The Bohemian California Kid

In 1966, Nancy Van Brasch, Barry Zorthian, Keith Purvis, and myself, drove around San Francisco in Barry’s new Land Rover looking for a large house where we could start a commune. We looked at several Victorians, but settled on a house on 30th. Ave at Geary. In the end I believe cost was a factor, even though Betty Zorthian was footing the bill. Betty was an heiress, owned a beautiful home in Pasadena with a barn and horses, but, she was already was the patron of J Zorthian who has earned the title ‘The Last Bohemian’.

“WHEN JIRAYR ZORTHIAN moved onto his Altadena ranch in 1945, the property consisted of one adobe-brick cabin and 45 acres of chaparral, oak trees, and coyotes. As a child he had escaped the holocaust in Turkish Armenia, and as an art student he had survived four years of Michelangelo and da Vinci at Yale…