Bolinas Grudgingly Opens Up

They do things differently in this corner of Marin County’s western coast. Balanced in the cleft of a misty forest, tilted toward the open sea, Bolinas behaves less like a town than an outlaw tribe at war.

Unhappy when Caltrans striped five miles of nearby Highway 1 with double yellow lines, residents painted them out. Offended by roadside call boxes that interfered with ocean views, they dismantled them. Unwilling to help outsiders find their tiny town, a 40-minute drive from San Francisco along mountain roads marked by sheer drops and hairpin turns, they tore down the 36 signs the California Department of Transportation had installed.

Over the years, the message has been clear: Leave Bolinas alone. But now, thanks in part to locals’ continuing passion about what happens in their backyard, change could be on the way.

Nearby Bolinas Lagoon, an inland finger of water that attracts 15,000 native and migrating birds each year, is filling up with silt. To save this local treasure, residents have sought and received more than $1 million in state, federal and county funds--an influx of cash that will fund a study of the problem and could leave the town beholden to the outside world.

With engineers, biologists, botanists, hydrologists and other experts expected to converge on the town, Bolinas could well need its dreaded road sign. No more giving bad directions that send visitors past the town and north to Point Reyes Station, something residents are known to do.

Tourists--and taxpayers--braving the drive to see the fruits of their investment in the lagoon will want to gas up their cars, have a meal, stay overnight. Will Bolinas bite the hands that feed it, or will the town of 1,500 be compelled to conform?

“Oh, no thanks, I think I’ll pass on that,” said Ron Miska, planning and acquisitions manager of the Marin County Open Space District, declining to step into the controversy. Miska will help oversee the three-year study that will propose solutions for the lagoon.

“There have been some problems with some of the tide-monitoring instruments being stolen, but the word has gotten out that this [study] is for the good of the lagoon and its wildlife,” Miska said. “We’re just getting started with the lagoon. We’ve got years to go, so we are working through local channels to get support, and my sense is the community will be behind us.”

The community in question has attracted notice far and wide for being difficult. Newspapers as far away as England, France and Australia have written about the Bolinas sign wars.

“It is a very political place, in the sense a lot of people are protective of the privacy issue,” said Phil Frank, a Bolinas Museum board member. “The residents have watched other towns . . . become marketplaces for tourist-oriented things rather than local services. They don’t want that to happen in Bolinas.”

The town’s insularity dates to 1971, when two Standard Oil tankers collided near the Golden Gate Bridge. More than 800,000 gallons of oil spilled into the straits and within hours, oil-soaked seabirds began struggling ashore.

Hundreds of hippies from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district descended on Bolinas to help. When the crisis ended, many stayed, entranced with the small town by the sea.

Bolinas’ newest residents became alarmed by recently drawn plans for aggressive development in the area. Rather than fight City Hall, they ran for office and became City Hall.

They promptly disbanded the Harbor District, which had been formed to develop the lagoon area, making development plans moot. The new residents next took over the unincorporated town’s water district and put a moratorium on new water meters. The result was zero development.

“The water moratorium was challenged by a group a few years ago and held up in court,” Frank said. “So it’s very difficult to build a house here.”

It can also be tough to run a business, which requires a careful balancing act.

The Bolinas Bakery exudes the local vibe. It’s a low-key place proud of having catered the Diablo Canyon Power Plant blockade in 1981 and a Barbara Boxer fund-raiser this year. A “Thank you for not smoking” sign in the entrance hall has been altered to read “Thank you for pot smoking.”

Realities Ignored

Yet its owner has been taken to task for flouting the anti-tourist attitude by advertising “over the hill” in San Francisco.

“To survive as a business, you have to be a combination of the two: serving the community and serving tourists,” said David Sobel, owner of the bakery.

“I’ve been doing this for 13 years, “ he said. “But it’s hard to support a family. It’s great for a hobby, but to make a living, there are certain realities you have to face.”

Houses are a different story. The Bay Area’s hot real estate market has reached even this isolated spot.

Homes that sold for less than $50,000 in the 1970s sell in the high $300,000 range today, and reach into the millions. Rents are rising and long-term residents are being forced from the area. So while money flowing to Bolinas Lagoon from the Coastal Conservancy, Army Corps of Engineers, Marin County and private donors may bring some change, the mitigating force continues to be the 25-year-old no-growth measures intended to keep Bolinas apart.

A longtime resident who declined to give her name looks with disdain on newcomers. “They come here with their Birkenstocks and their jeans, but they’ve got a cell phone in their Gucci handbags,” she said. “It’s a shame. It’s been changing for a while now, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Such change is inevitable, agrees Bill Fulton, editor of the California Planning and Development Report. “Restrictions on growth are going to increase home prices so long as there is a demand for houses in the area--that’s capitalism,” he said. “If they really want to restrict growth,” he added, “the only way to do it is to remove themselves from the market the same way they removed themselves from the map: Buy up the whole town and become a commune.”