On the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 27, The Soft Medicine Sanctuary announced its sudden permanent closure, effective the next day.
That evening, on the other side of Sebastopol, The Laguna Lab held its long-planned official opening. Thus, accidentally and fatefully, one venue closed and another opened in Sebastopol. It was as if the universe had stepped in to strike a decisive balance.
The Laguna Lab opening event was given the name “Make. Believe.”, and the lineup included Deep House Yoga, a communal black light painting, Mitzi and her band, The Space Walker, DJ Bank$hot, oracle and tarot, Timoteo, Shiny Objects, and Laiddbackzach and his band.
By their own account, their most successful events to date were a Bob Weir (Grateful Dead) tribute night and a family-friendly New Year’s Eve party (based on ’80s New York City hip-hop culture). They plan a regular funk night, a teen AI bootcamp, puppet theater, perhaps an educational mini-golf course and limited partnerships with Sebastopol Center for the Arts and the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation—“Big ideas, no money,” in the words of Timo Ryan, one of the two team principals. Indeed. They are indeed in the middle of a funding gap and require an additional $25,000 to keep the space open.
The following Tuesday afternoon, I met Ryan and Jonas Goldstein—the other team principal. They toured me through the space and showed me their investor pitch deck. It was glossily impressive. Goldstein has a background in art direction and marketing—as well as video art, sculpture and digital art spaces. Ryan’s talents include DJing, local FM radio, hospitality and regenerative farming. Together they share an aesthetic (and a lease).
The space was starkly impressive; a former e-bike manufactory, it has 3,500 square feet of open event space and 1,500 square feet of office space. The event space was largely empty, except for a DJ both, a ping pong table adapted into a sign, a skeletal egret puppet, a large banner by Jun Jun Li reading “looking forward to the future” and a two story paper mache sculpture of a yogi balanced on their head and neck.
Ryan and Goldstein and the team take the water bird egret as their mascot and derive much meaning from the venue’s location, at the bleeding edge of the Laguna de Santa Rosa— across the street from The Barlow complex. Conceptually, it is the blending zone, the mixing zone, the border between civilization and primordial nature. Culturally, its team is located at the intersections of art media, genders, generations, analog and digital, West Coast and East Coast, including both urban art professionals and regenerative farmers, all coming together to make things happen.
That is, if they can make their funding shortfall (grants and angel investors are in process but months away). See ways to help below. The Laguna Lab is also asking the community for volunteers with a background in operations to work on their COO advisory board.
Just before deadline, Goldstein reached out to thank their angel landlord, Dan Davis, “who gave us the runway to launch.” It remains to be seen whether the community, lately bereft, will answer their call.
Learn more: The next event scheduled at The Laguna Lab is March 14. Titled, ‘Get on the Bus,’ it is the first of their intended funk sessions. For times and location, visit The Laguna Lab via lagunalab.org or instagram.com/lagunalab_.
