Community Guide 2017
The Red House, Forest Knolls by Jasper Starfire Thelin My dad Ron Thelin, with his brother Jay (both Eagle Scouts who served in the Army), opened The Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street in San Francisco in 1966, and were suddenly in the heart of the national counterculture hurri- cane. He and my mom, Marsha, were already in their mid- twenties, and already parents (Kira was a toddler), so they were de facto “elders” in the blooming Haight-Ashbury, where every day fifteen year olds were arriving on buses from across the country. Involved with feeding and helping people with the Diggers, publishing the Oracle newspaper, the Human Be-In and the Summer of Love, the urban cra- ziness became too much. Instead of trademarking the name “Psychedelic Shop” (and ensuring his offspring residual wealth, surely), they gave away everything in the store as part of the “Death of Hippie” ceremony, and moved to the Red House in Forest Knolls. (Watch for Marsha Thelin’s insights about those heady years in her forthcoming mem- oir Mrs. Hippie [say it out loud]). Needless to say, there was plenty of high-minded party- ing, back-to-land spirituality and bioregional brainstorming among the commune of people that also moved there. I was born in front of the living room fireplace on a stormy night with dozens of people watching, the “midwife” having the qualification that she’d delivered her own child in a car a few years earlier. But, for the Community Guide , in this time of divided national echo-chamber
would sit at the bar inside the service station (where the Farm Stand is now) and drink a beer with Don. This type of direct community engagement (instead of staying siloed) led to creating a community garden on the strip of land between Sir Francis Drake Blvd. and Castro Street in Forest Knolls, which led to workdays to turn the downtown dump area into a children’s playground, which led to Lagunitas School’s upper campus play struc- ture rebuilding days, and soon enough a softball team was spawned for more social crosspollination: “The Valley Eagles.” Bolinas joined the league, too. Their team name: “The Bolinas Eaglefuckers.”
Painting of the Red House done in 2011 by MOT
Such hearty rough and tumble collaboration continued. The “Gratis Builders” came together, a green teeshirt with a beer can logo as their unifying principle, and built a house of innovative wheelchair-friendly design for Aneice Tay- lor in Woodacre. (See story on page 137.) When the Red House needed major home improvement (a not-infrequent occurrence), my parents organized The Siege of the Red House. Structuring the workers with military nomencla- ture, Dad was the general, with lieutenants shoring up excavation, carpentry and masonry brigades, and captains and sergeants deployed across the property (I was a private, helping choose stones with a good flat side for a retaining wall). Scores of family members and friends camped out at the house, cooking, partying and planning in the evenings. These connections are extant today, many now codified and fully accessible through the SGVCC, instead of only for those that happen to get wind of events and opportuni- ties. The best raffle prize every time is winning a day’s labor from half a dozen people to come work in one’s yard. My wife Mia won the Garden Goddesses a few years back. It was fantastic! I’m so proud to be a native son, and to be raising my own kids born here in the Valley with a partner who grew up here, too. God bless us, every one.
politics, I’d rather shine a light on the way the arriving counterculturalists interfaced with the locals: by work- ing side by side on practical things. Many locals were of a conservative persuasion, like flat- top-coiffed Don Yerion who owned the Forest Knolls gas station, and weren’t keen on the idea of all these long-haired men without tradi- tional jobs, and their rainbow-clad wives and naked children, arriving en masse into the SGV. So my dad
Ron Thelin with Marsha, Kira and Jasper at home in Forest Knolls, from a postcard urging voters to write Ron in as a Board of Supervisors candidate for the 1972 campaign.
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SGVCC
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