Owsley “Bear” Stanley III held numerous titles, together with Grateful Lifeless sound engineer, the world’s foremost LSD chemist, prisoner #15084-148, and the resident of 2321 Valley St. in Berkeley, CA, also recognized as the “Troll House”. The two-bed, one-bath storybook cottage in Berkeley’s Poet’s Corner community is now up for sale for $899,000.
Bear lived at the residence all through the 1960s, together with the 1967 Summer of Enjoy that saw hundreds of thousands of youths migrate to San Francisco. Owsley in portion helped gasoline that migration by turning on an full era of musicians, artists, and authors with his potent LSD. Just as Owsley’s chemistry aided fuel the countercultural motion, so as well did the Troll Dwelling as it brought alongside one another the society’s luminaries together with Ken Kesey, Ram Dass, and far more.
Rhoney Gissen Stanley lived at the Troll House—though she insists they under no circumstances referred to as it that—with Owsley until he went to jail for a few yrs commencing in 1969 immediately after authorities raided his LSD lab in Orinda. She recalled to Berkeleyside tales of riding about the block on the again of a Hell’s Angel’s bike and dancing ahead of the stroll-in brick fire with Ram Dass. The house’s unofficial mascot was an owl named Screech—named just after the sounds Rhoney built when she 1st saw it—who lived up in the rafters immediately after constantly escaping his cage.
“Most of the time reminiscences are about trauma, suffering and unpleasant stuff,” Rhoney, who wrote Owsley and Me: My LSD Household, said. “We keep in mind the difficult stuff alternatively than the uncomplicated things. I experienced no bad recollections [of the cottage]. I only had superior reminiscences.”
Linked: LSD Residue On 1960s Synth Sends Mend Tech On Accidental “Trip” [Watch]
The famed San Francisco Fox Brothers Building Company developed the 1,238 sq.-foot home in 1928. It characteristics a brick route foremost to the front door, stained-glass windows, a cylindrical chimney, and modest troll-sized doorways scattered through, a possible cause for the nickname. It was author Charles Perry who coined the title Troll Household in a 1982 Rolling Stone profile of Owsley. Perry when roomed with Stanley and chronicled the increase of his LSD empire.
“The Troll Home, as some people today called it, was a frequent stopover for the transcontinental psychedelic elite,” Perry wrote. “There was generally anyone making an attempt to sleep on the pillow-strewn ground when the 24-hour-a-day occasion lurched together. I dropped by every single week or so to see the most up-to-date wrinkle: ether-extracted THC, the progress copy of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or whatsoever.”
In 1990, the property passed to one more member of the inventive group when longtime Oakland Tribune editor Belinda Taylor acquired it. When living there, Taylor wrote Becoming Julia Morgan, a engage in about the Bay Region architect. Belinda’s daughter—who now owns the residence pursuing her mother’s loss of life in 2018—said Belinda’s “most successful imaginative times have been in that house.”
The Troll House holds a Berkeley Historical Plaque but is however not an formal landmark, this means potential entrepreneurs can renovate it nonetheless they would like. Two comparable Fox Brothers cottages in Berkeley are listed in the National Register of Historic Spots, per Berkeleyside. Rhoney hopes to one particular day establish the home as a historic monument.
“Wouldn’t that be cool?” she questioned. “If I could established up a belief. … I don’t know. I really don’t know how I’m likely to obtain it. But it’s going to go for a million pounds?”
Purple Oak Realty will host an open up home at the Troll Home at 2321 Valley St. in Berkeley from 2–4:30 p.m. tomorrow, Could 22nd. Go to the company’s site for a gallery of photos and a lot more information and facts. Scroll down to check out a marketing video for the property prepared by Pink Oak Realty, loaded with corny 1960s wordplay.
[H/T Berkeleyside]