08.27.08

Image as Metaphor: It’s probably best that we don’t have Scary Guy’s photo.

I have no interest in associating myself with those who think of themselves as the so-called norm,” says Peter Tscherneff, absently examining a slightly withered cactus he’s been working to keep alive. “Because they, the ‘normal’ people, are in so many ways the ones who are actually out of touch with their true selves. Whenever I point this out, it’s those people who get upset. The so-called normal people don’t like me all that much.”

That, as they say, is an understatement.

Peter Alexander Tscherneff is arguably one of the most unpopular people in the North Bay–though most of the people who feel that way don’t even know his name. His face, however, is enough to start phones ringing and security guards scrambling whenever Tscherneff appears at the door or onstage, as happened last May at SRJC’s Day Under the Oaks when he strode onto the little outdoor stage to deliver one of his infamous speeches and was arrested.

To most folks–especially those who’ve encountered Tscherneff at city council meetings, farmers markets, concerts, outdoor festivals, graduations, protests and random public forums–he is known as “the Interrupter.” Others, those who’ve taken the time to read his flyers filled with politically charged, rhyming poetry and festooned with photos and the ever-present reproductions of “Peanuts” characters, or have gone so far as to actually engage him in one-on-one conversation, know him to be charming, smart, articulate, funny–even somewhat likable. To those who’ve tried to sort out his dense, convoluted tirades and broadsides, he is the Vegan Guy, the General Strike Guy, the Free Leonard Peltier Guy, the Antiwar Guy, the Government Mind-Control Guy.

And to those who’ve listened to or read his dense, disturbing, multipage manifestos on child abduction and Satanism–in which Tscherneff claims to be an escapee from a military brainwashing experiment that once, under the direction of Joseph Mengele in disguise as an East Bay psychiatrist, programmed him to kidnap children and deliver them to the Bohemian Grove for ritual sacrifice at the hands of people like George Bush Sr.–he’s the Scary Guy.

Ask Tscherneff to describe himself, and he has his own list of descriptive nicknames: Sonoma County’s Manure-Disturbing Poet Provocateur, Tree Hugging Animal “Rites” Activist and sometimes merely Cactus Pete, the latter referring to his 10-years of growing cactuses on the small plot of land in Northern Petaluma where he has agreed to be interviewed this morning.

“It’d be cool just to stay here taking care of my plants, maybe write three or four hours a day,” says Tscherneff, who describes his residence status as “basically homeless.” Given the time, he says he’d love to write a series of children’s books called The Adventures of Pedro the Purple Turtle. But despite the hopes and dreams of those in the community who wish Tscherneff would stay on his cactus patch tending his yuccas, Cactus Pete isn’t planning to take a break anytime soon. “I have too much work to do,” he says.

That “work” frequently lands him in jail. He’s still wending his way through the courts following the May incident at the JC and another in Berkeley where he was arrested during a UC tree sitters’ rally. One has to wonder, with so much public dislike and legal trouble resulting from such actions, why does the guy keep doing it? Tscherneff has a complex, and characteristically rambling, explanation.

 “Why do I do what I do?” he asks. “(A) Because it is given to me to do it; (b) because no one else is doing it; and (c) I take very seriously the lessons of Gandhi and King. I take very seriously the true walk of the radical carpenter Jeshua, who was a vegetarian, by the way. I take very seriously the pain I sense and feel all around us. I would say that I’ve been given this task by the creator, and I am spiritually instructed to do as I do, and that in accordance to a lot of teachings from a lot of religions people are also instructed to do certain things, and I find most people disregard these things or are confused.

“When the simplest thing the Carpenter talked about was our involvement in mammon or the choice between serving mammon or serving the living God. And mammon is greed, and that’s the god this nation has been under. And the animal-flesh industry is based on greed, torture and murder, pure and simple.”

Asked, finally, if he himself thinks he’s crazy, Tscherneff laughs.

“Look around at the world,” he says. “Look at the people going to church as they pass by the homeless, obediently paying taxes to allow George to maintain his own insanity, judging the veterans, people who put their lives on the line and are now on the streets, spiritually broken. To me, that’s crazy.

“As for myself,” he says, “Let’s just say I prefer the term ‘spiritually enhanced.'”

08.27.08

Ritual: This 1906 image gives a whiff of creep.

 A looming, 40-foot-high statue of an owl. Men prancing naked in the woods. Bonfires. Pagan rituals. Child sacrifice. Secret underground caverns. Sex slaves. Satan’s bid to rule the world, with national and international leaders as his leering, eager pawns.

Sound like the convoluted plot devices of a bad horror movie? Nope, just a few of the deliciously outrageous rumors swirling around San Francisco’s high-powered Bohemian Club and its Bohemian Grove, 2,700 acres of forested beauty nestled along the Russian River near Monte Rio.

The Grove is home to the club’s annual summertime encampment of rich and influential men who gather each July to drink and act goofy in the woods with likeminded males. Presidents, former presidents and future presidents mingle with multinational CEOs and CFOs; military contractors get cozily drunk with admirals and generals; corporate executives share dirty jokes with government pooh-bahs and Supreme Court justices–and they all come together for the afternoon Lakeside Talks about such party-hearty themes as nuclear power and global economics.

It’s an odd blend of summer camp and cigar-filled back room. The Bohemian Club insists on complete privacy, which creates an air of mystery that adds spice to the juicy rumors. The club says the annual event is simply high-stress movers and shakers relaxing together with corny rituals and silly skits–just guys having fun.

But conspiracy theorists have a field day with the tidbits that leak out: the annual Cremation of Care ceremony at the foot of the 40-foot owl; comic skits performed by men in drag; drunken campers peeing copiously at the base of 1,000-year-old redwood trees; and claims that prostitutes do brisk business just outside the camp boundaries. From such details rise charges of debauchery, collusion with evil, and Satanism.

Some less sensational critics warn that these outrageous accusations deflect attention from genuine concerns about how the club is managing its property and how connections crafted during the boozy goings-on shape this nation’s future.

A fourth-generation Bohemian Club member, John Hooper resigned from the club in 2004 in opposition to plans to cut down more than a million board-feet of timber on the property each year. As explained before in these pages (July 4, 2007), the Bohemian Club is asking the state to allow it to log more than a million board-feet of timber on its property in perpetuity by filing only routine paperwork.

Hooper says the Grove contains the largest stretch of old-growth redwoods left on the lower Russian River, twice the amount of ancient trees located just upstream in the Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve.

“It’s ecologically a very important area along the river,” Hooper says.

While many focus on what happens inside the Grove, it’s important to understand the impacts on the outside world, asserts Mary Moore, who cofounded the Bohemian Grove Action Network and organized protests outside the Grove from 1980 to 2006.

The Bohemian encampments, Moore asserts, bring together the cream of this nation’s military, government, corporate and financial circles. In the Lakeside Talks, they’re shaping the future of this country. “It’s like your ultimate back room on steroids. It’s ruling-class bonding, where they cut deals.”

Moore doesn’t care if the campers dress in drag or if hookers are available. “What I care about is the Lakeside Talks and what they’re doing to the outside world as opposed to all this alleged stuff about their cavorting.”

A quick Google of “Bohemian Grove” returns a potpourri of facts and conjectures.

Fact: the Bohemian Club is a private, all-male club founded in 1872. It’s evolved into an association of rich and powerful men. They admit few outsiders into their camp, only carefully selected guests.

Highly questionable conjecture: Alex Jones, who created the film Dark Secrets: Inside the Bohemian Grove and its sequel The Order of Death, calls the Grove campers “the most powerful cabal on the planet.” Another website proclaims, “Your presidents perform annual child sacrifice to Molech Lucifer Satan at Jewish Bohemian Grove homosexual nudist compound in Monte Rio.”

These charges are scandalous, delightfully scary–and entirely irrelevant, Moore says.

“All you have to do is read those Lakeside Talks and you get scared enough,” she says. “Why do we need to invent stuff?”

 To learn more about proposed Grove logging, go to [ http:-/www.savebohemiangrove.org- ]www.savebohemiangrove.org.