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Scientology Santa Barbara closes it's doors...

programmer_guy

True Ex-Scientologist
Tom & Cathy are still listed as the owners of Buenaventura on the cult's website, but they reside in New Orleans & work at Narconon.

https://www.facebook.com/thomas.steiner.3133

Jim was mentioned in a weird, long-winded Ripoff Report complaint by Kathy Gold last year.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/the-c...anding-when-i-reached-out-for-help-in-1051823

LOL. She's been harassing Mike Rinder on Twitter. https://twitter.com/mskathygold

I 1st met Jim when he was Comm Course sup at Riverside Mission (Joanie Mongeillo was also Comm Course sup with him)
Jim eventually changed "hats" to become a reg at Riverside Mission.
Then he went to Buenaventura (I am guessing this was sometime after the infamous Mission Holder's Conference)
Here is a URL to a complaint about Jim (as he was a reg this is no surprise):
http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Jim-Hamre/63218111
 

DOC0715

Supressive Artist
The building is still open. While I was taking photos a young woman came out of their unlocked front door this evening and asked if she could help me. I asked her where they would be when the building sold and she said "Ventura". When I asked her where in Ventura she said she didn't know and went back inside. The first photo shows part of the interior through the front window. The letter in the second photo was posted in the window and says the police may enter the building when it is closed.
P1010250.JPG
P1010251.JPG
Oh geeze, now they're gonna be in Ventura? Like to know when that will happen.
 

Little David

Gold Meritorious Patron
Cross post from dbz:

Santa Barbara Ideal Org

From Tony Ortega:

sant.jpg

http://tonyortega.org/2014/05/25/sci...maiden-voyage/

The new Santa Barbara Ideal Org will actually be in Ventura in this building:

AGI-building-in-Ventura-300x200.jpg


Good Sam Office In California Has $9.7M Price Tag

Good Sam office in Ventura, Calif.

The building that houses the offices of Good Sam Enterprises LLC, formerly Affinity Group Inc., in Ventura, Calif., is for sale. The listing price is $9.7 million, Ventura’s Pacific Coast Business Times reports.

The 72,649-square-foot corporate headquarters sits on 9.3 acres of land on Vista Del Mar Avenue in Ventura.

The former Affinity building is being marketed by Nick Gregg, a senior vice president with commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis in Camarillo. He said the steel-framed building is suitable for another big institution, such as a corporate headquarters or college.

Affinity has been in the building since 1994 after putting a major refurbishment into it. The structure was built in 1983. Affinity has a “slight preference” to sell the building rather than lease it, Gregg said, but would lease to a quality tenant. In that case, they would likely sell it, fully leased, to investors.

Gregg said one large regional firm with about 500 employees has expressed interest in the site, though he could not disclose the company’s name. He is also searching regionally, nationally and abroad for a prospective buyer.

The property has a beautiful ocean view, Gregg said, but it is large and unlike any other in the city. It would take a big firm to fill or buy it, and those firms take their time. “We don’t have a lot of competition for this size building and this quality building,” Gregg said. “Having said that, the economy is slowly improving only now.”

Jeff Lambert, the director of community development for the city of Ventura, said the city is willing to work with prospective tenants or buyers to expedite permits for remodeling or other improvements. The city wants as many well paying jobs as possible at the site. “We would like to see a new corporate headquarters there,” Lambert said.

Good Sam Enterprises LLC is the parent company of Woodall's Campground Management and www.woodallscm.com.

http://www.woodallscm.com/2011/06/go...-7m-price-tag/

The Santa Barbara Ideal Org is on a remote street that dead ends at the Org. It cannot be seen until you drive to it. I know people who have lived in Ventura most of their lives. They told me they have never seen this building before.

Google St. view screen shots:

Screen+shot+2014-05-27+at+12.22.29+PM.png


Screen+shot+2014-05-27+at+12.17.14+PM.png


Screen+shot+2014-05-27+at+12.23.54+PM.png


Last edited by Miranda; 1 Minute Ago at 06:57 PM. Reason: User requested--this is not my post.

http://www.divided-by-zero.com/showthread.php?3144-Santa-Barbara-Ideal-Org&p=29657#post29657
 

GreyLensman

Silver Meritorious Patron
HellYeah.

Honestly, if the tech actually worked, missions and orgs could deliver auditing in rented porta-potties and there would be lines of people stretching for miles--just waiting for a chance to pay for auditing and get on the pc waiting list.

porta_potties_sfw.jpg



Seriously.​

That is absolutely the Ideal Org of All Time.
 

meekodev

Anonymous Raccoon
When I saw that at The Underground Bunker a couple things came to mind. First, this is an hour away during the middle of the day, during rush hour it's closer to two hours. No one is going to want this drive for courses after their day job. For Public members this isn't ideal (pun intended) at all. So there likely will be a drop off of SB people taking low level courses; they will likely take courses when they are already in Ventura to shop at Walmart and Kohls. Second, the average income in Ventura and neighboring Oxnard is not even close to Santa Barbara. Add these facts with the location in Ventura itself and this appears to be one of the emptier Ideal Morgues before it even opens.

On another subject I drove past our Org and it was open and staffed. Lately, I've seen it open more often than the last few years. It has me wondering if word got to Flag is been closed far too much.
 

Little David

Gold Meritorious Patron
The wogs won't even see this Ideal Org due to no traffic on the short section of street that goes to it. The street dead ends after the driveway to the Org's parking lot. It's possible that it could be seen by traffic on Hwy 101 if they cut down a lot of trees blocking the view of it.
 

Thrak

Gold Meritorious Patron
The wogs won't even see this Ideal Org due to no traffic on the short section of street that goes to it. The street dead ends after the driveway to the Org's parking lot. It's possible that it could be seen by traffic on Hwy 101 if they cut down a lot of trees blocking the view of it.

That's the one promise they can keep. There will be no traffic once you get to the org. The crickets may be deafening though.
 

FoTi

Crusader
Anyone who donates their money toward this project is a total fool.

These guys are s-o-o-o-o-o STUPID!!!
 

Little David

Gold Meritorious Patron
Bob Duggan will probably give them whatever money they need for this........if he's not angry that the Santa Barbara Ideal Org isn't in Santa Barbara.

Bob has also served as a director at Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Symphony, and the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering Advisory Committee. He and his wife, Trish, have contributed to the College of Engineering, the UC Santa Barbara Athletics Program, and also the world class Religious Studies Department. He has been a trustee of the UC Santa Barbara Foundation since 1989. The Duggans are members of UCSB’s Lancaster Society.

Bob has also served as a director at Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Symphony, and the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering Advisory Committee. He and his wife, Trish, have contributed to the College of Engineering, the UC Santa Barbara Athletics Program, and also the world class Religious Studies Department. He has been a trustee of the UC Santa Barbara Foundation since 1989. The Duggans are members of UCSB’s Lancaster Society. Click here for the commencement speech given by him in 2009.

http://bobduggan.com/
 
The wogs won't even see this Ideal Org due to no traffic on the short section of street that goes to it. The street dead ends after the driveway to the Org's parking lot. It's possible that it could be seen by traffic on Hwy 101 if they cut down a lot of trees blocking the view of it.

It's the San Diego Ideal Org all over again, a building overlooking a freeway on a frontage road. The difference here is Vista Del Mar dead-ends, and they will have to kill a large number of trees and put up an obnoxiously large sign on the roof to attract attention. It will probably fail like the SDIO, too.
 

Little David

Gold Meritorious Patron
Friday, May 31 , 2019, 5:41 am

Santa Barbara Scientology Building for Sale (again)

The iconic Scientology building at 524 State St. is on the market for $5.7 million.

The 13,241-square-foot downtown building is zoned for multiple uses, including commercial, retail, office and hotel.

The three-story building, with more than 45 feet of streetfront, is represented by Radius Group's Austin Herlihy and John D Repstad.

https://www.noozhawk.com/article/bizhawk_mesa_burger_headed_opens_in_camino_real_marketplace
 

Karakorum

supressively reasonable
Friday, May 31 , 2019, 5:41 am

Santa Barbara Scientology Building for Sale (again)

The iconic Scientology building at 524 State St. is on the market for $5.7 million.

The 13,241-square-foot downtown building is zoned for multiple uses, including commercial, retail, office and hotel.

The three-story building, with more than 45 feet of streetfront, is represented by Radius Group's Austin Herlihy and John D Repstad.

https://www.noozhawk.com/article/bizhawk_mesa_burger_headed_opens_in_camino_real_marketplace
Its a nice little building. Could be a decent place for a business.

Would be a massive PR win if somehow Independent Scientologists would buy it. :p
 

CaliMule

Work Hard and Bray
Would be a massive PR win if somehow Independent Scientologists would buy it.
Maybe, but also maybe it would make the statement "we are also capable of caring more about signs of wealth than exciting ideas we can share."

Scientology was most appealing when it was about ideas and relationships, not MEST and Calvinistic displays that one is among the elect.
 

CaliMule

Work Hard and Bray
Was it ever?

Scientology has dwindled massively in membership or activity over the last few decades. Clearly then, it once had a larger population of adherents. Being in or joining something is an indication of its popularity - that it had "appeal". You can't have a trend of unpopularity without a prior trend of popularity.

People who are "indie" rather than "churchie" Scientologists still find it appealing.

Seriously, it can't always be about hurling rotten fruit at people you dislike, thereby appealing to an audience of fellow haters. Endless instances of joining in the 5-Minutes-Hate needs to give way to something more meaningful and important someday. Genuine critical reasoning about something matters.
 

PirateAndBum

Gold Meritorious Patron
Maybe, but also maybe it would make the statement "we are also capable of caring more about signs of wealth than exciting ideas we can share."

Scientology was most appealing when it was about ideas and relationships, not MEST and Calvinistic displays that one is among the elect.
Calvinistic displays? What do you mean?
 

Karakorum

supressively reasonable
Scientology has dwindled massively in membership or activity over the last few decades. Clearly then, it once had a larger population of adherents. Being in or joining something is an indication of its popularity - that it had "appeal". You can't have a trend of unpopularity without a prior trend of popularity.

People who are "indie" rather than "churchie" Scientologists still find it appealing.

Seriously, it can't always be about hurling rotten fruit at people you dislike, thereby appealing to an audience of fellow haters. Endless instances of joining in the 5-Minutes-Hate needs to give way to something more meaningful and important someday. Genuine critical reasoning about something matters.
Thank you for your reply. In my previous post, I was not questioning that previously scn was more popular than it is now.

I was questioning if scn was ever "about ideas and relationships".
 

CaliMule

Work Hard and Bray
I was questioning if scn was ever "about ideas and relationships".
Yes, indeed. People drawn to Scientology in its earliest years were often idea seeking types, to be supplemented in later decades by relationship seekers as well as idea seekers. They were not all invariably "casualty contact" targets, people lured in by hopes of resolving some severe life ruining problem upon the promise "Scientology can help you with that". The whole Dianetics boom initially would suggest the sole targets of recruitment were these casualty contact types, but that was a short lived chimera that was virtually dead by the time Scientology started to fire up.

Who was Ouspensky, who was Gurdjieff, and who was Crowley? For that matter, who was Meister Eckhart and why so important that Hubbard would cite him in the preface to Science of Survival (earlier editions) as a person whose work he considered he was picking up and forwarding with the book?


Did Ouspensky's writings such as A New Model of the Universe or The Fourth Way express transformative ideas? In the minds of his followers, yes. Indeed such Ouspensky quotes as “[a] religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false” might lead one to think harmonization of these is appealing to his followers. Why not found a religion that has some kind of "scienter" variant in its name? Also, when Ouspensky talks about the issues of "will", such as "[d]esire is when you do what you want, will is when you can do what you do not want”, he is very likely targeting followers of Crowley and his "will" doctrines, that they may be lured to come be Ouspensky followers rather than Crowley followers. So much less emphasis on ancient Egypt, vaguely satanic aroma, and all that, so come around and think of changing allegiances, eh?

That people don't LIKE Aleister Crowley's image and ideas is no reason to deny that he was largely popular because of his books and novel points of view. He didn't get by purely on arranging drug influenced sexual orgies and peculiar sociodrama rituals with religious motifs, which he seems to have arranged more for kicks anyhow. He was an idea vendor. His most famous idea, “[d]o what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” is so vague he can and did expound on it with further ideas for decades. He had desirable followers to pick up, and Hubbard plainly talked of Crowley as his "friend" and declared himself to be Crowley's successor. He had his reasons to want Thelema adherents to become Scientologists.

Mystic, philosopher, and spiritual teacher Gurdjieff was one hell of character. He set the mold for it to be very very permissible to be a spiritual teacher who engages in immodedsty, lack of sobriety, hijinks and shenanigans that refute any hope of being seen as respectable, and outright fraud sometimes being applauded as a successful tactic rather than a deal killer in being a choosable guru. Hubbard may have earned vastly greater royalties and acquired more followers than Gurdjieff, but he sure as hell didn't outdo him in the extreme and outrageous conduct department. Gurdjieff was a very novel thinker, a vendor of ideas and to pick up his followers, if possible, would be very desirable. You can see Hubbard attempting this frequently in his early years and beyond. “I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself” is a wonderful steal by Hubbard from Gurdjieff, to point out merely one.

Ouspensky died in 1947 (allegedly his last words were "think in other categories", but that's apocryphal), Crowley died in 1947, and Gurdjieff died in 1949. All had committed followers keen for some thinking of a kind they valued. Why let the Theosophical Society snap them all up when a play could be made for their loyalty with thinking up their alley by a fresh voice? Hubbard courted these people vigorously. These people were idea seekers, and they would not remain unaffiliated for years and years after the deaths of leading figures. The early 50s were a wonderful time to try to acquire their adherence.

I don't feel I can do justice to Meister Eckhart's ideas and followers in limited word count, but they are both deep and there was a reason Hubbard wished to claim some variety of successorship to him.

To go on and on about the varieties of relationship seekers getting into Scientology would risk the "Wall of Text" denunciations that spring up around here often. Seems some think we are all just supposed to politely chirp in "Hooray for our side" with our posts and never attempt actual discourse and thought.

So I leave it there: YES, absolutely idea seekers were a prime target of Scientology recruitment.

Deep reading of Scientology history can substitute for lack of access to the early participants directly, but not perfectly. One need not rely upon the nasty juvenile rants of the anti-cult set to provide knowledge of why people might be drawn to Scientology, early on and later. Those juvenile ranters are not about enlightening you, but rather mostly about gratifying themselves by posing as potent or knowing people. You shouldn't let them dominate your thinking.
 

Veda

Sponsor
For that matter, who was Meister Eckhart and why so important that Hubbard would cite him in the preface to Science of Survival (earlier editions) as a person whose work he considered he was picking up and forwarding with the book?

-snip-

The acknowledgement "to fifty thousand years of thinking men... and my instructors in atomic and molecular phenomena, mathematics and the humanities, at George Washington University and at Princeton," was a long list of notable names assembled by Hubbard's editor, John Sanborn, with the purpose of giving Hubbard stature and gravitas.
 
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