‘Shroom Without A View:’ Maine Mushroom Aficionados Homeless After Being Banned By Previous Venues

The annual Maine Fungi Fest suddenly ain’t so annual.

To wit, the Mainers who like shrooms have yet to find a facility willing to host their yearly get together this spring.

Jonathan Leavitt, who has previously organized the fungi fest, decided after last year’s convention he would focus on other professional pursuits.

First held in 2022, Maine Fungi Fest is an annual event celebrating “All Things Fungi, Plant Based Healing, and Evolving Consciousness.”

As a sponsored project of Creative Oxford Hills, the festival convenes mycologists, foragers, chefs, and artists to learn and network.

The event for the past four years has been hosted at various locations in the Portland area.

Leavitt started the fungi fest, he told The Maine Wire, “hoping to expand the conversation on psychedelics in Maine, and an understanding that our role should be asking the questions, not claiming the answers.”

After they find a place each year for their celebration of all things psychedelic, festival organizers “reach out to whomever books the venue and we give honest answers about our content,” Leavitt said.

“In fact,” he added “I make it a point to share the agenda from the previous year’s events, so that there are no surprises.”

What Leavitt has discovered is that after the event, “some arrogant liberal or bible-thumping conservative who is higher up the food chain at the venue decides that it is inappropriate to have our kind of content at a school for higher learning, and we are told that they are not interested in having us back.”

In 2022 came the first annual Maine Fungi Fest, where folks interested in “All Things Fungi, Plant Based Medicine, and Evolving Consciousness” could come together to learn, teach, inspire, network, and create around these themes.

The first year was a one-day event held at the Portland Expo.

In 2023 the event was expanded and relocated to the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland, providing better accommodations for workshops, speakers, demonstrations, meals, lodging, and creative exchanges.

The event continued expanding and in 2024 relocated to University of Southern Maine in Portland.

Then last year it was held at Saint Joseph’s College in Standish, on the shore of Sebago Lake.

Now the festival is in limbo, their followers looking for a location that will be amenable to some harmless devotees of different lifestyles.

So come on Maine let’s lighten up – give them a shroom with a view.

Seriously now, that’s not too much to ask, is it?