Artist David Orr speaking at Death Salon: San Francisco. Photo by Annetta Black

In October we held our first one-day only event, Death Salon: San Francisco. The sold-out crowd had a great time learning from our speakers all day (when the Blue Angels were not trying to drown them out with their sonic booms…stop trying to silence the death revolution, Blue Angels, you cannot win!) The event was co-curated by the unsinkable Annetta Black, who runs her own amazing and far more frequent salon in San Francisco called Odd Salon. The Bay Area deathling community overlaps with some amazing other curious likeminded individuals, like fans of Odd Salon, The Body Appropriate, The Bone Room, and The Long Now. After a long day of diverse death talks, the great comraderie of the day left us feeling all warm and fuzzy, basking in the glow of all those death positive folks.

Performance artist Cara Rose DeFabio performing at Death Salon: SF. Photo by Annetta Black

You can see how the full day went down on our Storify, but we’ll do you one better: for the first time ever we’ll have full videos available of the lectures at Death Salon: San Francisco – more than 6 hours worth of content – for a small fee that’ll go towards us putting on future events. The videos are almost ready to go, we should have them available this month. We went to the trouble to film the event and edit it all pretty-like (thanks Bruno) for all of you deathlings who haven’t been able to make it to a Death Salon yet, so you can hopefully enjoy the talks and get a feel for the Death Salon experience until we’re able to come to your town.

OK enough about the past, it is time to look to the future of Death Salon, and the future is looking rather exciting.

It has been so hard keeping the news about our 2015 events under wraps because we are completely floored about having two such distinguished partners for our next events. In conjunction with an incredible exhibition of ancient funeral vases, we’ll be doing a one-day Death Salon at the Getty Villa on April 26, where we compare and contrast ancient death practices to the contemporary ones we see in today’s Los Angeles. We’ve got a positively star-studded line up of writers, comedians, musicians, art historians, and Death Salon all-stars — tickets and the full lineup will be available in the next few weeks. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve got up our sleeves. We can scarcely believe it ourselves. We can’t give it all away yet, but if you’re signed up for our email list, you’ll always be the first to know.

Then in the fall, we’ll be joining forces with one of the most groundbreaking deathspaces in the United States for Death Salon at the Mütter Museum. This medical oddities museum in Philadelphia should be on your list of places to go before you die anyway, but we can already promise you that Death Salon: Mütter Museum attendees will get rare access to their collections and the amazing curators who work with them. Also you deathlings said how much you loved our handpicked macabre vendors at DS:SF, so we’ll have an expanded shop of local artisans at DS:MM. Also: Death Quizzo. Aw yeah.

In other news, you all seem to be enjoying the pins and tote bags at the Death Salon/ Order of the Good Death online store, so thanks so much for supporting what we do. If it wasn’t for your pitching in by attending events and buying merch, we’d never be able to pull of the kind of events you’ve come to expect from us in cities all over the world. You told us you want t-shirts, and we heard you loud and clear. They’re coming, and soon. We’ve got some creative looks from our resident design goddess at andshedesigns that we think you’ll flip over.

Whew this is a lot of news for one little post! We promise to update more frequently, because, well, there’s just so much to update you on. In the immortal words of Penny Lane in Almost Famous, it’s all happening. For an organization that’s just a little over a year old, we are consistently amazed at the supportive community we’ve forged and we cannot wait to bring you all the death positivity in 2015. See you in LA and Philly, deathlings. We hope you’re half as excited as we are.

Love, your Death Salon skeleton crew

Death Salon Social Media Editor Sarah Troop, Co-Founder Caitlin Doughty, Co-Founder & Director Megan Rosenbloom. This photo & background photography by David Orr