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That Menacing Illegal Kombucha Ring Run By a Venice Cult Was Finally Busted

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It's getting ugly out there.

A cult kombucha conspiracy
A cult kombucha conspiracy
flickr/cheeseslave
Farley Elliott is the Senior Editor at Eater LA and the author of Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks. He covers restaurants in every form, from breaking news to the culture, people, and history that surrounds LA's dining landscape.

Everyone who moved here six years ago: call your Midwestern families and make sure they’re safe. It’s a good bet that their collective eyes are rolling right out of their heads after reading this story about a hippie cult in Venice run by a former child actor getting busted for selling kombucha.

And yet, sadly, the stereotypes in this sordid tale are apparently completely accurate. As Curbed LA reports, one-time teen heartthrob Andrew Keegan has of late been heading up a brand new religion (seriously) on Rose Avenue called Full Circle, which sounds like either a late-90’s prog rock band or a joint old folks home/cemetery, but is surprisingly neither.

Apparently, Keegan (Seventh Heaven/Ten Things I Hate About You) and his acolytes got busted for dishing out servings of the very, very, very low-alcohol drink kombucha (which is a sort of fermented tea praised by thin, weird people) as part of an undercover sting. Yes, really.

Those heady bureaucrats over at the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control called the sting a success after serving out a misdemeanor citation, and noted perhaps unflatteringly that they’re a "complaint-driven agency," which is what started the whole thing off in the first place. To read between the lines: somebody narc’d on the free kombucha, and in the process harshed the mellows of an entire Venice religion.

Frankly, that’s less than chill.