On Sunday we met in the reunified Santa Rosa Courthouse Square for our version of Permanent Breakfast. People brought tables and chairs and made one long table with the table cloths, put out food and decorations, and a great time was had by all. There was a variety of food from eggs to fruits, baked goods to salads, with plenty of juice and coffee to share. At first people seemed uninterested in joining us, but after a while we did get some folks to sit down and enjoy a shared brunch.

According to the LA Burners who also held a permanent breakfast this weekend there is a long history for this event.

“permanent breakfast” is a worldwide movement that started in Vienna in 1996. It took historic inspiration from the “Paneuropa-Picknick” where for a 3-hour long breakfast on 19th August 1989 at the Austrian/Hungarian border the “Iron Curtain” separating east and west Europe was briefly opened and thousands fled into the west. In the 21st century, “permanent breakfast” inspired people to utilize public spaces for local communities. It crosses social barriers. It lead to political change in Valencia by the grassroots Desayuno con Viandantes movement, at the end toppling over another government.

As “Burners”, doing a “permanent breakfast” also means going back to the roots: creating surreal zones in urban areas. As Burners we know how to organize “Burns” in remote areas and “Decoms” in town at dedicated private spaces. It is another challenge to utilize public space but a great and proven way of having a fun experience by creating an urban surreal “zone”.

The “permanent breakfast (burner edition)” event is co-created by Leobard, the Austrian Burners Association, and Friedemann Derschmidt, the founding artist of PermanentBreakfast.org.

Leobard invited us to join in, and we all had fun in our silly hats. I ate way too much, and got a sunburn because I forgot to wear sunscreen. North Bay Burners Permanent Breakfast was a big hit. We will definitely do it again next year. In fact people have asked if we can do it more often! The answer is yes. Everyone is invited to hold a permanent breakfast. It can be on any day you choose, and you can do a potluck like we did, or you can host your own breakfast and gift everything. It is entirely up to you. Invite passerby to join you, and then invite everyone at your breakfast to host their own. If you send us pictures we will post them!

We had a hat decorating party the week before, and decorated some top hats and mini top hats to wear. We brought extras to share in case anyone wanted to wear one who hadn’t brought their own. It was a fun way to create a visual unity, and inject some whimsy into the proceedings. We probably had twenty people in attendance, and seven or so who accepted our invitation to sit down with us and join the brunch in progress. Here are a few pictures I took, there are more on our facebook event page.