Bohemian Grove is a campground located in Sonoma County, California. Its main use is for the once a year meeting of members of the San Francisco men's club known as the Bohemian Club. However, this yearly event attracts many more international visitors then ever attend the monthly San Francisco meetings. Its visitors includes several members of prominent business leaders and government officials (notably several U.S. presidents). The campout lasts two weeks and currently costs $5000.00.
From the founding of the club, Bohemia's symbol is an owl. The owl symbolizes the wisdom of life and companionship that allows people to survive struggles with the cares of the world. A forty-foot concrete owl stands at the head of the lake in the Grove and serves since 1929 as the site of the yearly Cremation of Care Ceremony. In this ceremony, an effigy of "dull care" is burned, and according to a club member the ceremony is meant "to set aside the nagging and often unworthy preoccupations which inhibit openness and warm sympathy for human affairs generally and for works of artistic and moral creativity in particular". The ritualism and nature of the ceremony is the source of a number of critical allegations about the club.
Some past attendees have reportedly included Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Alan Greenspan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, William Jefferson Clinton, Robert Novak, as well as other political and business leaders. Many of the notable participants have been politically conservative, causing some to speculate that the club is actually being used as a meeting place to secretly determine important public policies.
The creators of Spinal Tap have made a movie with the same parody concept about Bohemian Grove, called A Teddy Bear's Picnic.
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