row of mud covered ovens and the large rectangular rack they build out of sticks where they place dough on flat trays to rise. They can also sometimes be located when someone calls out, “We need kneaders!”

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Magic Bowl

Ogred by Magic Bowl Bob, Magic Bowl kitchen has no “kitchen crew”, bowls, or meals, and no division between ordinary gathering participants and workers. In fact there are no workers; if someone is caught thinking they are working, they are fired. The kitchen is an open kitchen. There is always dog food available for folks’ dogs at all times. Magic Bowl Kitchen’s specialty is biscuits. Pancakes are also common, as are other things easily made with impromptu batter.

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Milliways

Milliways is a communal main circle kitchen with a staff and crew from diverse geographic origins. It first appeared in the Mark Twain National Forest at the Missouri annual gathering in 1996. Josie started the kitchen with nothing but a large full standing mirror.

When Mellow and other acquaintances from the holding camp arrived, they spanged a few pots, pans, and other essential kitchen necessities – as they wanted to carry on the spirit from holding camp. As the camp was set up across the creek from Kid Village, it was called “across the creek kitchen". Jasper had come to Missouri intending to set up a tea kitchen, and she had a basic set of cast iron enamel coated pots and pans. In addition, she had a collection of “Milliways this a way,” and “... that a way,” signs she was placing along the trail as she hiked in. When she arrived at “across the creek kitchen” with her coveted pots and pans, she was convinced (coerced) to merge with that kitchen. As the signs were already up, the deal was that if the pots and pans were to stay, the name would change – and Milliways was born.

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Due to an injury that prevented her from further crossing the creek, Josie moved in with Cowboy at the Hummingbird Café. As Cowboy and Gary were doing supply that year, and thanx to Aire Faire, Milliways had access to supplies to feed main circle and meals out of the kitchen daily. Freeman would often bake zuzus during the night, and David Shane set up Milliways on its own water system. Milliways was noted for its bad British accents, human television (TV Mike), non-traveling traveling band (Walter), ice cream (Jasper), and ever increasing levels of sanitation and cleanliness (Erin) Milliways appeared continuously at annuals until its gear and bus were lost in a wildfire while stored in Colorado in 2002. Highlights of that period include appearances by celebrities Douglas Adams in Arizona 1998, and a 6 hour drum circle led by Mickey Heart at the bliss pit go-go cage in Pennsylvania 1999. In 2006 two defunct Colorado regional kitchens (the Colorado Kitchen, and Phatty Platter) donated gear and Milliways reappeared. Milliways spent 2007 in Colorado at the regional at Hat Springs, and returned to the annual in Wyoming in 2008 and New Mexico in 2009. At this time rumor has it all Milliwavians are dead, or never really existed at all. Another and probably more credible rumor is that those limey bastards are just waiting to ground score more gear at the next rest area, and we’ll see them at a gathering all too soon. LTD Hide

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Montana Mud

Montana Mud has most of the time been a kitchen that serves only coffee to the public, altho they usually have a small fire and grill to cook meals for their crew. But if you ask them for coffee, the person you ask will usually reply, “We don’t have any coffee here”. Then that person will turn toward where most of the rest of the crew is working and ask, “What do we have here?” The crew will then answer in resounding voices, “MUD!”

And mud is an appropriate word, their coffee is made in the Rainbow way: take a large stainless steel pot of boiling water off of the fire and carefully pour some coffee grounds so that they float on the surface of the water, then do not stir or otherwise disturb and wait for the grounds to become saturated with water and sink to the bottom. When it is finally poured into your cup, it is almost strong enough to eat with a fork and you must be prepared for some stray grounds as you reach the bottom of your cup.

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If you happen to come at a time when they have run out and are preparing a new pot, and you ask them how long it will be before it is ready, the answer will always be “twenty minutes”, no matter how near it is to being actually done. They have been renowned for their drum circles at night. The crew has been mostly young and dressed in the blacky-khaki style, and they have a tradition that when someone joins the circle with more gray in his beard than someone who is sitting, that person should offer the guest his or her seat. When the Forest Service supervisor refused to grant a permit and the LEOs evicted all the gatherers from the originally intended site of the annual gathering in Michigan in 2002, forcing them all to move to the eastern side of a river that ran past it, Montana Mud held out and refused to move. For a few hours the Forest Service tried to stop all deliveries of water into the gathering until they left voluntarily, but public outrage at a “town meeting” in the nearby town of Bruce Crossing persuaded them to allow them in again. Finally the LEOs approached with horses and shotguns and surrounded their camp. All were given a last chance to leave, but 13 refused, and those were arrested. Some used nonviolent civil disobedience tactics, like going limp when arrested and making it necessary for them to be carried off. Montana Mud was started by a brother named Jimbo, who focalized the kitchen until 2002 when he passed the kitchen name onto a brother named Heybob amidst the controversy over the “West Bank” incident which resulted in the 13 arrests. Heybob eventually left the kitchen so he could raise a family, so in recent years a principal focalizer has been Useless. He left to help start Mudder Earth in 2013, and passed the Montana Mud name back to its original founder Jimbo at thanksgiving council 2012. Jimbo erected Montana Mud at the 2013 gathering, but brought the kitchen back to its roots – though Useless had focalized Montana Mud as a full-on kitchen which served food AND coffee, the kitchen at the 2013 gathering was only a coffee kitchen. BB Hide

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Mudd ‘n’ Butts

Mudd ‘n’ Butts is a coffee and cigarette kitchen. This kitchen debuted at the 2013 Annual Montana Gathering and was ogred by Not a Dave. The kitchen’s original crew consisted of the passengers in Not a Dave’s RV, The Flying Dutch Oven, which has to date survived two trips off of cliffs with no injuries. The kitchen was set up in the “dirty kids corner” of the woods and became a thriving community space among the street kids and travelers.

Since the word had gone out in 2013 that Useless had passed on the Montana Mud name and there would likely be no Montana Mud kitchen, the Mudd ‘n’ Butts crew founded their kitchen to fill the potential coffee vacuum they foresaw. Mudd ‘n’ Butts served coffee and tobacco 24/7, all gathering long. It was one of the first kitchens on site at Seed Camp, and once food supplies starting coming in, the kitchen added zuzus and a constant stream of pancakes to its repertoire. Mudd ‘n’ Butts served pancakes to Main Circle for most of Seed Camp, and fed Breakfast Circle during the gathering as well.

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Mudder Earth Café

Mudder Earth was born online between Thanksgiving Council 2012 and Montana 2013. After Useless handed Montana Mud’s name back to Jimbo at Thanksgiving Council, a lot of the younger crew that had been involved (the “Mudders”), having been told that Jimbo didn’t intend to do Montana Mudd as a kitchen, planned to put together a kitchen where they could continue to work together as Mudders. Doc Zsu Zsu was instrumental in focalizing this effort, and the feeling was very strongly that, like Montana Mud of the past several years, Mudder Earth would be a sober detox kitchen. Mudder Earth Cafe debuted at the annual gathering in Montana in 2013. After attempting to run a Welcome Home camp, Useless eventually joined forces with Doc and worked at Mudder Earth for the gathering.

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Musical Veggie Café

The second time I attended an annual Gathering was in the Allegheny National Forest (PA) in 2010 and I hooked up with Musical Veggie Café. The apparent focalizer of the camp was a man named Question Mark, who most notably welcomed people to dinner and performed his official duties in the nude.

The camp was very well organized (at least from my viewpoint) and featured an elaborate water filtration system, as well as an efficient dishwashing setup with rinse, wash, and sanitize taps. They had a “family group shower” pagoda type setup that was available to use after dinner in the early evening, complete with hot water!

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At meal times, Question Mark would have attendees gather around before dinner as he gave the camp news of the day, established the rules of washing hands before dinner and dishes after, and asked for people to gather firewood for the cooking and showering. The group would then hold hands and Om. Dinner followed afterwards, with women, children, and families being served first. Breakfast was commonly oatmeal with fruit in it, sides of fruit, and whatever else was available that day. There was always very strong coffee (REAL coffee!) available at every meal that was specially ground and brought for the national gathering. Lunch and dinner (from what I experienced) featured mostly cabbage prepared in a variety of ways. On the morning of the 5th I think breakfast even included some cabbage. (I really had my fill of cabbage that week!) The camp also maintained their own shitter with a two-seater box over the pit, which was very enjoyable. Regarding the “musical” part of the camp name, I don’t recall any major playing going on aside from some nice guitar music in the late evening with an occasional mandolin, drum, or some other type of riddim maker. Msx My first encounter with that name was at the 1988 Texas annual gathering and at that time it was “Musical Vegetarian.” They have been to almost every national gathering since, usually setting up in the outer reaches of the gathering. They have offered hot showers nearby many times. BB Hide

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NERF

N.E.R.F. stands for “NorthEast Rainbow Family”. It started out for a few years as New England Rainbow Family, but they changed it so it could include New York as well. They set up a camp and kitchen at every annual gathering.

NERF had its first regional gathering in 1988, just prior to the Texas annual, and they continue to have them. They try to have them every year except when the annual is held close by on the east coast. In the 1990s NERF gatherings sometimes attracted two or three thousand attendees, but over the last few years the gatherings have not been very large. One to two hundred folks attended the ones in 2012 and -13. But there is a lot of new energy coming into NERF and it has been decided that from now on the gathering will be held over the full moon in August.

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Nic@Nite

Nic@Nite is a free tobacco camp. It’s name is a pun on the name of Nick at Nite on the Nickelodeon cable TV network. Here the “Nic” is short for nicotine. They are often seen on the trails calling out, “If you need a cigarette we got one. If you got a cigarette we need one. We jones so you don’t have to.”

In the old days, one of the primary ways for kitchens to attract and keep volunteers was by having “kitchen tobacco” that was given out to those folks who were being productive. The problem with this was that the kitchens with more resources were able to get more workers, setting up a de facto hierarchy. Nic@Nite aimed to destabilize this hierarchy and level the playing field for everyone by providing tobacco to all.

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There are multiple origin stories for N@N, but allegedly their first physical camp was in 1999. Possibly there was an individual named Nick that “did” Nic@Nite a year or two prior to the original camp. After that a sister named Pixie (who I hear no longer smokes) was the original focalizing energy. In the early days of N@N, people had to come to their camp to get tobacco, but after a few years the concept of the “satellite” was implemented. Nic@Nite campers now wear a “busket” (an empty plastic coffee container, usually a large Folgers) around their neck with twine. Inside the busket are papers and rolling tobacco. They roam the gathering providing tobacco to major camps and kitchens and people on the trail as they go. There is also a constant presence of workers and tobacco at the Nic@Nite camp, so people can find it if they don’t know where the satellites are. N@N is pretty fairly organized regarding regionals, even smaller road-dog regionals, and will try to make sure at least one full-fledged N@Ner can be at each one. Each one can accommodate about a hundred gatherers comfortably. At the 2013 gathering in Montana, N@N had a consensus to have at least one worker on duty at their camp 24/7, meaning if a N@Ner wanted to go to sleep he needed to wake up someone else and make sure they were on duty rolling and handing out cigarettes to people walking by on the trail. They also made full rounds of the gathering every day-visiting every single kitchen and camp, from Front Gate to Fat Kids, and everywhere in between. Nic@Niters could be counted on to know their way around all the ninja trails in the woods, and also served as good Shanti Sena, acting as the “eyes and ears” of the gathering, able to go to every camp at any time of night with impunity and respect. Nic@Nite takes consensus seriously, and regularly has council. Tobacco math: After conversations with one long-time N@Ner, and subsequent questioning of others, most N@Ners estimate they can roll about a pound of tobacco per day into cigarettes to and out while at a gathering. At just over a half-gram of tobacco per cigarette, this equates to about 800 cigs per day, per N@Ners. This is enough to give 100 to 200 people their tobacco fix for a day. For larger regionals, more N@Ners than one may be needed to serve the entire population. At the May California 2013 regional, four ended up showing up, and serving 300 to 500 people. Since N@N is sort of a splinter concept, the entire camp does not need to show up for Nic@Nite to have a presence at a gathering;-even one person is sufficient to serve the function. Nic@Nite has three(ish) levels of participation. The first is “probie”. Like in fraternities and motorcycle clubs, a prospective member of the camp must go thru a probationaty period. A full-fledged N@Ner has to sponsor a legitimate probie, and that person is given a smaller, usually half-sized, busket. From that period on, the probie is expected to act as a N@Ner: never have an empty busket, roll cigarettes quickly, and generally put up with a lot of ribbing from other N@Ners and folks who get cigarettes from them. It is generally considered good form to good-naturedly harass probies along the trail. (“Hey probie! Gimme a goddamn cigarette! Faster! I could have smoked two by now already! I’m telling!”) The probate is expected to do Nic@Nite full time through all regionals attended throughout the year, and through one entire annual Gathering, at which point a Nic@Nite council will either consense to accept or reject the probie as a full Nic@Niter. If accepted, the probie is presented with a full-sized busket. Probies are often made to do annoying repetitive tasks like rock stacking, and the reaction sometimes expected is for the probie to finally say, “Fuck it, I’m not doing this anymore”. They are also tested on speed and aptitude regarding tobacco rolling. (I have heard of probies being ordered to roll cigarettes blindfolded or to roll cigarettes out of sand). Reasons to reject a probie have included bad attitude, having lost their busket or put it down and leaving it unattended too often, having been found to trade tobacco or expect something in return for tobacco, having a specific issue with a specific N@Ner, etc. The next level is Nic@Niter. Then they are expected to always have cigarettes ready, and to always have a busket around their neck. They are expected to be able to be loud and boisterous, and to be able to solicit tobacco donations as well as give out cigarettes. Each N@Ner’s busket is usually personalized over time with stickers and photos attached to the coffee can. The loss of a busket is a big deal, and sometimes grounds for dismissal from Nic@Nite status, or sometimes grounds for having another one regifted by a longer term N@Ner The final elite level is ‘mafia’. This is a small club, and mafia can pretty much do what they want in the camp, regardless of Nic@Nite traditions (though they generally choose not to abuse the power). Mafia can only be made through camp consensus, and very very few actually claim it. Nic@Nite prefers American Spirit rolling tobacco but they usually have a busket full of pipe tobacco, because it is cheaper in bulk and can be bought by the pound. Sometimes a N@Ner will have pipe tobacco in the busket, and a separate pouch for American Spirit donations, so the “good tobacco” isn’t mixed in with the rest. Occasionally “tailor-made” cigarettes are donated (factory rolled, from packs), and they are usually handed out and smoked quickly. Occasionally other people call themselves “...@Nite” and this makes Nic@Nite irritable. They consider it “their” label, and ask people to change their name if they are doing something independently. Occasionally regionals have happened where people have wanted to distribute tobacco but hadn’t been given a busket by Nic@Nite. Often, to avoid conflict or confusion, these folks will go by a different name, using a pouch of tobacco instead of a busket and going by “Nick@Now”, or “Shut Up and Smoke It”, or some other name. However, Nugz@Night was recognized and allied with Nic@Nite at the 2013 Montana gathering. That was a camp that provided the same service as Nic@Nite, but with marijuana. Nugz had specific self-imposed fairness rules. Nugz workers did not smoke any of the pot that was donated, and only allowed other people to smoke it. That encouraged donations because people eventually caught on to Nugz@Nite’s reputation and didn’t think they were being scammed. Adherence to this policy was one of the prerequisites for being a consensed Nugz@Niter. Fnc Hide

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Not a Fucking Kitchen

Not a Fucking Kitchen is a travelling kitchen that began in 2010. With a rotating cast of characters as crew, Not A Dave is the kitchen ogre. The crew mainly consists of folks many would call “dirty kids” and has included people who also plug in at Nic@Nite, Projex, GOAT Camp, and Front Gate. The crew changes frequently because the Not A Fucking Kitchen vehicles tend to be willing to pick up any travelling kids along the way that need a ride, no matter where they are or how full the vehicle.

The kitchen was born at the 2010 Shawnee regional gathering, but the seed began in June of 2010, when Not A Dave took a beat up ‘99 Honda, picked up five travelling rainbows in the Alleghany area of PA, and took them to the 2010 Annual Rainbow Gathering in the Alleghany forest. By the end of the gathering, their camp had lost one member and picked up two more, and the Honda rolled out as a team of seven to the Eastern Washington regional gathering in August of 2010. At that gathering, three rainbows got off the ride, and four more got on. They headed off to Illinois for the Shawnee Gathering in October, dropping one more passenger off along the way.

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The crew was the very first vehicle on site. Setting up a camp in the parking lot, they started cooking and feeding people. When asked if they were a kitchen, the response was “We’re not a fucking kitchen, but we’ll feed you until one gets here.” After a few days, other camps had lent or donated their cooking gear and food, the crew were serving hundreds, and no kitchens had set up yet. When other kitchens finally arrived, the crew of “not a fucking kitchen” had planned on donating the gifted kitchen gear to the crew that was working the Front Gate. However, several people appealed to the crew, asking if they would continue serving food if their equipment was moved into the woods and set up. Not A Dave and the kids said okay, and so about thirty dirty kids hauled the kitchen into the woods and set it up, and helped run it as well. The kitchen specialized in dirty kid recipes- chili dogs, cheeseburgers, deep-fried zuzus wrapped in bacon, fatty sugary and greasy goodness. One night they emptied out the entire supply tent to cook a feast for everyone. Finally there were no supplies left but some sugar and cooking oil and things of that nature. About that time, a pizza delivery worker arrived at the kitchen with a hundred pound donation of pizza dough. The kitchen was back in action - they made donuts with the sugar and oil, and when more food appeared they wrapped everything in pizza dough and fried it. On the last day of the Shawnee Gathering, a group of kitchen workers had a powwow and wanted to keep the kitchen going, so they convinced Not A Dave to promise to buy a bus and take it on the road. After asking around, Dave found a long-time rainbow in Illinois with just the bus he needed - it had already been on the rainbow trail before and used to carry tipis into the gatherings in the ‘80s. The asking price was $1500, but after getting better to know the crew of Not A Fucking Kitchen and their vision of feeding the homeless nonstop around the country, the asking price was generously reduced to $500. After the crew got rid of the Honda and manifested the rest of the money, the man with the bus decided to simply donate it for free after all. The bus, named Not A Fucking Bus, which some said was short for “Not A Fucking Bus (It’s A Fucking Spaceship)”, and its crew headed towards New Orleans by the end of October. In New Orleans, the bus served food daily on the streets during a Halloween celebration called Voodoo Fest. Because of the influx of craziness and strange people, it tended to be difficult for travellers to be able to get out of New Orleans after this celebration - all the gas stations were unfriendly to juggers, all the cops were wary of spangers, and there were too many kids trying to find the same few rides out of town. As a result, the Not a Fucking Bus ended up picking up a huge number of youth trying to leave. By the time it left, the bus contained 47 kids, 20 dogs, 3 cats and a ferret. On the way out of Louisiana, the bus had a transmission breakdown and managed to roll into a Target parking lot in Lake Charles, LA, before completely dying, on November 11, 2010. In a strange turn of events, the manager of the Target gave the crew his - and Corporate’s - permission to stay there until the bus could be fixed. The bus family -which had now dwindled to 33, and added 8 new puppies - immediately set up a campsite and full-fledged kitchen in the parking lot, and thus began one of the most unusual six-day gatherings ever seen in the rainbow tribes. Word got around town that a free food kitchen bus had broken down, and suddenly kind people and food and supply donations started rolling in. By the second day, the Target manager’s mother was bringing the kitchen fresh hot donuts each morning, another local couple was bringing them handmade lunch each day, and local charities and families were going into the Target and Walmart and coming out with things for the bus and kitchen - the kitchen fed each other and the community nonstop with the food coming in. On November 12, the local news also covered the story, leading to an even more massive outpouring of generosity from the city of Lake Charles, and a viral interest in the bus family on facebook. Some of the news generated can be viewed here, here, and here. By the sixth day, a stranger came up to the bus, had a look under the hood, and told Not A Dave, “You don’t need a new tranny. You need a new bus!” He drove some of the kitchen crew to his nearby property, waved his hand at a whole row of school busses in a field, and said to pick any one they liked. With a new bus, 4700 pairs of fresh socks, and dog food lining the floor three bags deep from the driver’s side to the back door, along with cases and cases of food and drink donations, the crew was ready to head out - but first, the Mayor of Lake Charles came by and presented the kitchen with an official commendation from the city for outstanding work with the homeless, and the key to the city. Triumphant, the crew headed toward Texas. In November 2010, the new bus, Not Another Fucking Bus, used its donated food and supplies to help feed at a small regional gathering in Texas, and then went to Austin, TX and fed on thanksgiving at the Church Under the Bridge Thanksgiving Feed. At the end of November, the bus and crew headed to Hippie Hill, in Tennessee, where the crew agreed to part ways. The bus was given to the family at Hippie Hill, and soon passed hands to the Shut Up and Eat It kitchen, which took the bus to regional gatherings until its eventual demise at the end of summer 2012. In May, 2011, a Southern Michigan Gathering resulted in a revival of the kitchen with a skeleton crew and no vehicle, and the crew reunited at the Annual Gathering in Washington and served at its first and only Annual Gathering to date as Not a Fucking Kitchen. Since the kitchen maintained that it was Not a Fucking Kitchen, it refused to take food from Main Supply, and refrained from serving Main Circle, preferring to simply cook on its own and feed whoever was hungry in the vicinity. At the end of this gathering, the kitchen took a leave of absence for over a year. In September of 2012, Not a Dave procured a new travel vehicle, an RV. He took it to Morrison Colorado for the Furthur shows at Red Rocks and he and his girlfriend Cindy and his dog Not A Dog began amassing a new crew. The RV slowly made its way to California where it plugged into the Black Sheep Solstice Gathering. Dave and his crew then took the RV to San Francisco to the Furthur New Years Eve shows. From the start of January onward, Dave and his crew plugged into the scouting and early focalizing movies for the All-California Spring Regional Rainbow Gathering 2013. At a Groundhog’s Day council in Mendocino, the RV crew met Travis Trip for the first time and helped him and his friends learn how to manage a kitchen. After that weekend’s council came to a consensus to gather in California in May, the RV headed out to Colorado again, to rendezvous with more family at the winter Furthur shows. From Colorado, the RV headed towards Oregon to borrow water pipes from the Northwest Tribes. With nearly no brakes left, the fully loaded RV returned south with water pipes sticking out of its rear end and landed at the Scout Rendezvous/Holding Camp near Fresno. After unloading the water pipes and strapping them onto the bus of some local family in Fresno, the RV did a town run in which its brakes finally gave out. The bus zoomed down the mountain road in freefall mode, and finally went off a cliff. 40 feet down, the RV landed on a road and drove up the side of a steep hill to come to a rest. After putting brake fluid and gas into the RV, Dave and the several shaken passengers were able to limp it back into the woods. After this incident, the RV was dubbed “The Flying Dutch Oven”. The RV was repaired, and when it returned to the woods for the regional gathering the crew set up Not a Fucking Kitchen in all its previous glory. By the end of the gathering, the crew had begun setting up the meals buffet style so hungry hippies would go down the line to eat - the kitchen was renamed “Not a Fucking Drive-Thru”. Travis Trip was also at this gathering, and he and his friends set up kitchen they called NEU (New Earth Union). On May 3rd, at NEU Kitchen, Not-a-Dave and Cindy were married. The ceremony was officiated by the Constable of Cascadia, Patrick Pinkerton, and the couple were surrounded by a small semicircle of their closest family and friends, and then a larger circle of everybody else. In an act of spontaneous enthusiasm, after the vows the crowd christened Cindy: “Not a Cindy”. At the end of the California gathering, Not a Fucking Kitchen combined gear and crew with NEU and the whole group caravaned to the annual gathering in Montana, where the combined crews formed the new kitchen Mudd N’ Butts, which served food from the first day of seed camp through July 6th. After the Montana Gathering, the Flying Dutch Oven had one more mishap which sent it off another cliff. It is currently out of commission but there are eventual plans to rebuild it. Fnc Hide

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O-ji’s Kitchen

Also sometimes called California Kitchen, O-ji’s kitchen appeared only at the 2008 Wyoming annual gathering. It was focalized by two brothers, one named Spring Ogre, because of his efforts toward guarding water source springs in the past, and the other Joji, a name reflecting his Japanese ancestry. Their names were combined to make “O-ji’s”. One was into things spiritual and natural, the other showed you with his speech how he got the nickname “Ogre”. “Gruff and groovy” was one way people described it. It was thought incongruous by many that two people with such different personalities could come together. This kitchen served vegan raw food in salads, like Joji’s previous kitchen that he named Siva Burn Lounge. Next to it was a small meadow for group yoga activities. The large meadow in front of this kitchen was the scene of several memorable confrontations.

One morning there appeared a huge boogie pit for drummers and dancers, apparently dug in the dark the previous night. The pit itself was 20 feet in diameter and about 3 feet deep, with an inner fire ring of large boulders, about 7 feet wide. The soil that had been dug up was piled into a ring around the pit, about 6 feet wide and from 2 to 3 feet high, 50 feet in outside diameter. The outside of the ring was lined with stacked boulders, and there were vertical posts of wood all around the outside 3 feet tall connected by horizontal rails that had been lashed on with burlap twine. There was an entryway on the side near the kitchen with steps of rock and piled sand.

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The next morning there was a meeting near the parking lot at Welcome Home between family and the resource rangers, and their leader made it clear that he didn’t like the huge boogie pit near O-ji’s and asked if we couldn’t fill it in partially, reducing the pit’s diameter. A discussion ensued about what number of feet would be a good maximum, and 10 was suggested but rejected for 12. He was able to accept it as a fait accompli, but he didn’t want it to start being a precedent for future ones, as a pit under construction near another kitchen was starting to show. It was finally agreed to by the family to talk to the kitchens near the pit and try to persuade them to fill it in partially, reducing the diameter to 12 feet. Spring Ogre was the first person they tried to talk to later that day inside the gathering, and he talked to them at length when asked. Neither he nor his kitchen wanted to take responsibility for building the pit. He said “a bunch of kids came in the night and made it”, and he didn’t want to take any part in dismantling it because “a hundred gutter punks will come around and take it out on me for doing it.” At another point he said that there were people who had come around in the morning to work on it, “but the presence of all these cops scared them away” Another brother from the yoga camp came over and started cutting apart some of the lashings on the outside rails, saying “I don’t want this thing here because it brings around all these cops.” Then another brother came around with a wheelbarrow with three shovels piled in it, and set it down and took one of the shovels like he was preparing to dig with it, and Ogre came over and stood in his way. This brother responded by attempting to hit him with it, not really succeeding in landing a blow, and Ogre grabbed it out of his hand and threw it to the ground, tipping over the wheelbarrow, while a few other people rushed up to restrain both of them. Ogre then started bellowing about how he was going to have him charged with assault, naming another brother who had to go to jail for what he did and saying this one should too. The brother was gently persuaded to leave by the people who had surrounded him, and the wheelbarrow was taken back to Info. On the 6th of July the pit was filled in. The rocks that had been around the back of the raised ring were thrown into the pit, then the 4th of July watermelon rinds were thrown over them before being covered with dirt. The inner fire ring was the last to be taken apart, and all the logs that had made the railings were burned up in it. Next year at the 2009 New Mexico annual the biggest boogie fires were lit on top of areas of flat rocks laid end to end, without digging any pit at all, and this has become the preferred design. BB Hide

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Paonia Peace Kitchen (PPK)

Paonia Peace Kitchen is a crew of people who carry on the traditions of Rainbow Crystal Kitchen, where they all work whenever the annual gathering is in a western state. One of its principal sources of energy has been Gary Stubbs’ good friend Marty Heartsong, who lives in Paonia, Colorado. Gary has long expressed his disapproval of sites in the east at Vision Councils, and he chooses not to attend gatherings there. This kitchen appeared at the annual gatherings in Arkansas and West Virginia, as well as Colorado, where Gary was forbidden by the Forest Service to enter any National Forest, and Wyoming, when Gary was heavily involved in the Welcome Home kitchen.

Unlike Rainbow Crystal, PPK has usually installed bliss rails. They also like to have fun with alternate meanings for their initials, such as Planetary Peace Kafé or Perpetual Pancake Kafé

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Popcorner

A good friend of mine, Annie, brings her own popper around the world with her when she travels. It is part of her everyday persona. She pops