Rainbow Mansion

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach
by Ashlee Vance
Published 8 May 2023

It would, however, turn out that the Rainbow Mansion revived the idea for the engineers and software developers flocking to Silicon Valley. In large part thanks to Jessy Kate, so-called hacker houses were about to become a thing. Some people were simply trying to deal with the Bay Area’s ever-rising rents. Some wanted more of a sense of community. Others used the houses more as networking tools for their start-ups. By 2013, enough of those types of houses would appear to warrant a trend piece in the New York Times with the title “Bay Area Millennials Are Flocking to Communes—No Tie-Dye Required” in which the Rainbow Mansion and Jessy Kate made a prominent appearance.

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By 2013, enough of those types of houses would appear to warrant a trend piece in the New York Times with the title “Bay Area Millennials Are Flocking to Communes—No Tie-Dye Required” in which the Rainbow Mansion and Jessy Kate made a prominent appearance. The Rainbow Mansion of 2006, though, was different from the clones that followed. It had a hint of magic. At the heart of the house was a group of friends who would form bonds as tight as those of any family. They shared a love of space and also something more profound: they were united by idealism. Led by Marshall and the Schinglers, they genuinely believed they could change the world for the better and tried to infect anyone who passed through the Rainbow Mansion with the same spirit. Outside the core group, an ever-changing cast of characters lived in the house.

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One September, on the occasion of International Talk like a Pirate Day, the housemates hoisted a skull-and-crossbones flag up a pole in the front yard. Rita phoned the cops and told them she felt threatened by the flag. She also did not appreciate the ritual of the UN flag ceremonies in which members of the Rainbow Mansion would march out to the flagpole and blow a conch shell before holding a small parade to celebrate the citizens of Earth. While that could all sound ridiculous to some, the Rainbow Mansion housemates took their world-changing aspirations seriously. The housemates strove to codify their world-saving agendas. They held regular meetings in which they listed ways they could positively impact the earth and all its peoples.

Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us
by Will Storr
Published 14 Jun 2017

In the yards, great palm trees that had overgrown their plots gave the landscape a strangely hairy appearance. There was a Sunday evening atmosphere; recycling bins, concrete Buddhas and men in shorts with prominent veins riding expensive bicycles. Finally, the train stopped at Sunnyvale, where you alight for Cupertino, home of Apple. I took a taxi up a winding hill to the Rainbow Mansion, a large cream house with a terracotta roof that was now an ‘intentional community’ made up of bright young tech workers. My search for the self had taken me, once again, to the Western world’s edge. Now that I’d landed in the present day, I had the opportunity to meet selves that should be, if the ideas I’d been pursuing were correct, made up of so many of the lives of their ancestors.

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The Startup Castle, a Tudor-style mansion in the Valley, became the subject of mockery when its entry requirements were revealed. Applicants were required to exercise fifteen hours a week, have a ‘top class’ degree and enjoy petting dogs. ‘Dealbreakers’ that would keep you out included getting regular gifts from your parents and having been ‘prescribed anything by a psychiatrist more than once’. My contact at the Rainbow Mansion was a Spanish NASA employee called Vanesa. ‘You’re in the Mystery Room,’ she told me, leading me through the tall, shiny lobby, with its tattered chandelier and its wall calendar on which someone had scheduled ‘World Domination’ for next month. Vanesa was the person who dealt with the applications that were sent in, from all over the world, by workers trying to get a bed here.

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In my experience, if you’re running solely on one aspect, you’re going to have trouble. If you’re just looking for money, or you’re just looking to change the world, you’re going to be all out of whack.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because if you don’t change the world and you don’t make a lot of money, you’re a failure.’ As we drove back to the Rainbow Mansion, I told Jeremy that there was a particular species of tech worker I was especially interested in tracking down. Just as the culture in which we’re suspended forms a generalized ‘perfect self’ for us to compare ourselves to, so every cell of that culture also generates its own specialized iteration of it.