Remembering Our Roots:
A trip down Memory Lane in Jungle Vibes’ 15th year

It was a different world when Wayne Morgenthaler opened Jungle Vibes 15 years ago on Water Street, in the basement below what is now Thai Issan.
“Petaluma was pretty provincial in 1993,” as Wayne remembers it. He conceived Jungle Vibes as a way to open a dialogue with the community about ideas, a beachhead for a concept of trade that was rooted in more than just the goal of moving merchandise.

“The whole idea of the store started on a shoestring.” Wayne ran the early store by himself, with a cashbox and calculator. Remarkably, though, he soon had volunteer help.A community, he reasoned, had to have a reading room, something intermediate between a library and a bookstore. He was eager to stock the reading room with books from three sources: the New Society publishing company, a Quaker organization that focused on social and environmental issues; the radical political books of South End Press; and Frances Moore Lappe’s books on food ecology from the Food First Institute for Food & Development Policy.

There was only one problem: lack of funds. So Wayne called each company and asked, “How about you send me two copies of every book and I’ll pay you later?” Incredibly, all three publishers agreed.

“They just sent me the books. And I did pay later. And that was the beginning of the New Society Reading Room, the early incarnation of the still vital bookstore element of Jungle Vibes.”

That was where the volunteers came in. Clara Nelson, Petaluma’s beloved elder peace activist, would come down once a week for a few hours.
“She’d sit there and talk to people, and sort of serve as clerk.” Sheba Rapaport came as well, wife of chicken rancher Joe, an avowed Communist from the Ukraine. On her passing, she left Joe’s entire book collection to Jungle Vibes, including many written in Russian.

The first paid staff person was a Petaluma High student, a vivacious Puerto Rican girl from New York named Makini. She and some kids from Betty Harrison’s video class formed the nucleus of a show on the Petaluma Community Access TV station and were instrumental in getting the skateboard park started. Much happened in the back room at Jungle Vibes.

The computer revolution had just begun. “I remember my monochrome monitor. Our first flyers were totally paste-up jobs,” says Wayne. They were created with paste-on illustrations and fine-tip pens and copied at Kinko’s. Soon, Wayne acquired a cash register from Ternes, a local office supply store, and more staff. The youthfulness of the Jungle Vibes staff has helped shape the character of the store ever since.

The move to the corner of Kentucky and Washington Street came in 1997, though you can still see the original faded Jungle Vibes mural on the Water Street basement wall of Thai Issan, and today the basement is home to Wayne and partner Connie Madden, where they still host house concerts for the local folk music scene.

It was during the very early days at Water Street. The idea was audacious: a non-shopping event on the biggest shopping day of the year. It was an official “no war toys” event, co-sponsored by the Peace and Justice Center of Santa Rosa.
“It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving,” recalls Wayne. “We went into the crowd that was shopping downtown and passed out ‘no war toys’ flyers to come to our little event right in the middle of Santa coming to town.” And an amazing number of people and their friends and their kids showed up. Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior) came and signed books. Shirley Thatcher, the beloved “Mother Teresa” of the Peace and Justice Center for years and years, came.

“We had all these little sideshow events where you’d throw a ball to ring a buzzer and the like, just like a carnival sideshow.” Even though it was the biggest shopping day, the people didn’t come because we were a store and they were shopping. The Keep the Peace Arcade was actually conceived as an alternative to shopping. “We couldn’t possibly have sold much anyway,” notes Wayne. “There were hundreds of people, and at that time I was the only clerk. Linda Hamm from Early Works shared the space for a while, but she was too busy with parent/child activities.”

The idea here was to have an experience that played with the idea of getting high on exotic psychedelics only to deliver the message of saving the rainforest. Get high on nature! It was trendy and people brought herbs from the rainforest, like dragon’s blood, a plant substance concocted by a shaman in the rainforest. A botanist who was an associate of Terence McKenna, the ethnopharmacologist who has done research on psychoactive drug use in different cultures, gave a talk on the traditional uses of dragons blood and served a tasty red Guarana spiked fruit punch. It was a party and lecture all rolled into one.

For the musical background, there was Baka Beyond’s Spirit of the Forest, a blend of their own Afro-Celtic sound with that of the Baka people, formerly known as the Pygmies. The party was a huge hit.

African Village Celebration
Jungle Vibes invited Onye Onyemaechi, the African healer and drum player, to a festival of music, dance, Caribbean food, shamanism and a display of beautiful West African baskets and drums from Steve at Overseas Connections. The local drumming group Skin and Bones was there. It was raining, and we were

worried that no one would come. Onye said, wise man that he was, “It doesn’t matter. Rain or shine, you’re still out there having a party, like a village in Africa would. We should just approach it that way.”

It turned out we packed the place. Over a hundred people came. It was a big drumming event, very soulful.

Jazz in the Plazz
In 2007, Jungle Vibes, supported by a small group of downtown merchants, hosted local musicians—such as the Pyrotones, Hellhounds, Jordan Samuels Quartet and Kathy Guillory—for Saturday and Sunday afternoon concerts in Helen Putnam Plaza. It’s all part of making downtown Petaluma a place to meet friends, get some sun and enjoy beautiful sounds.