The "offending" line is https://github.com/Netflix/pygenie/blob/master/pygenie/utils.py#L34-L40
Even when importing unicode literals, it seems like socket.getfqdn() returns a str instead of a unicode, and the concatenation fails if the hostname contains a unicode character.
With newer Mac OSX, it seems the hostname is set with a unicode apostrophe by default e.g. "Arthur’s".
steps to reproduce on Mac OSX:
oldhost=$(scutil --get HostName) # To save your current hostname
scutil --set HostName Arthur’s . # for instance
# Running anything importing pygenie under python 2
python2 -c "import pygenie"
It's more of an FYI, since there is an easy workaround (no unicode in the hostname)