Jonathan Pinkston, the “psychedelic” candidate for mayor of Sebastopol, leads the small but determined “Hub” coalition.
The Hub advisory committee consists of Jim Corbett, Bear Heart, Debra Guisti, Jonathan Greenberg, Kai Harris and Pinkston. Hub’s headquarters is at Soft Medicine Sanctuary, which Pinkston co-owns. Ahead of Sebastopol’s next city council contest, Pinkston has called his first vote. This vote will not take place at the ballot box, but at the ticket booth—as Hub organizes “The Bloom Festival” of “music, yoga, food, medicine, dance and wine”—a three day “takeover” of Sebastopol, beginning Oct 24.
The Acid Test
This event will be a flashingly brief energetic image of the vision Hub has for Sebastopol, and a strong step forward in realizing that vision—demonstrating city-wide leadership, broadening their coalition and disseminating the Hub platform.
From city and county campaigns and post, Hub intends a hugely ambitious reform package including new green space for Sebastopol, new below-market housing, resistance to several hugely unpopular “wine county” hotels proposed by developers, attracting young hippie entrepreneurs to the fast aging town and decriminalizing (taxing and regulating) psychedelic medicine in a first-of-its-kind scheme to make Sebastopol a regional hub for psychedelic healing. (See “Jonathan Pinkston : The Psychedelic Candidate” for free at bohemian.com.)
It’s an invigorating vision for dear old Sebastopol. Progressive, but in agreement with the spirit of ’76 and ’67. Bloom fest will be a first step—that is, if Hub lands that big step. Like all of Hub’s plans, Bloom is hugely ambitious on the page and complicated in the implementation. And there are early signs that building their political coalition may bring some of their intended reforms into real world conflict.
Sebastopol Blooming
Per their website, pinned to their masthead, is a statement of intent—for Hub inasmuch for Bloom. “Sebastopol Bloom is a vibrant celebration of food, movement, music and community. Join us for an unforgettable weekend that will show you what the world can really be like, when we deeply connect to place and each other.”
Lovely. And with that moral compass the website also provides a festival map.
It’ll make one whistle. In a diagonal across Sebastopol (a crossroads village), Bloom fest will incorporate all of the important and large format venues in town—the Sebastopol Community Center, The Barlow, the town square, Soft Medicine, SebArts and Ives Park.
Bloom is a complete town take-over. And at its geographic and true heart—a center of city tensions—an all new venue will be debuted, Sebastopol’s “temporary use” park. It is the large vacant lot, opposite the town square, where Piazza Hospitality of Healdsburg still intends to build its tourist-fetching $500 a night hotel.
Dotted across the festival map are many fun extras, such as an upcycled bizarro bike
race; a bath house; several art openings; all day yoga, dance and Hindu chanting; a sprawling makers’ fair; a biohacking fair; and a visionary lecture series.
Not pictured on the map, in a wide littoral arc around the central venues, hotels, motels, bed-and-breakfests, Airbnbs, camps and glamps will be eagerly anticipating sell-out business. For a great many tourists from within the North Bay and abroad will be needed to fill venues that normally compete.
As for the music—this is principally a music festival—Hub has booked big names
including Polish Ambassador, Mamuse, Dogon Lights, Whiskerman, Porangui and Alya Nero. They will be backed and supported by an undercard packed with local heroes like DJ Dragon Fly, Black Sheep Brass Band and King Dream (visit sebastopolbloom.com for a longer list and three-day schedule).
If these names aren’t familiar, the stages are informally named “the Guayaki stage,” “the beer stage,” “the wine stage” and “the cacao stage”—four zones which are not, coincidentally, the principle voting blocks of Sebastopol. This festival is designed to please everyone (except, perhaps the NIMBY Alka-Seltzer crowd).
But will it? As I write, three weeks out, my spies at the ground level of this vast organizational push suggest perhaps more than their fair share of year one disorganization. But I think they will pull it off.
The cleverness of the Bloom Festival design is that it is largely dependent on autonomously operating venues and organizations (such as the Sebastopol Community Center team or Soft Medicine) packaging and co-branding them as Bloom. And, with a rope drawn around the whole of Sebastopol, every independent spa, wine bar, movie theater, farmers market, drum circle, cafe, pizza parlor and ice cream shop in that charming town can be considered a “festival amenity.”
The Art of the Deal
On the Bloom website, just below that lovely statement about what the festival
(and Sebastopol) could be, is a second statement. It is a second statement of intent, and it fits the festival into Hub’s policy objectives for leading Sebastopol into that more beautiful world:
“All net proceeds of the Sebastopol Bloom Festival will go to design and support downtown green spaces. One of these projects we are working on: visual and structural improvements and upkeep of a temporary community park/event space at the future site of Hotel Sebastopol (currently set as a 2 year temp use, pending funding and full city approval)… This 5X increase to the size of the usable downtown square area will help beautify Sebastopol. We are very lucky to be working with Piazza Hospitality on this temporary green space that will connect Main Street to the Barlow shopping district, the same way the eventual Hotel Sebastopol project aims to do.”
When I read this, I was somewhat taken aback. My understanding had been that the aim of Bloom, as an annual event and fundraiser, was to progressively buy out the land from under the unfunded and resisted Piazza hotel deal. Arranged this way, the festival would have been a masterstroke, realizing two (and three and four) of Hub’s policy objectives (green space and no bougie hotels) even before the city council election (and the power needed to complete their agenda).
The festival date is even set for one week before Piazza’s building permits are set to expire. At least, that had been my understanding when I spoke to Pinkston in the spring and agreed to cover the festival. It could be that I misread the charismatic and somewhat mesmeric Pinkston those months ago. But then again, I openly record our conversations. Clearly something has shifted.
As recently as August, in a story carried by the Press Democrat, Piazza remained adamant. Despite setbacks and unfavorable conditions, they will build their Healdsburg-style hotel in the heart of Sebastopol. Perhaps Pinkston and Hub have changed their minds about gentrifying downtown hotels over the summer?
I only speculate, but perhaps Hub is banking on worsening economic conditions and
hardening opposition to the hotel—as Sebastapudilians get used to their vastly enlarged town square. With agonizing and exquisite ambiguity, the improvements the fest is now funding (grading, rebuilt sidewalks, increased parking at the lot) will suit both park and hotel construction. Time will tell what wins out.
If two of Hub’s aims for Bloom are (maybe) deflected from their ends, two others remain trained on their mark—provided the event is a big hit. These being the aim unifying the town and building their coalition with a three-day celebration of Sebastopol’s best. And also the aim of raising Sebastopol’s profile nationally for a specific demographic—the young crunch money that tour “transformative” festivals each summer.
Attracting business investors and home buyers of this demographic had been the stated
objective of Hub’s struggling “Co-Create”—an “intentional” business incubator.
Underscoring that point, Pinkston and Hub have successfully attracted big names Bella
Silberfein and Mark Abadi, lead organizers of the Bhakti Festival, to take over Ives Park
during Bloom with a lush three-day experience of yoga and Kirtan (call-and-response chanting of sacred Hindu texts). Bhakti fest has helped establish Joshua Tree (near the town of Coachella) as a year-round home and investment location for affluent, post-burner, Millennial hippies.
Effectively, Hub is putting a proven magnet inside its unproven magnet. Very clever. Although, in making Sebastopol a proven destination for affluent tourists, Hub might be making it easier for Piazza to secure the $40 million needed to break ground.
The Vote Before the Vote
Assuredly, the Bloom Festival weekend will be a party to remember. And it will be a party with a purpose—a party that continues as a political party. I love the deal, and I love the bash—I’m not sure what excites me more about this.
If success blooms for Sebastopol Bloom, Hub will move forward into the polls and the psychedelic future with an unbeatable momentum. If Bloom fails, Hub may falter and turn inward for a time. Always one to hedge his bets, Pinkston has just had a new baby girl.
Learn more:The first annual Bloom Festival will be held Oct. 24-26 at various Sebastopol venues. It is both free and ticketed. Follow the link for tickets and more: linktr.ee/bloomfestLINKS.
Thanks for this energetic, ageist and out of touch article about the city of Sebastopo Cincinnatus!
There are plenty of hippies of all ages here, not just the young ones. A lot of the original hippies live within city limits or nearby and there are various organizations such as ‘Sebastopol Tomorrow’ that have similar vision to the soft medicine trust fund crew. They have driven the city to the brink of bankruptcy.
Council meetings are every other week but few people ever attend except for single issue protests against chicken farmers, the plight of the Palestinians, misunderstanding changes in recycling services etc, then most people leave while all the boring important local stuff on the agenda is thrashed out.
I don’t think many local hippies will be able to afford the bloom festival – especially the older ones living in low income high density housing – but some of the local area tech bro yoga types will probably splash out.
All the cannabis entrepreneurs are long gone after the business was legalized and the glut plus bureaucracy killed profit margins, that crowd six or seven years ago would have been a good fit for Bloom.
We live in interesting times…