Brunch 2 - June 4, 2006

Viva la revolucion!

Our 2nd brunch was a great success, and it grew amazingly from 20 people at our first, to around 50 for our second! This was, as you can imagine, an amazing amount of work, but it seemed worth it, exhausting as it was.

We served brunch downstairs on the patio off the "yoga room", overlooking the gorgeous lawn. In the entrance we had literature on one of the side tables, and then two tables set up next to the doors onto the patio - one for the brunch collection, the other for our SHAC7 fundraiser.

Outside we had one long table set up rather than several small tables. Family style, we hoped it would encourage conversation and community between people who might not necessarily have met before, but who could easily have plenty to share with one another.

About 20 of our revolutionaries were from a local Kung Fu school. The founders and their daughter are vegan, and this weekend happened to be a workshop weekend for them, and many instructors were here from out of town. Though we didn't realize beforehand, this brunch was a great way to spread the word outside of the Denver community as well!

I learned during this brunch that many (or even most) styles of martial arts have strong buddhist roots. This surprised me, maybe because my 2 years of martial arts were in a style that came from the Japanese people/farmers who needed to learn a subversive fighting method out of self-protection. These other styles came from the temples, so the buddhist connection, upon reflection, made perfect sense. And from the buddhist philosophy of non-violence, it follows that many martial artists are vegetarian or vegan. The people at our brunch from the Kung Fu school were a mix; not all were vegan or vegetarian, but just a group of people who enjoy good food.

And everyone enjoyed the location even more this time, I believe. It was cooler downstairs, and once people had eaten their fill, there was the lawn! This setup definitely contributed to most people hanging around for the full brunch, regardless of how early they arrived.

People were wonderful about helping with cleanup. Not just for the self-busing cart we had set up (it is wonderful having access to an industrial kitchen!), but our comrades were more than willing to come back to the kitchen and put in some elbow grease on the dirty dishes. We greatly appreciate this, and hats off to all of you who helped!


Not to mention the fundraiser! Wow, it was really great. We'd decided to do SHAC7 again, this time more organized, more announced, more obvious, more fun. Lynn and Sarah from Three Little Figs Market in Boulder agreed to help us by providing a selection of titles from their vegan market, and to offer them for sale. Any money above the wholesale cost would be donated. Between the booksales (yay! I bought The Milennium Cookbook, which I've been eyeing for about a year!) and the straight donations, we pulled in $142 for the SHAC7 defense fund! Brunch Revolutionaries rock! Awesome, hats off, and many thanks to all who participated.