Finding Bay Area waterfalls and undisturbed mushroom rings, a self-guided tour of SF libraries, and a cavalcade of custards in San Jose. Plus, a new all-ages club in Richmond, the best view via SF’s public-private open spaces, and how artist Morisot was more than Manet’s muse.

A map for wandering

The San Francisco Public Library’s Explorer Map turns the city into a low-stakes scavenger hunt: visit all 27 branches, collect a sticker at each, and see how far curiosity will take you. Library patron Matt Spitz, who visited all 27 locations, described how the map makes you notice distance differently — some branches fit easily into a day, while others require intention and planning.

SFPL’s website includes staff recommendations for nearby places to stop while visiting each branch, and the library is offering a chance to win a grand prize for those who complete the quest. — SFPL, Matt Spitz

Above the workday

San Francisco’s privately owned public open spaces are easy to miss, tucked inside office buildings and marked by small signs, but they’re open to anyone who knows where to look. One spot that’s pretty easy to access is One Kearny, where an elevator ride leads to a compact rooftop terrace on the 11th floor.

The main draw at One Kearny is its spectacular view — Market Street unfolding below, rooftops stacked into the distance. The entrance is at 23 Geary Street, and visitors just need to let security know they’re heading to the public rooftop; there’s also a restroom key available at the front desk. — AllieEdition, SF Privately Owned Public Open Spaces

In close company

The Legion of Honor’s Manet & Morisot exhibition looks at the long artistic relationship between Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, pairing their paintings to show how closely their work developed over time. Moving chronologically, the show highlights shared subjects, recurring figures, and moments where one artist clearly responds to the other.

Curators also acknowledge the ambiguity of their personal connection without trying to resolve it, focusing instead on what can be seen on the canvas. The exhibition brings together loans from several museums and is now on view at the Legion of Honor. — KGO

Off the beaten block

A small all-ages venue called The Planetarium opened Thursday in the East Bay city of Richmond, with room for about 120 people and a calendar already filling up with lesser-known band names. Run by longtime DIY scene organizers, the space is geared toward local and touring acts still finding their footing, alongside performance art, comedy, film screenings, and monthly variety shows.

The founders describe it as a place where younger audiences can show up without alcohol shaping the room, and where stranger ideas are welcome on the bill. The Planetarium is located at 5327 Jacuzzi Street, with its January shows now underway. — Richmondside

Lunches made with care

Since 2017, Joy D’Ovidio has been assembling lunches for unhoused San Franciscans with the same care she once brought to specialty foods — soft brioche buns, ripe fruit, and ingredients chosen to be nourishing and easy to eat. What began the day after the 2016 election as a small act of resolve became A Meal with Dignity, a volunteer-run nonprofit operating out of her home.

The meals are intentionally restaurant-quality, funded by donations, and designed around the realities of life on the street, from dental health to portability. Volunteers distribute 30 to 150 lunches a month to people living outdoors and in RVs, primarily in the South of Market district. — KPIX

Small custards, long lines

A&M Patisserie is a San Jose pop-up turning the familiar egg tart into a rotating cast of flavors, from yuzu and pistachio to honey garlic and corn cheese. Started during lockdown by Alice Ngo and Minh Pham, the operation has grown into a fixture at makers’ markets, where long lines form around a banner listing 18 variations at a time.

The tarts sit between Portuguese pastel de nata, Macau-style egg tarts, and Cantonese dan tat — deeply flaky crusts, lighter custard, less sweetness — shaped by Pham’s bakery training and the flavors the pair grew up with. The menu changes as they test new ideas, with savory versions and a salted egg yolk tart planned around Lunar New Year, and regular appearances at SJMade fairs and other South Bay pop-ups. — KQED

Rings after rain

On Christmas morning, content creator Divya came across a rare sight on a forest hike: a full fairy ring of fly agaric mushrooms, glowing red against the wet ground. Divya explains that fairy rings are very delicate and take years to form, relying on consistent soil, undisturbed space, and just the right amount of rain to bloom at once.

Divya recommends places like Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz, Claremont Canyon in Berkeley, and the redwoods of Portola Valley near La Honda for potential sightings. — WeekendWanderersInc

Waterfall season

After the record-breaking King’s Tide and heavy rains, Bay Area waterfalls are sure to be at their most spectacular. Cataract Falls via Rock Spring on Mount Tamalpais offers a 6.5-mile loop with about 1,500 feet of elevation change, winding through shaded forest and past the Laurel Dell picnic area.

The trail passes multiple cascades and wooden bridges, making for plenty of scenic stops along the way. — OutdoorWiseLiving

Top image: The Planetarium/Google Reviews

Previously: Field Notes: Tamales, New LGBTQ Club in Oakland, and 21 Artists From ‘90s Mission School

• Meanwhile, the MAGA folks are trolling California Governor Gavin Newsom over how he was sitting during the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit Wednesday, to which his office responded with a preposterously Photoshopped yoga-like pose on social media. [Daily Beast, Buzzfeed]

• In addition to removing Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the list of free days at US National Parks, President Trump added his birthday, as well as Flag Day. [CBS News]
• Downtown SF’s annual Let's Glow holiday light event kicked off Friday night featuring stunning displays at eight locations. [NBC Bay Area]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

This week: Arab Film Festival in Oakland, street cuts in the Tenderloin, and mutual aid in Berkeley. Plus, Visitacion Valley library, musician Roddy Bottum’s memoir, a fanciful redwood tree net structure, and an artist's playful take on local landmarks.

The unbordered reel

The Arab Film Festival is back for its 29th year, holding steady after a year of budget stress and community rescue. What started as a scramble for support turned into a surprisingly full program, with films arriving from across the Arab world. In theaters from San Jose to Oakland, the lineup includes five Oscar submissions, three of them Palestinian.

Festival organizers frame the work as a gesture toward visibility and belonging, inviting audiences to meet the region’s filmmakers on their own terms. Screenings continue in Oakland through the weekend. — KPIX

Care and exchange

Saturday, November 22, neighbors and friends will gather for a mutual aid swap in Berkeley, bringing food, clothing, masks, rapid tests, and small works of art to share. Each person can take what they need and leave what they can, folding generosity into the afternoon.

Organizers are still accepting donations and volunteers to help run the swap. Masks are required, and the event will run rain or shine from 1–5 p.m., just a short walk from North Berkeley BART. — Rosemary McDonnell-Horita

Street cuts

Desmond Cannady sets up a chair on Leavenworth Street and cuts hair on the Tenderloin sidewalks. At 24, he learned barbering as a kid in Stockton and San Jose, and now balances school, a Berkeley shop, and these street sessions.

Beyond trims and fades, he talks with clients, offering advice and a listening ear. Twice a month, he gives free haircuts, making space for connection in a neighborhood that often feels overlooked. — Mission Local

Voice and reckoning

Roddy Bottum, whose musical journey spans Faith No More, Imperial Teen, and Man on Man, found his creative home in San Francisco, and now lays his life bare in The Royal We. The memoir traces early brushes with alcohol, years of drug use, and a queer awakening, all told with humor and candor.

Bottum reflects on family, loss, and the friends and icons who shaped him — Robert Plant, Kurt Cobain, and Courtney Love among them. Bottum will be at City Lights Bookstore on November 20 in conversation with Brontez Purnell. — Bay Area Reporter

Local icons

Menlo Park artist Courtney Beyer turns Bay Area landmarks into little bursts of delight. Her cards and stickers capture the Flintstone House, Stanford Dish, and even Karl the Fog with humor and heart.

Beyer’s work, now in about 60 stores nationwide — including locally — mixes charm with craft, while her eco-conscious approach adds an extra layer of care to every design. — The Mountain View Voice

Quiet corners

Local content creator Taylor recently shared her visit to the Visitacion Valley library, noting its unexpectedly cozy vibe despite being a newer building. When she visited on a Saturday, the branch was bustling with neighbors, families, and readers making themselves at home among the shelves.

Taylor has been visiting all of San Francisco Library’s branches and just has a few left to check out. — TaylesOfTheCity

Transit canopies

BART’s new canopies along Market Street give weary travelers a clearer sense of place amid the downtown rush. Their glass frames hold LEDs, cameras, and arrival screens, making the descent underground feel less like a plunge into darkness.

The structures are meant to shield the rebuilt escalators and cut back on the grime that’s long collected at the surface. They also double as small galleries, designed with imagery that reflects the different communities along the corridor. — SF Bay Area Rapid Transit

Woven heights

Just outside San Francisco, Kane and Fernando of the TreeNet Collective spent six weeks building colorful nets in the redwoods, blending play with art. The floating structures stretch across branches like sculptural treehouses, brought to life with the help of a small team of collaborators.

Visitors can climb, explore, and experience the forest from a new perspective. — Tree Net Collective

Correction: A previous version of this post included outdated information about the Mushroom Train, which occurred earlier this month. We apologize for the error.

Image: Courtney Beyer Design

Previously:Field Notes: Trans Youth Talk, Newt Migrations, Seasoning the Streets, and Elks Return to Tule River

A former pilot for Alaska Airlines who was flying on a jumpseat home to the Bay Area from a trip to Washington, who nearly brought down the plane he was flying in due to a hallucination, is taking plea deals in both state and federal court.

Joseph Emerson of Pleasant Hill faced change-of-plea hearings in both state and federal courts in Oregon Friday, stemming from his October 2023 case in which he endangered passengers and crew aboard an Alaska Airlines flight, when he was off-duty as a pilot but flying in the cockpit jumpseat.

Emerson originally pleaded not guilty to charges that included 83 counts of reckless endangerment — 83 counts of attempted murder, for each of the other people on the plane, were dropped. And his state and federal trials in Portland, where the Alaska plane made an emergency landing, have been pending since last year.

As KTVU reports, via Emerson's attorney, he was changing his plea today to guilty to a federal charge of interfering with a flight crew, and no contest to the state charges.

As Emerson has described in interviews, he had been on a camping trip in Washington's Methow Valley with friends, who were together memorializing the death of Emerson's best friend, Scott Pinney, a fellow pilot who had died in 2018. The group had partaken of shrooms, or psilocybin mushrooms, something that Emerson had never done before, and he proceeded to have an adverse reaction that lasted for two days after he'd taken them.

Medical experts believed he suffered from hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which can affect first-time users of hallucinogens. The condition makes it difficult to separate perception from reality.

He said he had not slept for 40 hours and still did not feel right when a friend drove him to the airport in Everett, Washington, but he was at that point desperate to get back home to the Bay Area to his wife and children.

On the plane, he entered some sort of panicked and hallucinogenic state. "There was a feeling of being trapped, like, 'Am I trapped in this airplane and now I'll never go home?'" Emerson says. While sitting in the cockpit, he believed he was dreaming. He says he kept thinking "this isn't real, I'm not actually going home ... until I became completely convinced that none of this was real."

Wanting to end the frightened dream he was in, Emerson reached up for two red handles above him which he knew to be fire-suppression handles that cut gas to the engines — a move that could have brought down the airplane. The two pilots were able to wrestle him away from doing this, and sent him to sit in the back of the plane, where he proceeded to drink hot coffee directly from a pot — another attempt to wake up — and then he reached for a handle on one of the cabin doors.

He says that a flight attendant grabbing him jolted him back to reality, and he then asked to be handcuffed, which the flight attendent did.

In jail and finally sobering up, Emerson said he was horrified and confused by what had happened. His wife described him as a stable family man for whom this was completely out of character. But Emerson later discussed in interviews how he had suffered from depression, and he self-medicated with alcohol, and the case brought up the issue of pilots and mental health — with many pilots who fear ever coming forward with mental health struggles, due to the threat of losing their licenses.

Emerson was freed on bond in December 2023, and has been awaiting trial.

Emerson's federal sentencing is still pending. But as CBS News reports, the conditions of state plea are that he will serve five years of probation, 664 hours of community service — eight hours for each person he endangered — and pay $60,569 in restitution, primarily to Alaska Airlines.

Previously: Alaska Airlines Pilot Who Nearly Downed Plane Goes on 'Good Morning America' as He Awaits Trial

A “mushroom church” called the Rising Phoenix Entheogenic Temple just opened its second San Francisco location, some six months after a much larger mushroom church left town claiming they were the victims of “religious discrimination.”

It was a big deal in the local media in December 2024 when an Oakland-based "mushroom church” called Zide Door announced they were closing their only SF location, citing “religious discrimination” by the SF Planning Department. (The department argued that their building wasn’t up to code and needed $200,000 worth of repairs.)  But it was around that same time that another mushroom church popped up in the Lower Haight, in the form of Rising Phoenix Entheogenic Temple on Haight Street near Fillmore Street.

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Now those high holy rollers have opened a second SF mushroom church. According to their website and a Wednesday morning press release, Rising Phoenix Entheogenic Temple has opened a second SF location on Polk Street near Vallejo Street.

“In an effort to expand the Temple's congregational reach, Rising Phoenix has opened a 2nd Temple location in the historic Russian Hill neighborhood on Vallejo Street,” the church said in the press release. “With over 35 strains of magic mushrooms available at the Temple, Rising Phoenix offers a diverse range of strains that cover a spectrum of inward and outward settings, body and mind feelings, and visual effects. The strains include premium indoor-grown mushrooms, outdoor foraged strains, and exotic species that are rare and difficult to source.”

Looking at the new mushroom church’s Yelp page, there are no reviews, just a series of interior store shots all posted within the last eight days. But the Haight Street location’s Yelp page has largely positive reviews from the church’s satisfied, erm, congregants.

There have been a couple other mushroom churches operating in SF. This 2024 Examiner article notes a Living Church in Polk Gulch, which still has upcoming events listed. That report also mentions a Church of Cosmic Consciousness in the Castro District, though that organization’s Instagram account has been removed.

Rising Phoenix may have done a little better with neighborhood outreach than their other peers.

"We have been engaging with communities in the Marina, Nob Hill and Russian Hill region for almost a year now since we first opened in San Francisco,” an unnamed spokesperson says in their press release. “We've seen a large and growing demand for our spiritual and religious services and products from these San Francisco communities and were lucky enough to recently secure a lease at 1506 Vallejo Street. Haight Street will continue to operate like it always has but this second location gives us extra space to do more great work at a time when religious and spiritual guidance are needed more than ever."

You have to be a member (as 21+) to enter the premises, though a lifetime membership is free.  

Yes, the church’s sale of magic mushrooms is technically illegal. But SF has decriminalized magic mushrooms, while state Senator Scott Wiener’s many attempts to decriminalize magic mushrooms at the state level have all failed.

So if you’re in the market for some “religion,” both SF Rising Phoenix Entheogenic Temple locations are open seven days a week from 10 am - 8 pm.

Related: ‘Magic Mushroom Church’ Is Closing Down Its SoMa Location, Claiming Harassment From SF City Hall [SFist]

Image: Rising Phoenix Entheogenic Temple via Yelp

The Church of Ambrosia’s Zide Door in SF has been providing magic mushrooms and other legally questionable delights for over a year now at Howard and Seventh streets, but says they’re shutting down the SF location because of “harassment” from the SF Planning Department.

For about the last five years, a purported “magic mushroom church” called the Church of Ambrosia has been operating out of Oakland, providing what they call “safe access of all Entheogenic Plants, with a focus on Cannabis and Magic Mushrooms.”

The church popped onto our radar back in 2020, when Oakland police raided their East Oakland location and accused them of selling illegal drugs — even though Oakland had decriminalized the possession of psilocybin. Then during 4/20 this year, the Church of Ambrosia made news as they provided porta-potties and crowd control on Hippie Hill after that event was officially canceled, though you knew thousands of stoners would just show up anyway.

According to KRON4, the Church of Ambrosia opened an SF location called Zide Door in April 2023, where a $5 membership fee gets you access to, you know, the stuff.

But now SFGate reports that the mushroom church is closing the SF Zide Door location at the end of the month. The church is citing $200,000 in repairs they say is being required by the SF Planning Department to their 1121 Howard Street location, and claims the Planning Department is subjecting them to “religious discrimination.”

“It’s obviously hostility from people in the Planning Department,” the church’s founder Pastor Dave Hodges said in a press release. That release claims that the church is “the victim of a city planning department bent on expelling the institution.”

The release cites a quote from an Examiner article from this past August where Planning Department chief of staff Dan Sider described the church by saying, “It seemed to me like we were dealing with a bunch of people on mushrooms that were trying to convince us that they weren’t hosting bunches of people on mushrooms.”  

That Examiner report also alleges some unsafe working conditions, workplace harassment, and employees being paid in cash with no benefits, after speaking with some ten current and former Church of Ambrosia employees.

Yet there are a series of Department of Building Inspection (DBI) violations that have been given to the site. A June violation cites “Circuit wiring installed without permit or inspection Clearance violations around electrical distribution equipment Non-compliant exit/emergency lighting installed without permit or inspection,” while a late August citation describes “incomplete and improperly installed bathroom fixtures.” The DBI has sent the venue several warning letters since.

“The building code represents the minimum legal safety standards for a structure,” DBI spokesperson Patrick Hannan. “When a building isn’t meeting the minimum code standards, we require the property owner fix it so it’s safe for people to occupy. That’s what we’re doing here.”

Yet the building’s landlord Tatiana Takaeva Shiff said in a statement to the Chronicle that “I never had any problems with the planning department until Dave opened the church.”

Yes, the church’s sale of magic mushrooms and what appears to be unlicensed cannabis is completely illegal. But SF has decriminalized magic mushrooms, while state Senator Scott Wiener’s many attempts to decriminalize magic mushrooms at the state level have all failed.

So if you’re in the market for some, err, “religion,” Church of Ambrosia is still maintaining its Oakland location at 1216 10th Avenue, and there are a couple other mushroom churches operating here in San Francisco.

Related: A ‘Magic Mushrooms Church’ Is Providing More 4/20 Porta-Potties and Crowd Control Than the City Is [SFist]

Image via Zide Door

The man who was seen by neighbors having a violent mental health crisis on New Year's Even is a Marine Corps veteran with PTSD, his attorney said, and the breakdown he had was caused by a high dose of psychedelic mushrooms.

SFist reported on the naked man firing a gun on December 31 in the vicinity of 41st Avenue between Balboa and Cabrillo streets. The incident occurred before noon and was documented on social media before police intervened.

Thankfully no one was hurt, but the man was running nude with a loaded gun, and he reportedly fired several rounds while standing atop a parked car, striking multiple cars and at least one home.

Now we're learning, via the Chronicle and after a court appearance, that the man in question was 33-year-old Evan Supinski. According to Supinksi's attorney, Rebecca Young, Supinski is a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan, and he consumed psilocybin mushrooms around 10:30 a.m. on December 31, which may have interacted badly with other medication that he takes for PTSD.

Hallucinogens like psilocybin have been seen in clinical experiments to help sufferers of PTSD and other mental disorders — however high doses can induce psychosis and panic in many individuals, as we also saw with that Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to take down a plane in the midst of a very bad trip in October.

In a statement to the Chronicle, Young described her client as "a loving and devoted father" and "decorated Marine Corp veteran diagnosed with service connected, combat-related PTSD who had a complete mental breakdown after ingesting an inordinate amount of psilocybin."

Supinski's wife and baby were apparently at home at the time of the shooting incident.

We're also learning that Supinski threatened his landlord and upstairs neighbor amidst the December 31 incident, telling the landlord, Daniel Grogg — who is also a former Marine — that he was "Satan."

Supinski's wife, Debora, testified that she became worried after husband turned delusional, and he allegedly told her he wanted to kill her and the baby and commit suicide so they could all go to heaven. When she took the baby upstairs to safety, she said, he retrieved his gun. He then stripped naked and told her to do the same because they were "in the garden of Eden."

The shooting occurred after Supinski apparently cast his landlord as a villain in his mind.

According to Grogg's testimony, per the Chronicle, "He was shooting shots out front into my car with the intention of drawing me outside. He was yelling for me to come outside so he could kill me. He shot rounds into my neighbor's car two houses away. … He was calling me Satan."

Grogg was among those urging the judge not to release Supinski from jail pending trial.

Young, the attorney, told the court that Supinski had received a double dose of an unspecified medication he takes for PTSD two days earlier, and on the morning of New Year's Eve he allegedly consumed three shrooms. This led to a psychotic break about an hour later.

In January, Supinski was remanded by a judge to a veteran’s rehabilitation program, while he awaits trial. He now is participating in Fresh Start, a transitional living program for veterans in the Sunset District, and is wearing an ankle monitor. The judge cited Supinski's lack of a criminal record, and the bad trip, for her decision.

Previously: Naked Man Reportedly Shooting Off Gun Amid Mental Health Crisis In Outer Richmond

A 71-year-old woman who was out foraging for mushrooms in a Northern California forest earlier this month and got separated from her husband and daughter was found dead last week after being missing for two weeks.

The woman, Vana Sisopha of Tacoma, Washington, was in Del Norte County with her husband and 44-year-old daughter on a mushroom-hunting trip. The trio set out on February 3 in the Smith River National Recreation Area near Gasquet, after previously taking a similar trip in the area. That night around 8 p.m., as Bay Area News Group reports, Sisopha's husband reported that both his wife and daughter were missing after they'd become separated in the woods.

A search for the daughter the next afternoon was successful, but she was found suffering from hypothermia.

A subsequent search for Vana Sisopha and the family dog involved "dozens of agencies, some from the Bay Area" as the news group reports, and it included "helicopters, airplanes, drones, dogs and infrared imaging equipment."

Temperatures in the rugged terrain dipped below freezing, and the search had to be called off on February 14 due to a snowstorm. When the search resumed on February 18, the woman's body was found "in a hollow under a log." The Sisophas' dog was never found.

As Wild Rivers Outpost reported, "Sisopha’s family, including her son, Michael Chansavang, and his wife, Esther Chansavang, helped with the search... According to Esther Chansavang, Sisopha and her husband are avid mushroom foragers and have been hunting for them up and down the West Coast for about 20 years. They have visited the Gasquet area about four to five times previously."

Top image: Photos via Redwood Parks Conservancy/Courtesy of the family

San Francisco joins a movement that’s coming on hard in several other cities and states, decriminalizing “entheogenic plants” like magic mushrooms and ayahuasca, and encouraging research of these for therapeutic purposes.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has not convened since late July, enjoying their annual summer recess. But they returned to their weekly full board meeting duties Tuesday, and one of their votes was a trip.

Vice reports that, in a unanimous vote, the board decriminalized plant-based psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, peyote, and ayahuasca, joining other cities like Oakland, Santa Cruz, Denver, Seattle, and Washington D.C. to decriminalize such drugs.

The move does not technically legalize these drugs, it just discourages law enforcement from arresting and prosecuting people for possession of said drugs. It also acknowledges that these “entheogenic plants” have been proven clinically useful in the treatment of addiction, anxiety, PTSD, and recovery from other synthetic drugs like opioids.

Looking at the actual text of the resolution passed, it urges “City law enforcement agencies that the investigation and arrest of individuals involved with the adult use of entheogenic plants in the Federal Schedule 1 List be amongst the lowest priority for the City and County of San Francisco.” Later in the full legislation, it clarifies that  “City resources not be used for any investigation, detention, arrest, or prosecution arising out of alleged violations of state and federal law regarding the use of Entheogenic Plants.”

In a statement picked up by KPIX, the measure’s co-sponsor Supervisor Dean Presston said that "San Francisco joins a growing list of cities and countries that are taking a fresh look at these plant-based medicines, following science and data, and destigmatizing their use and cultivation. Today's unanimous vote is an exciting step forward."

The measure does not go as far as state Senator Scott Wiener’s SB-519 bill that would have additionally decriminalized LSD, molly, and DMT. Wiener pulled that bill in late August, though he said in a statement at the time, “I’m optimistic through education and member engagement we can pass this critical legislation next year.”

Decriminalizing plant-based psychedelics is not as culturally extreme a move as the safe-injection and safe-consumption sites that San Francisco seems likely to move forward upon (nor will it have nearly the impact in terms of limiting morbidities and mortalities). But it does normalize and destigmatize an emerging and increasingly accepted form of therapy, so it is  —  and we mean this in a good way  — truly a feel-good measure.

Related: Mushroom- and Weed-Dispensing Church In Oakland Sues Over Police Raid, Confiscated Property [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

A kooky church in Oakland that believes in the spiritual power of hallucinogens has now filed suit against the city and the Oakland Police Department over a raid two years ago in which police took cash, cannabis, and mushrooms.

The civil lawsuit, filed last Friday, contends that the City of Oakland, its police department, and one particular police officer violated the First and 14th amendments by discriminating against the religious beliefs of the Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants. The church — founded in 2019 not long after the city decriminalized the possession and use of psilocybin mushrooms and other plant-based hallucinogens like ayahuasca — was raided in August 2020 after police said they received a tip that it was selling cannabis and other drugs without a dispensary permit.

The police seized $200,000 worth of mushrooms and cannabis, as well as some cash and computers, and Zide Door is now suing to get those things back. The suit also contends that police did $50,000 in damages to the church facility in conducting their raid.

Zide Door's founder, Dave Hodges, has longstanding roots in Bay Area cannabis circles, and was formerly part of the San Jose Cannabis Collective. But Hodges maintains that the church was doing nothing illegal in its distribution of its "sacrament" in the form of 'shrooms and weed, and it was the cops who acted illegally.

"This is not just an excuse to sell drugs,” said Hodges in a statement to the Chronicle. “This is what we truly believe is the origin of all religion and really what religion should be.”

The church's complaint contends that it never sold drugs, but only distributed them to parishioners who each paid $5 membership fees. Parishioners can also come and collect their "sacrament" and make donations to the church when doing so. There is no limit to how much cannabis or mushrooms each person can take in one visit.

Zide Door hasn't held regular services since the pandemic began — Hodges tells the Chronicle that he's held only one service, in February 2022 — but back before COVID services would begin with a passed joint. The church doesn't allow psilocybin use on the premises, and encourages people do that at home or in another safe environment where no driving will be required for eight hours.

When SFist first reported on the raid, Hodges said the church had around 20,000 members, but the Chronicle now reports that Hodges has issued 60,000 membership cards — and he says that around 200 members show up each day to pick up their cannabis or mushrooms.

If all the members are paying their dues — tithe? — that would mean Hodges could be pulling in $300,000 a month.

"This is the first for-profit religious establishment I’ve seen in my 28 years as an Oakland cop," said Oakland police captain Rendell Wingate speaking to KPIX two years ago, when the raid occurred.

Whether the church's case has any legal legs remains to be seen — and two UC Berkeley law professors disagree on the merits in comments to the Chronicle. On the one hand, Zide Door and its attorneys may be able to persuade a judge that its religion — ostensibly the Church of Ambrosia, which boasts only one location and it's this one — requires the use of psychedelics and that police misconstrued its intentions. But on the other, state laws are pretty clear about where and how recreational cannabis can be distributed and there are no religious exemptions to that on the books — and one expert, UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, suggests that a First Amendment argument isn't likely to prevail in a state law prosecution like this.

Previously: Oakland Police Raid Church That Was Allegedly Selling Mushrooms and Weed to Congregants

Top image: Zide Door's location at 1216 10th Avenue in Oakland. Photo via Google

Following some neighbor complaints, an East Oakland church dedicated to psychedelics was raided by police in mid-August, and the founder of the church wants people to know he has nothing to hide.

The Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants says it is devoted to providing safe access to magic mushrooms (psilocybin), cannabis, and other psychedelics for the purposes of spiritual growth and awakening. And the founder of the one-year-old church, Dave Hodges, makes no bones about the fact that the church collects payment from "parishioners" — of which he says there are 20,000 — for the drugs. As he explains to SFGate, he sees Zide Door as just like ayahuasca and peyote churches that have been allowed to operate under the Religious Freedom Act — and he sees the money exchanged as just like dues to tithes.

Church members sign an agreement when they join saying that they "own everything that is part of the church." "When you’re a member, you are an owner," Hodges says. "And under that scenario, how do we sell you anything that you already own?"

But the Oakland Police Department didn't see it that way. And there was apparently so much smoke emanating from the church building on 10th Avenue — Sunday services at 4:20 p.m. often include a communal joint (pre-COVID?) — that the Alameda County Health Department had reached out about complaints that the church was "creating respiratory health issues" for children who live nearby.

As Oakland police captain Rendell Wingate tells KPIX, the churches he knows aren't "known to sell cannabis or mushrooms." And he adds, "This is the first for-profit religious establishment I’ve seen in my 28 years as an Oakland cop."

Police had to saw into the church's safe during the August 13 raid, and as VICE reported, they confiscated about $200,000 worth of mushrooms and cannabis, as well as some cash.

Hodges posted photos of the raid on Instagram, saying, "Goes to show you how ridiculous the OPD is in this situation... What a great use of time and resources!?"

Hodges has a history in the Bay Area medical marijuana world, and was part of the San Jose Cannabis Collective. These days, with Zide Door, he's been trying to promote the use of mushrooms and cannabis after having a spiritual experience himself taking extremely high doses of psilocybin — a section of the church's website is devoted to such high-dose trips, for which it recommends a dark room, a bed with a bathroom nearby, and possibly adult diapers.

"The core concept of what we believe is our ancient ancestors came across these mushrooms and, being a hungry monkey who finds a bunch of these mushrooms, they were likely to eat a bunch of them," Hodges said to KPIX. "And, if you eat a lot of these mushrooms, you can have some very intense experiences that can only be described as spiritual visions."

Hodges refers to these very large helpings of psilocybin as "god doses," and says that one such trip led him to form the church.

(In a recent Facebook post, Hodges says that one church member, #18846, just did "88.2g of Albino A+ in Tea form." He says, "This was a crazy journey, but he made it through and came out very positive. He is doing profoundly spiritual work.")

Oakland has, technically, decriminalized the use of psilocybin, ayahuasca, and other entheogenic plants. But the religious freedom exemption may be taking things a bit far when it comes to selling the stuff

As Decriminalize California campaign director Ryan Munevar tells SFGate, "People have tried this before with cannabis, they create these churches, and it doesn’t really work."

The Alameda County DA's office has not yet filed charges against Zide Door or Hodges, and Hodges tells KPIX that he's preparing a civil lawsuit against the OPD and the city "our First Amendment rights based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act."

Below, one more photo of Hodges in his psychedelic priest vestments.

Touting their supposed efficacy in treating certain illnesses, a Monterey County man has proposed a measure for California's ballot that would legalize consumption of psilocybins, aka "magic mushrooms."

CBS 5 reports that the proposed ballot measure was filed Friday, with hopes that it would appear on the 2018 ballot.

According to the initiative, which you can read in full here, adults over the age of 21 "would be exempted from criminal penalties" for use, "possession, sale, transport and cultivation of Psilocybin."

The man behind the measure is Monterey County resident Kevin Saunders, who's been a candidate for mayor of the city of Marina, among many other things.

From a 2016 KSBW report:

[Saunders] is banned from Starbucks coffee shops worldwide. Saunders served a month in jail after pleading no contest to violating a restraining order and harassing the manager of a Marina Starbucks.

Saunders is also banned from Monterey College of Law in Seaside, where he was expelled as a third-year law student.

According to KSBW, Saunders drew criticism last November when he reportedly targeted Monterey County Weekly reporter Sara Rubin with an "anti-Semitic rant" in which he said “Send this shill back to Jersey or Haaretz” and “These J’s will do just about anything to stop me."

Going back further to 2014, Saunders was sentenced to a month in jail for "violating a restraining order, making harassing phone calls and violation elections code," the Weekly reported at the time. He was also required to seek mental health counseling.

Fast-forward to today, and Saunders says he's now hard at work helping the mental health of everyone in California. According to the LA Times, in two studies published last November (you can read them here):

Trial subjects who received a single moderate-to-large dose of psilocybin got substantial and lasting relief from their profound distress. Among 80 cancer patients who participated in the two trials, as many as 4 in 5 continued to feel measurably less hopeless and demoralized six months after taking the drug than they had upon their recruitment.

For his part, Saunders told the LA Times that "using mushrooms helped him stop using heroin 15 years ago."

“I think we’re seeing something that could literally heal our brothers and sisters," he told the Times. "We’re talking about real cutting-edge stuff."

But before that happens, Saunders will need 365,880 valid signatures to get the measure on the ballot for the November 6, 2018 general election. But Saunders seems ready for the challenge, as he says the time is right for his proposal.

"It’s a natural progression from marijuana legalization," he told the Times. "I think that we are having an opportunity to lead the discussion."

Related: Coyotes, Possibly High On Magic Mushrooms, Attacking Cars Near Stinson Beach

Sonoma-based singer-songwriter Garrett Pierce has a new album out next week on Crossbill Records called Dusk, and the first release, "Distant Thought," comes with this music video directed by Pierce featuring nature scenes shot on the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts, with an emphasis on mushroom foraging in the woods.

There are also a couple of pretty sunsets, and some deer lingering along a roadside.

Says Pierce, "This video was shot in my natural habitat — mushroom foraging in the redwood coast of Sonoma & Mendocino County. The lyrics for 'Distant Thought' were a dedication to the healing powers of this part of the state and so it seemed logical to shoot the video there. Winter used to be a depressing time for me when I first moved to the Bay Area, but now I look forward to hiking and discovering new mushrooms and bringing home my favorite edibles to have with dinner."

When Donna Davis looked in the mirror, she saw that her skin had turned yellow.

As KQED tells her story from 2014, Davis, fell ill after enjoying a "delicious" soup she cooked from mushrooms foraged at Salt Point State park in Sonoma.

But Davis had made an error, mistaking poisonous Amanita phalloides — commonly known as "death caps" — for edible hedgehog mushrooms. Unlike hedgehogs, death caps are often olive-green in color and have gills, or little ribs under their heads. Nearly a day after eating her soup, Davis was dehydrated, confused, and frightened.

After being treated in a hospital and narrowly avoiding a liver transplant, Davis was one of the lucky ones. Between 2010 and 2015, 57 became sickened and five died after eating death caps. One mushroom is enough to kill a person, and dogs, says Debbie Viess of the Bay Area Mycological Society, "die in droves."

As recent rains have brought a boom in mushroom growth, so too have they invited death caps. The "strikingly beautiful mushroom" according to the Bay Area Mycological Society, "can be found everywhere," in California as Dr. Craig Smollin, Co-Director of the San Francisco division of the California Poison Control System, told KCBS. "They could potentially grow in someone’s backyard.”

So what's an amateur forager to do? "Assume nothing, and learn for several seasons before you eat any wild mushrooms," says Viess. "Use good, regional books, find a mentor, and have your initial IDs checked by more knowledgeable and trusted identifiers." Of course, you can also see Viess' post on the "invasion of the death cap." Or you can just forego foraging altogether.

Related: Generous Rain, Regulations Make Point Reyes A Mushroom Magnet

The sleepy beach town of Bolinas has something lively to talk about this week, as reports emerge that a coyote (or coyotes) has been attacking cars along Highway 1 in a manner so bizarre it has residents scratching their heads. The attacks are weird enough that one seemingly outlandish explanation, that the coyotes are eating hallucinogenic mushrooms and vision questing their way into interactions with drivers, is being considered.

A report in the Pacific Sun details the late-night encounters had by numerous motorists.

"A coyote has taken to staring down automobile drivers as they drive through this twisting, turning section of highway," notes the paper, "before attacking the car and then skulking off back into the wilderness. The coyote runs up to the cars, usually at night, forcing drivers to stop as the beast stares and sniffs around the vehicle."

“It’s a terrifying, yet beautiful thing to behold,” one driver told the Sun.

Experts aren't sure what's behind the abnormal behavior, but they are sure of one thing: It's not rabies. It seems that the attacks have been going on for a period of time longer than an animal infected with the virus could be expected to live. Lisa Bloch, director of marketing and communications for the Marin Humane Society, told the Sun that "[if] this is going on longer than a week or so, then it’s likely not rabies. And we don’t suspect rabies, just because it is pretty rare.”

The attacks have been reportedly occurring for the past three weeks.

“We are trying to figure this out,” Bloch helpfully informs us.

The Sun notes that the fly agaric mushroom (amanita muscaria) grows in the area and has hallucinogenic properties, and that Bloch recently warned residents about the possible side effects of their pets eating the wild fungus.

Bloch, for her part, suggested a more prosaic possibility: Drivers have been feeding the coyotes from their cars.

“It’s possible that someone was feeding him and thinking that it’s cool, and magical and mystical to have a coyote eating out of his hand,” she explained.

Which, when we consider that this is Bolinas we're talking about, seems in the end the likeliest of explanations.

Related: Dogs Make Terrible Stoners, Are Probably Mooching All Your Weed Stash