SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. April 8, 2024 – Pastor Dave Hodges, founder of the Oakland-based Church of Ambrosia, will join book author Lama Mike Crowley to mark the one-year anniversary of the Church’s Zide Door San Francisco location opened April 15, 2023.
The celebration, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. this coming Monday, April 15, will include brief remarks from Hodges and feature Lama Mike’s book signing. His latest works, “Psychedelic Buddhism: A User’s Guide to Traditions, Symbols, and Ceremonies,” explores the power of combining psychedelics and Buddhist meditation.
The San Francisco Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants opened last year in a move aimed at meeting the growing interest in exploring spirituality through the church’s psychedelic and cannabis sacraments. Since then, Church of Ambrosia membership, including both Zide Door sites in Oakland and San Francisco, has grown significantly to approximately 106,000.
The one-year observance at 1121 Howard St. in San Francisco is among a series of notable events occurring within a four-week stretch. The milestones began with the successful “Spirituality & Beyond #4” psychedelic conference held Easter weekend at Kaiser Conference Center in Oakland, hosted by Church of Ambrosia.
Speakers from that event are being posted on the Church of Ambrosia’s YouTube site, starting with Mistah F.A.B. (aka Stanley Cox), an Oakland Rapper, songwriter and community organizer who spoke movingly during the conference about the importance of mental health and the spiritual connection to it.
Only days after next week’s Zide Door anniversary, the church also will salute on April 19 the international holiday for LSD. April 19 is the anniversary of the day in 1943 when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann intentionally ingested LSD (which he had synthesized five years earlier) and then took a bicycle ride. The day has since become known as “Bicycle Day.”
The final event of note has been observed in recent years on April 20, a date that is now known as an international day to celebrate cannabis.
This year, organizers of the annual “420 Hippie Hill” have announced they cannot hold the event in Golden Gate Park, citing citywide budget cuts. Hodges has said he is disappointed by the cancellation and that he believes large crowds will nonetheless show up, despite the cancellation.
“We are very concerned about it,” Hodges said, adding that he expects some measure of chaos given the absence of planning.
“This is a religious holiday to us,” he said. “We take it seriously as a church and we will be there passing out water. We need to get involved to help deal with the chaos in any way we can.”