Kuipers, Dean 1964(?)-

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Kuipers, Dean 1964(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1964, in MI; partner of Meg Cranston; children: Spenser. Education: Graduated from Kalamazoo College.

ADDRESSES: Home— Los Angeles, CA. Office— Los Angeles CityBeat, 5900 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 2211, Los Angeles, CA 90036.

CAREER: Journalist. Los Angeles CityBeat, Los Angeles, CA, deputy editor. Former editor at Spin and Raygun magazines. Has worked on numerous short films.

WRITINGS

(Author of essays, coeditor, with Chris Ashworth) Ray Gun: Out of Control, introduction by Marvin Scott Jarrett, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

I Am a Bullet: Living in Accelerated Culture, photographs by Doug Aitken, Crown (New York, NY), 2000.

Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor of text to both the book and the film Diamond Sea, by Doug Aitken. Contributor to periodicals, including Playboy, Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, Interview, Travel & Leisure, Outside, LA Weekly, and Spin.

SIDELIGHTS: Dean Kuipers is a native of Michigan who left for Los Angeles after finishing college in Kalamazoo. Since graduating he has edited a number of alternative periodicals, including Spin, Raygun, and Los Angeles CityBeat. His journalistic experience is rounded off by also contributing to mainstream periodicals, including Playboy, Rolling Stone, Travel & Leisure, and the Los Angeles Times.

Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke is set just down the road from where Kuipers grew up. A blue-collar, libertarian couple, Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm, lived on a farm which frequently held concerts and get-togethers for decriminalizing marijuana use. Neighbors were mostly indifferent to the proceedings or lifestyle of the two men.

In 2001, shortly before the September 11 terrorist attacks, District Attorney Scott Teter arranged to have Rohm’s son taken into protective custody and to seize the land and property. The two men refused this heavy-handed government invasion and armed themselves to protect their land. The end of the five-day standoff resulted in the burning of the farm and both men shot dead, despite never firing at a law enforcement officer.

Reviews of Burning Rainbow Farm were mostly positive. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the book “an excellent look at the marijuana subculture, deluded or not, aspiring to the Middle-American mainstream.” Whitney Pastorek, reviewing the book in Entertainment Weekly, noted that it was “exhaustively researched” but “criminally underedited.” In a Seattle Post-Intelligencer review, John Marshall stated: “Kuipers has a gift for trenchant incident and information, but he has filled the book with way too many minor characters and other plot diversions.” Marshall conceded that the book “remains a riveting, and often shocking, account of government law enforcement gone wild.”