HISTORY OF EREWHON - NATURAL FOODS ... - SoyInfo Center

and Goldfinger were also involved. Once we moved to the
warehouse (summer of 1966 we started work again and got
into producing concerts at California Hall with the Grateful
Dead et al. Paul was designing Light Shows. The last event
by the Calliope Company (rock wise) was our Halloween
Dance opposite the Kesey Acid Test Graduation. We then
had one theatre event at the Straight Theatre, the premier of
Michael McClure’s ‘Blossom.’ After Xmas that year I left
for Boston.” Address: San Francisco, California.
4. Photograph of Evan Root at the first Erewhon retail store
at 303B Newbury St. in Boston, Massachusetts. 1966.
• Summary: Evan Root wrote in Nov. 2010: This “one is
me, circa 1966, at 303-B Newbury St., Boston, below street
level, at the corner of Hereford Street, wearing a Japanese
clerk’s coat, something like what is called a Happi Coat,
hand made by Aveline [Kushi]. This picture was in Lilly
Kushi’s marvelous photo album, which you may well have
had a chance to see. She took it out and gave it to me near
the end of her life.
“There are, to my knowledge, very few photo archives
of that first little Erewhon store. You can’t see anything of
the store or the shelves in the picture. I am sitting at the
check-out desk, upon which there is a decorative bouquet of
wheat grain in a vase.
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HISTORY OF EREWHON 24
“This store defied all business reason as so few people
came through the doors to shop. It was principally a place
where people came to talk and wonder about our place in
the universe, and how macrobiotic practice could align us
with that order. It took about one year before we had our
first $100 day, and that was worth a celebration.”
Question: In those early days, which important
macrobiotic addresses were in Boston and which were in
Brookline (which was enclosed on three sides by Boston)?
Evan: “Before I left for Japan (spring 1969), in
Brookline there was the Kushi’s house at 216 Gardner
Road. This is the first house the Kushis rented when they
moved from Wellesley in March of 1966 and was their
home along with as many other people as could fit in,
myself included. There were several apartments where
groups of mb (macrobiotic) students lived, as well.
Sometime later (I can’t recall the timing here) 29 University
Road opened up as the first ‘study house’ outside of the
Kushi’s home. I think another one opened on Washington
Street before I left, though my memory is hazy on just
when. These first ones were rented by Aveline and were all
under the Kushi umbrella with ‘house leaders’ usually a
couple whose studies of Macrobiotics qualified them as
‘senior students.’ There may have been one or two others.
“By the time I returned, there were numerous ‘study
houses,’ more in Brookline and in various other locations