Acetarium/Guidelines

The following guidelines are designed to sort of give all residents and guests at the Acetarium an idea of how we live and what we might expect from folks while they visit with us. Everything is always up for conversation!

Guidelines for all guests

• Acetarium proprietor Mika Matsuzaki is Japanese and the Acetarium has adopted the Japanese custom of taking shoes off before entering the house. The less-well known traditional of removing pants is optional, but strongly advised.
• The Acetarium is smoke-free area. Please do not smoke on the premises. From time time-to-time, folks here do burn incense or smoke hookahs with flavored tobacco. If that bothers you, let folks know. If that excites you, invite others to join! Smoking is always possible on Elm street outside the building.
• The Acetarium is vegetarian. You don't have to be vegetarian in the rest of your life but we do ask that you be vegetarian in the parts of your life that take place in the Acetarium. We do not buy or cook meat and would prefer that you do not bring meat to cook or eat in the Acetarium either (at least not while we are around). Dairy products and eggs are not a problem.
• The Acetarium residents like to invite our friends for dinner and other meals. We hope, as our guest, you invite people too! We eat most meals at our table in the kitchen. However, our library doubles as our dining room for larger groups. When guests are staying in the library, we may need to use their room for consuming meals.

Guidelines for medium term guests

Here are some more specific guidelines:

• The Acetarium is a cooperative living space. We buy food and drink as a group and share them. We expect guests to participate in the cooperative by contributing to purchases of food and drink for the house and by consuming things that the house buys. The details of the cooperative -- in terms of payment, what is purchased, and special items that belong to one person, etc. -- is always up for discussion.
  • Part of our coop is that we eat most dinners and weekend brunches together and do other meals together when possible. You don't have to, of course, but we'd love it if you did. You're welcome to help cook as well. In general, those who don't cook should consider cleaning up after the meal.
• The Acetarium is a very bike-friendly space. Long term guests are encouraged to bicycle and several bicycles are available to Acetarium guests!
  • The resident/guest room doubles as our "garage" and contains many of our bikes. This can sometimes get tricky when it is also containing our guests! One things it means that people will need to go in and out of that room sometimes to get bikes, tools, or parts. We will always try to minimize this. We can also try to coordinate so we leave bikes in the hallway if a bike will be needed before the guest is awake. In our experience, this has rarely a problem and we will always try to be as flexible as we can to try and avoid interruptions.
• Every Sunday, our house and the larger community of friends and folks who hang out go to Grendel's Den. For the last seven years, the folks who live here have gone very single Sunday that we've been in town. We really never miss it. As a way of getting to know and integrated in our broader community, we really hope that our guests will come on Sundays. It's not a requirement or anything, but we think you'd enjoy it!
• Guest of guests are generally fine although we ask folks to announce guests to the house email list and put it on the calendar so we don't get overbooked. We'll ask you every time we're thinking of hosting somebody — yell at us if we don't! — so please do try to keep us in the loop. We want anybody here for an extended period of time to be full-fledged community member and to have a say in how the house is run while they are there.
• If you're staying here, you should definitely sign up for the social mailing list and, if you can, join the IRC channel so you can be plugged into the broader community of folks around the house. Details are on the wiki. We will put you on two house mailing lists for our apartment and for the combo-apartment next door that we coop with.