> and then to oppose a regional sewer system that might have opened the town up to development.
Don’t forget the part where they already took over the Water Department and stopped issuing new water meters after 1971. That also means no new housing, because housing has to have running water to be legal. For your benefit, we promise. I wonder what kind of “development” might have been opposed in the years after 1968?
How convenient for them that they were able to simply declare that a creek arising in a national park is the property of just the exact people who happened to be living there at a particular moment! I'm sure there was nothing exclusionary about it.
It's not like access to water is an unsolved problem in CA. We've moved heaven and earth to shift water thousands of miles and satiate millions of people in CA. Watering Bolinas is not technically impossible, it's only politically impossible. Given the property values, the residents there can certainly afford added taxes to go towards replacing their 100 year old infrastructure, but choose not to, as they have a mental philosophy that can be boiled down to "no new friends" at best, and boldface xenophobia at worst.
> At the heart of the complaint is the contention that, although a temporary water moratorium is one thing, an "emergency" lasting twelve years is a taking. They allege that it is the unlawful duration of the moratorium which constitutes the continuing wrong.
Note: This was written in 1983~4, so it's now been an "emergency" lasting fifty years :)
Meh. I lived in Marin County for 12 years, and visited Bolinas several times. The descriptions of people and the 'culture' in the TFA are really good -- but overall IMHO is a grand romanticizing of the place. It's a genuine "hippie town" that epitomizes a California of another time, for sure. Its sewage issues are real, and represent so much of the overall absurdity of the place. All that, and and the overarching hostility of its residents towards outsiders made them seem to me, ultimately, as being people not above it all, but more washed-out. Lots of hypocrisy there.
Marin is a truly strange land. I go up there a lot (I live in the South Bay) mostly to go hiking and maybe pick up some oysters in bulk for shucking at home, and the locals do seem to have a peculiar mix of traits that seems both genial and hostile all at once.
It’s like a museum curator: “look, but don’t touch.” They welcome you and your money, but only to the point of you changing anything about their cloistered lifestyle.
As someone who grew up there in the 70s and 80s this feels very much like an academic exercise in mental masturbation by someone who has never been there. It was an interesting read, but felt very separated from the reality I experienced.
I was a kid then, but my folks were beatniks. I never felt hippie-enough living there, but now am glad that my folks weren’t strung out as I had a pretty idyllic childhood; riding horses and being free to roam the village until dinner time but not as feral as some of my classmates.
Not hippie but also not outlandish. During the initial outbreak in China you would nog be allowed into town if you didn’t live there also if you were registered in another city you were supposed to be ‘there’. Sometimes towns and cities dug up roads so people could not try to sneak in. So from that POV it’s not hippie but it’s also not extraordinary.
The crossed-out-"NIMBYS" sign is my favorite one at that intersection considering nobody has been able to build a new home in Bolinas since the civil rights era.
I live in Marin, and have been going to Bolinas since childhood.
What has changed is amount of very wealthy people whom now consider the town their property.
They swoop in with their millions, and then complain? I'm sorry, but I don't get my wealthy Marin neighbors. They consider themselfs Liberal, but my goodness they are anything but tolerant.
What really gets me is why move to Bolinas if you don't like excentric hippy types? I'm not going to pretend to understand them. I try to avoid my wealthy neighbors.
Yes--Bolinas locals do not want outsiders. They tear down signs the county puts up.
That's about as far as they go. They are a friendly bunch. If ever there go to Smiley's Bar. The owner keeps track of overzealous Sheriifs, whom are itching for a marginal dui.
The wealthy threaten to sue, and complain about everything?
You used to be able to spend the night on the beach. That will bring a ticket now.
Surfers used to park overnight while traveling up, and down, the coast in their bus, but no more. Expect a ticket.
Bolinas still has a nice 60's vibe, and I'm glad it's not gone.
You probally know this, but hippies settled in Bolinas years ago. The land was cheap, and they loved the seclusion.
They got involved in politics, and decided if they wanted to keep the small town feel they woukd have to act quick. Developers were eying get all of West Marin for development.
The locals decided to issue only so many water hookups in order to control development.
In their wildest dreams, they never thought the area (all west Marin) would appreciate in value so much. Back then people with money wanted the city, or or within aiming distance to a country club.
That has changed, and they are quietly scooping up property, and bring their litigious uptight ways to a nice little town.
Oh yea, a deceased friend of mine was married to a drug dealer in the 70-80's. They came home from an opulent night of debsuchery, and dining, in San Francisco. Her husband was blotto, and decided he needed to hide his $800,000 at the beach, or in his yard in Mill Valley. He woke up the next day, and forgot where he buried it. He went to every beach, and nothing rang a bell. He dug up his yard, and nothing. Out in west Marin there $800,000 buried somewhere, or floated away with the tide?
Think about this treasure story when at the beach.
We have one other treasure story in West Marin. Something to do with days before the combustion engine. Something about a large amount of old currency buried, or in a tree?
My first treasure story is first hand knowledge. She had no reason you lie to me. Years later she told the new owners of her house the treasure story while in line at Safeway. She said the new owners looked at her like she was crazy.
> I'm sorry, but I don't get my wealthy Marin neighbors. They consider themselfs Liberal, but my goodness they are anything but tolerant.
Perhaps they (in the early '70s, not trying to attack you personally) had the good sense to realize the civil rights battle was over and they would have to try a more esoteric approach to keeping out the Undesirable masses: http://radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea
See also:
- successful opposition to BART over the GGB
- opposition to the Richmond Bridge (morphed into the fight for bike lanes)
- successful opposition to the Tiburon / Angel Island Bridge
- successful opposition to all freeways in SF that would have connected to the Golden Gate and spurred development in Marin: (the Embarcadero Fwy / I-480, the Central Fwy / US-101, the Western Fwy / I-80, and the Junipero Fwy / original I-280)
This is the 2nd time this article appeared on HN front page, and nobody even discusses the literary main theme of the article, they just jump right to the exclusionary politics of modern Bolinas and Marin County generally, which tells me that HN readers are way more concerned by the boomer legacy of housing crises than they are about the boomer legacy of inconsequential literature.
It is insanely exclusionary - they also like to take over / own a lot of the parks.
What a lot of the towns will do is post no street parking signs that are weekend only no street parking near all trailheads to any parks. This will be miles of no parking on super wide roads with big pullouts.
It's really pretty funny unless you have to walk the 2 miles to get the the (public) park or trailhead.
So lots of ways of taking the public goods and privatising them up there for sure!
This happens regularly all over california and it is the most dissappointing part of this state. We need more campgrounds and trailhead parking. Having like a 10 car lot for a trailhead is unacceptable, pathetic even. Closer to where I live, in the Palos Verdes peninsula, residents fight to remove public parking near beaches or trails all the time, and they tend to win these disputes. It's such a sad state of affairs how the rich can abuse our public resources to such a degree in this state.
I don't particularly care that they do it but what is absolutely comical is that where I am its the very very LIBERAL folks doing it (who are also rich).
You'll have like 5,000 acres of park, they'll shrink the parking to 10 car lot, then they will do a weekend ban on parking on the side of the street all the way to trailhead.
For those interested in the history of Bolinas, I recommend reading The Town That Fought To Save Itself.
For a broader history of how Marin is able to uniquely exist as parkland/farmland adjacent to a major metropolitan area, I recommend watching Rebels with a Cause.
For anyone interested in helping to preserve low-cost housing availability in Bolinas, I strongly encourage donating to the Bolinas Community Land Trust.
And as a final note on culture: for anyone considering purchasing in Bolinas, it's important to be mindful that it is important to actually _live_ there. There is a limited supply of housing, and vacation homes/rentals have a serious, negative, cultural impact on the town compared to full-time residents who will participate in the community over time.
Surely that ship has sailed. There are 40 properties in Bolinas listed on the Marin transient occupancy tax registry, and there are listings on Airbnb that aren't in the registry, too. It's one of the big issues with Prop 13. Half of the houses in Bolinas are owned by Dead Boomer Perpetual Family Trust. The heirs don't want to live there so they just throw the house up on Airbnb. The community gets nothing.
I agree about the importance of actually living there and contributing (_not_ monetarily) to the community. Several of my roommates in college grew up in Bolinas, and for them it was clearly a magical and a formative experience. But this is only achievable if you have a critical mass of intentional community builders residing there. Despite some downsides (only one of my friends has been able to continue living there in the long term) and trickling gentrification, Bolinas seems to have successfully clung on to that ethos for now.
I once visited and saw in a realtors window a water meter for sale for $300k dollars. No land. When I enquired why this water meter was so expensive the realtor said you can only connect a property to Bolinas water using an approved water meter, and this was the only one of its type available for sale. Crazy!
26 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 67.0 ms ] threadDon’t forget the part where they already took over the Water Department and stopped issuing new water meters after 1971. That also means no new housing, because housing has to have running water to be legal. For your benefit, we promise. I wonder what kind of “development” might have been opposed in the years after 1968?
> At the heart of the complaint is the contention that, although a temporary water moratorium is one thing, an "emergency" lasting twelve years is a taking. They allege that it is the unlawful duration of the moratorium which constitutes the continuing wrong.
Note: This was written in 1983~4, so it's now been an "emergency" lasting fifty years :)
I was a kid then, but my folks were beatniks. I never felt hippie-enough living there, but now am glad that my folks weren’t strung out as I had a pretty idyllic childhood; riding horses and being free to roam the village until dinner time but not as feral as some of my classmates.
But, during this pandemic, Bolinas showed its real colors: https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-in-bay-area-cases-corona-vi...
Not exactly 'hippie' in my book.
What has changed is amount of very wealthy people whom now consider the town their property.
They swoop in with their millions, and then complain? I'm sorry, but I don't get my wealthy Marin neighbors. They consider themselfs Liberal, but my goodness they are anything but tolerant.
What really gets me is why move to Bolinas if you don't like excentric hippy types? I'm not going to pretend to understand them. I try to avoid my wealthy neighbors.
Yes--Bolinas locals do not want outsiders. They tear down signs the county puts up.
That's about as far as they go. They are a friendly bunch. If ever there go to Smiley's Bar. The owner keeps track of overzealous Sheriifs, whom are itching for a marginal dui.
The wealthy threaten to sue, and complain about everything?
You used to be able to spend the night on the beach. That will bring a ticket now.
Surfers used to park overnight while traveling up, and down, the coast in their bus, but no more. Expect a ticket.
Bolinas still has a nice 60's vibe, and I'm glad it's not gone.
You probally know this, but hippies settled in Bolinas years ago. The land was cheap, and they loved the seclusion.
They got involved in politics, and decided if they wanted to keep the small town feel they woukd have to act quick. Developers were eying get all of West Marin for development.
The locals decided to issue only so many water hookups in order to control development.
In their wildest dreams, they never thought the area (all west Marin) would appreciate in value so much. Back then people with money wanted the city, or or within aiming distance to a country club.
That has changed, and they are quietly scooping up property, and bring their litigious uptight ways to a nice little town.
Oh yea, a deceased friend of mine was married to a drug dealer in the 70-80's. They came home from an opulent night of debsuchery, and dining, in San Francisco. Her husband was blotto, and decided he needed to hide his $800,000 at the beach, or in his yard in Mill Valley. He woke up the next day, and forgot where he buried it. He went to every beach, and nothing rang a bell. He dug up his yard, and nothing. Out in west Marin there $800,000 buried somewhere, or floated away with the tide?
Think about this treasure story when at the beach.
We have one other treasure story in West Marin. Something to do with days before the combustion engine. Something about a large amount of old currency buried, or in a tree?
My first treasure story is first hand knowledge. She had no reason you lie to me. Years later she told the new owners of her house the treasure story while in line at Safeway. She said the new owners looked at her like she was crazy.
Perhaps they (in the early '70s, not trying to attack you personally) had the good sense to realize the civil rights battle was over and they would have to try a more esoteric approach to keeping out the Undesirable masses: http://radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea
See also:
- successful opposition to BART over the GGB
- opposition to the Richmond Bridge (morphed into the fight for bike lanes)
- successful opposition to the Tiburon / Angel Island Bridge
- successful opposition to all freeways in SF that would have connected to the Golden Gate and spurred development in Marin: (the Embarcadero Fwy / I-480, the Central Fwy / US-101, the Western Fwy / I-80, and the Junipero Fwy / original I-280)
What a lot of the towns will do is post no street parking signs that are weekend only no street parking near all trailheads to any parks. This will be miles of no parking on super wide roads with big pullouts.
It's really pretty funny unless you have to walk the 2 miles to get the the (public) park or trailhead.
So lots of ways of taking the public goods and privatising them up there for sure!
You'll have like 5,000 acres of park, they'll shrink the parking to 10 car lot, then they will do a weekend ban on parking on the side of the street all the way to trailhead.
For a broader history of how Marin is able to uniquely exist as parkland/farmland adjacent to a major metropolitan area, I recommend watching Rebels with a Cause.
For anyone interested in helping to preserve low-cost housing availability in Bolinas, I strongly encourage donating to the Bolinas Community Land Trust.
And as a final note on culture: for anyone considering purchasing in Bolinas, it's important to be mindful that it is important to actually _live_ there. There is a limited supply of housing, and vacation homes/rentals have a serious, negative, cultural impact on the town compared to full-time residents who will participate in the community over time.
https://www.amazon.com/Town-That-Fought-Save-Itself/dp/03944...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2231578/
https://www.bolinaslandtrust.org/