Gentlemen's clubs may be slowly becoming a thing of the past, but there are still quite a few of them around. One of the more prominent gentlemen clubs in the world is the Bohemian Grove. The Bohemian Club's all-male membership includes some prominent artists and musicians as well as business leaders, government officials, and former U.S. presidents. The Bohemian Grove is a restricted 2,700-acre campground in Monte Rio, California, and in mid-July of every year, it hosts a two-week gathering of some of the most prominent men in the world. So, who has been a member of this exclusive club? We've made a video that reveals secret members that Bohemian Grove doesn't want to be revealed. Click to find out who.
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00:00The Bohemian Club, which meets in Bohemian Grove in California, is an exclusive gathering
00:06of mostly rich white men with plenty of power.
00:09The members of this not-so-secret cabal run around the California woods annually, mostly
00:14drinking and goofing off.
00:15Here's what really happens at Bohemian Grove.
00:18One of the hard and fast rules of Bohemian Grove is, weaving spiders come not here, which
00:23essentially means that no matter what, real-world deals aren't to be made at camp.
00:28There's one notable exception, and that happened in 1942.
00:32And even that's a sort of.
00:34The Bohemian Club owns Bohemian Grove, and the super-secret camping trip that happens
00:39every year only goes on for a handful of days.
00:42For the rest of the year, any members of the club can use the grounds for whatever they
00:46want, and according to Skeptoid, Bohemian Club member Dr. Edward Teller reserved the
00:51camp in September 1942.
00:53Teller would go on to be forever known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, and the ground
00:58work for the Manhattan Project was laid there.
01:01But here's the thing.
01:02Teller was the only member of the Bohemian Club there, so it can't really be said the
01:07club members were out there planning world domination.
01:10Were they?
01:11In 1989, Spy magazine writer Philip Weiss snuck into Bohemian Grove and described the
01:16annual lowbrow theatrical production known as the Low Jinks like this.
01:21The humor was not just lame, but circa-1950s college follies lame.
01:26Those who have gotten an inside peek into Bohemian Grove say the theatrical productions
01:30are a huge deal, and the one-time production Weiss was talking about was not only filled
01:35with the type of humor an 11-year-old might find hilarious, but it also cost a whopping
01:39$75,000.
01:42That's just one of the plays the members stage for each other.
01:45There's also a more serious production called the High Jinks, or more formally, the Grove
01:50Play.
01:51Over the years, they've staged performances of St. Patrick at Terra, recited hundreds
01:56of poems, tackled subjects like the triumph of Christianity over Druidic paganism, and
02:01Jack London even wrote an original piece for the High Jinks, which was never staged.
02:06Costs go up well over $100,000 per performance, and it must be nice to have that kind of cash.
02:12Every annual meeting in Bohemian Grove has since 1880 kicked off with a ceremony called
02:17the Cremation of Care.
02:18The ceremony starts with a parade of men dressed in red hooded robes, some carrying torches,
02:24and some carrying a wooden coffin with a wooden skeleton named Care.
02:28The procession winds through camp until they make their way to the side of a lake watched
02:33over by a massive cement owl, and as spectators gather, the men playing the priests extinguish
02:39the torches.
02:40They sing a song, and a priest tells members,
02:43"...shake off your sorrows with the city's dust and scattered to the winds the cares
02:47of life."
02:49The funeral pyre is lit, the dull cares of the world are gone, and attendees head back
02:54to camp to embark on a week of merrymaking.
02:57In 1986, the club attempted to argue, quote, that male gender is a bona fide occupational
03:03qualification, much like Hooters argued that being a female with a certain body type was
03:07a job requirement for being a server there.
03:10The Bohemian Club was less successful than the restaurant chain when it came to their
03:14lawsuit, and they were forced to open hiring practices to female employees.
03:19Of course, there's a but.
03:21Jobs for women were restricted to the dining circle and valet parking, which former Summertime
03:26employee Sophie Wiener said were the lowest-paying positions.
03:29She also added that there was a very literal line on the ground that marked the place where
03:33women needed to stop, and yes, this nonsense happened in the 21st century.
03:39The line must be drawn here!
03:42This far, no farther!"
03:43Vanity Fair got a copy of the official itinerary for 2008's encampment, and there was plenty
03:49of musical entertainment scheduled.
03:51It turns out that singing around the campfire isn't just for the Boy Scouts, and that year,
03:56Sam Cooke's music was featured in a 9-15 p.m. campfire circle.
04:01It's not all fun and games, though.
04:02The lakeside talks are always a major part of the retreat, and they're usually heavy
04:07stuff.
04:08They're scheduled for every day at 12.30 p.m., and over the years, they've been given
04:12by people like Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Wernher von Braun, Herbert Hoover,
04:17and Neil Armstrong.
04:18At the same time some of the most powerful men in the world are giving talks on some
04:22hugely heavy topics, there's something else going on, too.
04:26Constant drinking and what Vanity Fair calls, quote, profuse outdoor urination.
04:30They credit that to three things, gin fizzes being poured at 7 a.m., so many enlarged prostates,
04:37and such majestic natural urinals.
04:40The Bohemian Club owns 2,700 acres of redwood forests, and only a small amount of the property
04:46has been turned into a retreat.
04:48Vanity Fair and journalist Alex Shomatoff suggest there's been something else going
04:53on outside the carefully groomed camp for a long time, and that's illegal logging.
04:57Shomatoff was approached by former Bohemian Club member John C. Hooper, who claimed that
05:03over the course of a few years, he saw towering redwoods marked for logging, stumps replacing
05:08trees, and hiking trails turned into logging roads.
05:12Club members responded that they were logging responsibly, within the guidelines of their
05:16permits, and all the money made from selling the lumber was going back into forest management.
05:21But Hooper claims otherwise, and only a few years later, the club's 100-year logging permit
05:26had been revoked, forcing the club back to the drawing board to find more modest logging
05:31proposals.