| BOLINAS REVISITED (Originally appeared in Pacific Sun as "Brigadoon Blues" - December 2002) By Alex Horvath |
| A GEOGRAPHY QUIZ FOR LOCALS: It's a busy Friday morning in a well-known Marin community. The streets are jammed with tourists, locals and delivery trucks. Automobiles stop and start about the busy town center looking for a place to park -- but they're out of luck -- there isn't a single spot left. It's not quite noon. The next night, at a quaint but upscale restaurant, movie star Robert Redford spends his birthday dinner at a quiet table among family and friends. Fans in the restaurant leave him alone. Across the street, a three-room, loft-like bed and breakfast -- each room with hardwood floors, a private deck and its own jacuzzi -- is being built high above one of the town's most prominent businesses. Near the town park, at the entrance to a beach, three charter buses arrive in the early afternoon and drop off 150 guests in front of a house owned by the CEO of a trendy apparel company. Inside the gates, near the pool, a tropical scene has been created, complete with flowered leis, catered lunch, a full bar and a live reggae band. A few of the revelers dance in the street as the party spills out over the fences. What town are we in? Tiburon? Larkspur? Sausalito? Bolinas? If you picked Bolinas, you win. But if you're like me -- or any number of us who grew up in the tiny West Marin enclave over the past three decades, there was a point when you would have bet against this kind of scene ever happening in our town. After all, we're the ones who used to throw water balloons at the occasional misguided tour bus or Winnebago! Obscurity for Bolinas has vanished. I think it hit me the first time I spotted a tourist wearing a "Bolinas 2 Miles" T-shirt purchased from a local shop. Or it may have been last summer when I crashed a party on the outskirts of town where Hillary and Chelsea Clinton were guests. Hillary turned heads the next morning strolling through town with her secret service entourage, stopping at the coffee stand outside the Coast Café for a latte. Rumors circulated about Chelsea's braces getting caught in the beard of a local peasant who asked for a kiss. Somewhere in-between these occurrences I realized that none of us from the old days were in Kansas any more. And it certainly didn't feel like we were in Bolinas, either. An uneasy feeling comes over me as I begin to chronicle what might turn into an obituary for my hometown; a feeling that longtime friends are gasping for air or reaching for some other kind of assurance. The feeling grows when I encounter a distressed woman on Wharf Road who had just gone through the local Hearsay News for "the hundredth time" in search of a rental for her and her family. "If we can't find a place soon, we may have to leave," she says. Her situation is not uncommon. A sampling of the Hearsay shows no rentals at all listed in the previous three issues. "There are plenty of other people looking," she tells me. If there was a place available, she's not sure she would even be able to afford it. Finding housing hasn't always been so tough. At one time, 70 years ago, lots on the Bolinas Mesa were given away with the now-defunct San Rafael Bulletin. In 1970, the average price of a home on the Mesa was $20,000. Rent back then for a two bedroom house was about $85 a month. Today, the same homes and property sell for upwards of $500,000. Funky trailers and tiny living quarters, when you can find them, rent for as high as $1,000 per month, more than half of an average locals monthly income. Try and find an actual "house" and you are usually priced out of luck, according to residents. With the boom economy of the '90's, the rich started moving in and snatching up the land. Many of the modern buyers purchase the homes as getaways -- leaving them empty for months on end while evicting families who have been renters for years. Contributing to the situation is the town's water moratorium -- a ban on new water meters -- that has been in effect since 1971. No new hook-ups translates as no new homes. "I liken it to having had the same effect as a 'smart bomb,'" said Howard Dillon, a 25-year resident who works as an actor and part-time driver/delivery person. ""The water moratorium was the right thing to do at the time. The fallout effect has left houses standing but there are no people around." Dillon said the syndrome is exemplified on the street where he lives. "One night I was laying in bed -- and a car drove by quite late. I got to wondering how many houses on are road are unoccupied. The next day I counted and there are 21 houses past mine all the way to the cliff. Of those houses, 11 are not lived in full-time. I get a lot of work from the rich people in town. What's happening also is the people here are becoming the servant class." Some of the wealthier have tried their hand at patching up the town's housing dilemmas. Susie and Mark Buell -- among the town's more prominent new citizens -- have contributed generously to the Bolinas Housing Project, an undertaking converting the dilapidated old Gibson House Restaurant (and former site of the Bolinas Bay Bakery) into 12 smallish but inexpensive apartments, designed for the working homeless population. Rents for those lucky enough to get a space are expected to be between $400 and $600 per month. The project has been underwritten through county grants and local donations and has received widespread support in the community, including more than $30,000 from the Buell's. *** *** *** *** *** In spite of their generosity,though, the Buell's are also symptomatic of a greater problem. In addition to their principal dwelling on Olema-Bolinas Road, the couple owns two other "guest homes" overlooking the community and the lagoon on Altura Avenue, for the occasional rich and famous visitors like Hillary and Chelsea. The Buell's are not the only ones. A local contractor who asked that his name not be used, said he has a wealthy client who bought a weekend house -- and a couple of additional houses for his two daughters. According to the contractor, these homes remain empty most of the time. "The daughters have no intention of ever living here," he says. In contrast to the Buell's and their multiple homes, longtime Bolinas Public Utilities District director Paul Kayfetz, once referred to as being "The Lion of Bolinas," for his efforts to maintain the town's cloak of obscurity and the 30-year water moratorium, has cashed in and sold his Ocean Avenue home (for $2 million in April 2002) and relocated with his family to Strawberry. And even though Kayfetz's principal residence is now in Southern Marin and he currently owns no property in Bolinas (according to property tax records), he still manages to serve as a director on the BPUD, as he has for most of the past 30 years. Kayfetz's Bolinas telephone number is answered by voice-mail and snail-mail is still delivered to his post office box there. He initially declined an interview, but when questioned about the move and elected office residency qualifications, said, "If you do some research you will find that I still maintain a bedroom in a house in Bolinas. I, and my kids, stay there a couple of nights a week." Paul Kayfetz, a weekend resident? I can't say I blame Paul for hanging onto the Bolinas identity. I mean, lots of people who used to live there still identify with the town. My own e-mail address even begins with "bolinasdude," and I live in Santa Rosa. Besides, few, if any, of the locals I spoke with care that Kayfetz has relocated. But there are plenty of people who are going to have to change their address and voter registration information if lack of housing forces them out of Bolinas. The mood of the community was documented in an independent film made last year titled Safe House. The film's prodcuer/writer/director, San Francisco filmmaker Martin Matzinger, lived in Bolinas from 1984-91, and filmed the movie in Bolinas over four days for just under $6,000. The film's farcical dramatic plot -- which involves a geneticist who has discovered the gene that will cure greed -- stars Dillon and other locals. But interspersed around the drama are actual interviews with residents discussing being displaced. The film serves as a historical document and opens with scenes of townsfolk stealing the road sign to "Paradise," a thinly disguised village like Bolinas. "The film really poses the question, 'What is greed?'" Matzinger said. "None of the documentary part was scripted. I picked people who I knew had a story. I went to them and said I am going to interview you. It's a movie that is inside of a fictional movie. I told them that anytime you wanted to say the name of your city to replace Bolinas with "Paradise" and to speak from their own true life experience. "There was some incredible footage. They are a community being displaced and struggling with it. Some force, some big wave -- the world economy -- its forcing things to change and so these people are struggling against the wave. The way I think about it is that this is happening all over the world. This is the middle-class and artist-class version of everything getting displaced. This is the artists version of the community breaking up and children and others can't afford to live in the community any longer. And it's happening al over and this is just Bolinas's version of it," Matzinger said. *** *** *** *** *** A sampling from the documentary includes an interview with Cypress Perrin, who lived in the community for 36-years. "I just got some new 'non-neighbors.' It's the non-neighbor policy that we have now. You don't send the welcome wagon because they are not going to be there. The just buy the place and live somewhere else. They just buy the place and have someone come over and do their work. That's what I am go to have across the street," Perrin said. Perrin died in November 2001, shortly before the film's community center premiere. Perrin's two-bedroom home sold for $625,000 in March after being on the market for three months, according to real estate figures. The broker says the new owners plan on splitting their time between Bolinas and San Francisco. "When I walk past Cypress's house part of me is just screaming," said Lea Earnheart, who was also interviewed in Safe House. "Another part of me is happy that there might be a person with a family and will be fixing it up." Terry Donohue, an agent at Peter Harris Bolinas Real Estate, said she tries to match home buyers to the community and hopes for full-time residents. "For the general health of a community and to keep real estate values stable, it's better when a greater percentage of the community are full-time residents," Donohue said. She added, "Bolinas has a history of having a second home community. A second home community where homes have stayed in the family for generations. In some ways that kind of second home community is stable and healthy. Also, when the economy is shaky, real estate used for full-time occupancy has a better chance of retaining its value." Tom D'Onofrio said he had been coming to Bolinas since 1965 before moving there in 1967, and agrees that weekend residents there are nothing new. "Half of the houses on the mesa were empty in the mid-1960's," he says. D'Onofrio described the pivotal moment when the current "sense of community" was born. It was the morning of the big oil spill in January 1971, he says. As a habit back then, the renowned wood sculptor and Methodist minister would wake up at 5:30 a.m. and get ready for the day. "I turned on the radio and heard about the oil tankers colliding under the Golden Gate Bridge and that oil was washing up on Bolinas and Stinson Beach. I jumped on my horse and raced to the end of Poplar. What I saw there looking over the cliff made me cry." D'Onofrio said a thick sheen of oil was visible from his cliff-top vantage point -- and the odor of petroleum could be smelled even from that distance. Realizing that the tide was going out, and would be coming back in at 8:30 a.m., D'Onofrio knew there would be limited time to save the lagoon. He got the assistance of a neighbor to begin a phone tree: "Call 10 people and have each of them call 10 people." He arranged for bales of hay, giant logs and thick cable to be brought down to the end of Wharf Road, the inlet for Bolinas Lagoon. At 6:30 a.m, D'Onofrio was standing on the counter at Scowley's Restaurant (the site is now a clothing boutique), gathering up locals to come to the beach and deal with the community emergency. He recalled, "By 8 o'clock, there were 300-400 people -- 'rag tag hippies' -- descending on the Wharf Road side of the beach. As were were backing the truck loaded with big timber logs, a large voice boomed from out of the fog. Because of the fog and sunlight behind them, they could see us but we could not see them. The voice boomed, 'Do not drop those logs. This is the county of Marin speaking. You will be under arrest.'" "It was the quintessential Bolinas moment," D'Onofrio said. "Someone on our side said that on the count of three, raise your middle finger. It was like One, Two, Three -- Fuck you!" In that moment, said D'Onofrio, things became different. Nobody was arrested -- they were instead applauded. And Standard Oil supplied $1 million to the community for cleanup and future studies. In the following months, residents became more conscious of controlled growth in the town. Houses were going up overnight -- the end of a big building boom. D'Onofrio says that certain members of the BPUD at the time were property owners who had plans for developing the lagoon and other areas into recreational businesses and condos. Those BPUD board members were voted out -- and a new regime came in -- and with them came the water moratorium of 1971. *** *** *** *** *** Thirty-years later, Bolinas business owner and newspaper publisher Don Deane reflects on the moratorium and on the town's current housing crisis. "The water moratorium is real. No one fought it harder than I did," Deane said. "I thought it was completely unfair and inequitable. At one point, Paul Kayfetz was like my archenemy. It was like I was Luke Skywalker and he was Darth Vader. I'm sure Paul saw it the other way around." Over the years, Deane's viewpoint has changed. "If you don't look at the housing issue emotionally -- if you look at it pragmatically -- it's about supply and demand. The water shortage does exist -- it's been certified based on state ratios. If there hadn't been a water moratorium there would have been a sewage or septic moratorium. Maybe there would have been another 200-300 homes -- but then it would have been over. It wouldn't have affected the economy of the housing. The moratorium bought some time -- but it couldn't affect the underbelly. And the underbelly is economics and housing." So that's it, The moratorium came and saw and conquered. Too bad the victorious were the folks who didn't live there and who could afford a half-million dollar house. Deane said that a partial solution to the housing dilemma was something like the Gibson House project -- which will provide housing for eight to 12 in the community. Realistically though, he points out, half of those people were already living there before project began. The net gain will be three or four more people getting to live in a 12-by-12 foot room. As the community prepares for a new bed and breakfast high above the Bolinas Garage, I am struck by the idea that not much has really changed in my hometown. We used to party with the Jefferson Airplane down at the same house that has today's charter buses. We had celebrities dining in local restaurants -- like John and Yoko or Bob Dylan at the Gibson House, back in the early 1970's. We've had other musicians, artists, writers and film makers -- and some weekend residents who became pretty good friends once they got to know us. Another thing that hasn't changed is the incredible spirit of the community -- new and old. Recently we threw a benefit at the community center to help my younger brother, Tim, pay for his final year in law school. Chipping in a thousand big ones for Tim's fund were none other than the Buell's, whom Tim has never met. Three hundred locals showed up -- bringing checks or items to be auctioned. And there were some strangers. A woman at one of the tables said she had lived in town for three years. She said that her family moved here because of the kind of community spirit Bolinas has a reputation for having. That was funny to hear, because in all my years of living there, I thought we only had a reputation for ripping down road signs -- and for being reclusive. One thing this writer is convinced of: The community is not dead, and there is no need for an obituary. If anything, I feel the need to take out a classified ad in the Hearsay News. The ad would read, "If anyone is interested in an incredible tenant or caretaker for his or her estate, please contact me at (alexhorvath@sbcglobal.net). I want to come home." I want to come home. |