About Us: News Articles: Gazette 1

Peaceful Punks Thinking Inside The Box

By Steve Irsay
Staff Writer

Long Beach Downtown Gazette June 2005

There is a cozy place where radical punk rock politics and tree-hugging hippie idealism stand together, steel-toe boot to sock-footed Birkenstock; where black-clad gardeners pick organic veggies with one hand and flick off offending authority figures with the other.

That place, at least here in Long Beach, is the Gaian Mind.

The youth center and soon-to-be organic café opened quietly several months ago in a small powder-blue storefront at 620 Pacific Ave. Outfitted with a long couch, several chairs and a tiny corner stage, it has hosted Friday night vegan potlucks and performance events drawing teenage punks from the Los Angeles area.

On Saturday, June 11, the Gaian Mind will be one of the extended stops on the East Village Arts District’s Tour des Artistes, selling eco-friendly crafts like incense holders made out of dead palm fronds, and hosting demonstrations on paper-making.

The Gaian Mind is the brainchild of local punk activists Ben Lawson, 24, and Emily Merrick, 23, who, along with two other friends, rent the storefront and a floor in the neighboring house. Lawson, who moved to Long Beach two years ago from Oregon, has so many incendiary ideas in his head that his long ponytail and scruffy beard look like fire hazards. For now, though, the plan is simple: reach out to the disaffected young people in the Southern California punk scene who need encouragement.

“Our objective is to really have this be a communal, healthy, clean learning environment,” Lawson said. “This can be a place to study or become an artist or safely experiment with any aspect of yourself.”

Of course, idealistic punk collectives are easily as old as the movement itself. What may set the Gaian Mind apart from the many ramshackle operations that have come and gone is a business plan built on used cardboard boxes.

In addition to playing drums in punk/grindcore outfit Resistant Culture and being a self-professed “soccer mom” to younger punks in the L.A. scene, Lawson is also the environmental coordinator for UsedCardboardBoxes.com, a Los Angeles startup that collects boxes from various companies and re-sells them, keeping perfectly good moving boxes out of landfills.

Founded in 2003 by former tech-sector CEO Marty Metro, the company has already partnered with U-Haul and several major apartment rental agencies and is in the process of franchising.

The Gaian Mind space is a Long Beach test franchise. From 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, people can buy inexpensive boxes and, in the process, give the youth center a source of income until its café and art operations hopefully make it self-sustaining, Lawson said. Then, the box operations will be moved and the focus will shift fully to the Gaian Mind project.

Named for the Greek and Roman goddess “Gaia,” or “Earth Mother,” and the related scientific theory that the entire Earth is one living organism, there’s talk of the Gaian Mind center including everything from benefit concerts to organic gardening to alternative education classes to wilderness training programs.

“It’s almost like the punk Boy Scouts,” Lawson half-joked.

The hope is to use the positive activities to divert some passionate young people from the nihilistic path of just “getting wasted.”

“We want to create experiences that are so joyous and meaningful that you want to remember them,” he said. “You would regret it if you got wasted and couldn’t remember anything.”

Lawson still isn’t sure exactly what the Gaian Mind will become, but he hopes it will look good to the people hurtling by on the Blue Line train that runs just outside the center.

“I want them to see punks watering plants and doing their homework and taking care of the land and being responsible citizens,” he said. “It breaks my heart to think that these kids have so much to offer that is not being recognized.”

For more information on the Gaian Mind, go to www.gaian-mind.org. For details on UsedCardBoardBoxes.com, visit www.usedcardboardboxes.com or call 888-Boxes-88.