Friday, November 16, 2012

Announcing Long Now's Salon Social Space

Long Now Raises Funds & Spirits and Further Opens the Long-Term Conversation

I've been helping the Long Now Foundation with their plans to raise half a million dollars to redesign their San Francisco museum space into an incredible social venue: a bar, salon & gathering place for Long Now members and the general public. The campaign is now live, take a look.

Offering major donors the opportunity to participate in a "bottle keep" purchase of singular Long Now spirits and support a new social step in Long Now's admirable mission ...

Help us build it... from The Long Now Foundation on Vimeo.

We would like to invite you to help The Long Now Foundation build our new event space...

More information at http://www.longnow.org/salon/

We opened our small museum and bookstore here in Fort Mason in 02006 to show some of our long-term projects. Since then, we have seen some of the best connections and conversations about long-term thinking at our receptions and gatherings.

So in collaboration with our partners here at Fort Mason, and the amazing design-build studio “Because We Can”, we have designed a salon space that will not only house our prototypes, and a hand curated library, but also serve locally roasted coffee by day, and inspired cocktails by night. The goal is to build a social place to help make long-term thinking more automatic and common rather than difficult and rare. But now, we have to raise the funds to build it.

We would like to engage you, our friends and members, along with some amazing local artisans in a campaign that is hopefully as compelling for you participate in, as it has been for us to create.

St George Spirits in Alameda has created two exclusive spirits for us. Each one is truly a distillation of long-term thinking. The first is an aromatic gin made with juniper berries harvested by hand among the five-thousand year old bristlecones from our site in eastern Nevada.

The other spirit is a whiskey with a specially tailored grain bill. It will be fermented and distilled in such a way that it'll be delicious without aging, and grow more intricate and complex with every year. We will bottle a small amount, each year for the next 15 years, allowing you to taste its annual progression.

Each of these spirits will be kept at our space for you in the Japanese “Bottle Keep” tradition. They are stored on permanent display in a custom vessel by Adams & Chittenden. When you arrive the bartender will lower your bottle for you to enjoy it straight, or mixed in a cocktail of your choice. We are offering two levels for you to participate, the Founders Bottle, and the 15 year Whiskey Club.

But to be clear, this space is about more than just coffee and cocktails. The goal is to build a social place to help make long-term thinking more automatic and common rather than difficult and rare. We are excited about bringing you all together in a new space, and a new conversation. Please join us and help us build it.

We do realize not everyone can afford to help us at these donation levels. If you can’t afford to donate at these levels, but would like to participate, we encourage you do so as a group of friends. We are happy to list several people as owners of any bottle club membership.