Mental Health Activists Rally in Protest of “Psycho Donuts”

by Spence Cooper on 05/06/09 at 9:42 am

It's Bi-polar

I’ve yet to feast my eyes on anything so wickedly delicious. Whether you fancy a “Bipolar”, “Cereal Killer“, “Massive Head Trauma” (a messy donut with a crazy face drawn in chocolate and red jelly filling oozing from the side), or my favorite, “Donut French Fries” (French Fried shaped donuts with a side dish of raspberry filling or Bavarian Crème), Psycho Donuts will fill your crazy order.

According to their website, “Psycho Donuts has taken donuts to the next demented level. We bid a fond farewell to the tired, round ring of lameness, and the drab, time-weathered environment of donut past. Psycho Donuts has taken the neighborhood donut and put it on medication, and given it shock treatment.”

Not only does Psycho Donuts — which opened this March in Campbell, California — model donut names after various psychiatric disorders, the interior of the donut shop sardonically replicates a mental institution, replete with a padded cell where customers can pose for photo ops while wearing a straitjacket, and a “Group Therapy” area. To make it official, employees dress in white as doctors and nurses. The theme is truly a stroke of Warhol-like genius.

“The environment,” says their Facebook Page, “is quirky weird. Sorta like a science experiment gone bad. With a name like Psycho Donuts, its not too surprising that we have a padded cell and straitjacket! We also have our own crazy videos, and over-the-top art from a variety of local artists.”

But here’s rest of the story. In a bizarre twist that’s plucked from the pages of World According to Garp, or scenes from the cult classic Harold and Maude, Psycho Donuts is deluged almost daily by sign-carrying advocates protesting on behalf of the mentally ill.

Picture the scene: California, a banana republic run by corporate-government elites whose economy is on the threshold of default, is about to implode financially and suffer some of the most profound social program cuts in the state’s history — yet instead of marching to the state capital to protest massive budget cuts, these self-appointed representatives (they passed out “stigma-free” donuts at the rally) stage a protest in front of a donut shop. Their apparent goal is to preserve the dignity of the mentally ill, whose collective identities are perceived to be under assault by a zany-themed donut shop.

Folks, you can’t make this stuff up. (Video1) (Video2)

Among those protesting were Patty Eaton of the Silicon Valley Independent Living Center, Councilman Dan Furtado, one of the event organizers, and Brian Miller, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, who passed out letters from NARSAD, a charity to mental health research. “The [NARSAD] letter,” writes Chris Vongsarath with Mercury News, “was addressed to the owners of Psycho Donuts, letting them know that their donation to the charity had to be refunded” because the charity can’t allow NARSAD’s name to be used to justify the donut shop’s portrayal of mental illness.

“We don’t want to shut down their business,” said Miller. “We want to see small business thrive; we just think there’s a more tactful way to do it, a more responsible way. If your products are good enough, people will come back — even without the theme.”

The theme IS their product, Mr. Miller. It’s a themed donut shop.

Then there’s Patty Fisher’s scathing condemnation of Psycho Donuts in her Op-Ed piece for Mercury News. Fisher compares Psycho Donuts’ themed parody to the vicious desecration of Americans soldiers. “If you’ve been in a padded cell,” writes Fisher, “it’s not a joke. And if your husband came home from Iraq with permanent brain damage, you might not chuckle at a doughnut called ‘massive head trauma‘.”

“When I stopped in to buy some doughnuts and see what all the fuss was about, I thought the owners were out of their minds,” writes Fisher.

But Fisher’s outrage didn’t stop her from buying and eating their donuts. “Sure,” she goes on, “the doughnuts themselves are great — my favorite was ‘split personality‘, with chocolate sprinkles….”

Doesn’t donning costumes at Halloween, a school play or a costume ball represent the same playful mock parody? What then, stage a vigil in protest at a costume factory?

Kip Berdiansky — who reportedly invested his live savings — and co-owner Jordan Zweigoron, opened Psycho Donuts at a time when the state of California is on the brink of collapse. Their new business provides desperately needed jobs and a tax revenue — Berdiansky and Zweigoron should receive support from the community for their entrepreneurial efforts.

“There’s a fine line, I think, between having a sense of humor and not, and we’re really just looking at doing something that’s light-hearted and fun,” co-owner Zweigoron said. “It’s a misunderstanding; people are drawing direct parallels between what we’re doing and having a deeper meaning, but there’s not one.”

“We wanted to reinvent the doughnut,” said Berdiansky. “Like why not change the shape? Why not put cereal on it? We were coming up with all these ideas and thought, hey, that’s kinda crazy.”