Differing Visions of Future Pose Challenge for Guerneville

They agree on pretty much one thing out here along the Russian River, a stunning but snake-bit stretch of Sonoma County nestled between the wine country and the sea.

No one in this resort region wants the world to think of their hometown the way it looks on the news most winters--drowning under raging flood waters, buried beneath landslides, piled high with storm debris.

After that, however, all bets are off. Particularly now.

For the first time in 101 years as a tourist destination, the good people of the Lower Russian River are banding together to plan themselves a future, and there are about as many visions as there are residents.

“The River” is still one of the top 10 gay summer resort areas in the world, even after the AIDS virus savaged many hotel owners along with their clientele. The epidemic is abating, but questions remain about whether the gay heyday of the 1980s will be back to revive a flagging economy--and just how welcome a new generation of muscle boys might be here.

With its tall redwoods and ample campsites, this also has long been an affordable enclave, a sort of blue-collar summer home for middle-class Northern California. But with each flood has come a rush of renovation money, and many local innkeepers are working hard at going upscale, pricing the past right out of the future.

Normally dissent is not a concern in a region that shelters loggers and bikers, gays and lesbians, farmers, aging hippies and disenchanted urban dwellers looking for peace, quiet and a nice glass of Chardonnay.

But as they cobble together a blueprint for tomorrow, the 7,000 or so inhabitants of the struggling little towns along the lower stretches of this wide waterway are trying to figure out just who will be most welcome here if and when the region finally reinvents itself.

They wonder as they press for redevelopment money, as they enlist Vice President Al Gore in their efforts, as they try to plot a strategy for tourism: How precious can gritty Guerneville get?

How gay will its future be? Where do families fit in? Can one small region be home, say, to a clothing-optional resort for gay men, where registering guests are greeted with a basket of condoms, and a bed and breakfast that hosts family reunions--all within walking distance?

“There are resorts that cater entirely to the gay community and want that to come back. There are resorts that have nothing to do with the gay community, and they want more families. We are more upscale, and all we want are rich people. We don’t care what they are,” says A. Darryl Notter, who owns the graceful Applewood Inn with longtime partner James Caron and believes Guerneville “could be another Carmel.”

But only over a few dead bodies.

Attorney Barbara Barrett, executive director of the Russian River Chamber of Commerce, sees the Guerneville of the future as a destination prized for its “magical natural beauty.”

“There’s a casual ambience you can’t get other places,” says this transplanted lesbian from San Francisco, who heads up what passes for government here. “I see it keeping the flavor, not becoming another Carmel.”

Residents Feel Economic Pinch

For now, the specter of that hoity-toity hamlet is just that. Notter and Caron have little trouble filling their $275-a-night suites. But the hills surrounding their establishment are filled with rickety cabins designed for summer campers, not the hard-pressed residents who live in them year-round.

An estimated 51% of the children attending elementary school in Guerneville and nearby Monte Rio are eligible for federal free lunch programs. The housing stock needs to be brought up to code, the roads repaired, the sewer system expanded.

“We have had four presidentially declared disasters in three years,” says Bob Young, the gay owner of a coffeehouse who heads up the region’s new economic development task force. “I don’t know of any other community that’s had everything pulled out from under it--AIDS, flooding, the recession.”

Although life hasn’t always been quite this tough in what used to be known as Stumpville, Calif., “the metamorphosis of this town is tremendous,” says John C. Schubert, local historian and sheriff’s deputy.

Tourism took off in the late 1800s after early loggers clear-cut the ancient redwoods and sold off land for vacation development. Railroads brought in a steady stream of day-trippers traveling north to see the remaining big trees.

Until the mid-1920s, when a forest fire ravaged the area. And the 1930s, when the Depression hit. A turnaround began late in that decade and continued through the war years, when the big bands were a regular fixture along the river.

“You had the likes of Ozzie Nelson, Phil Harris, Harry James,” Schubert says. “‘The people from San Francisco’s Mission district came--the Irish, the Germans, the Italians. This was for the middle class. If you were rich, you went to Lake Tahoe.”

At its big-band peak, hundreds of thousands of tourists would clog River Road on weekends, jam the beaches, and fill the small resorts.

“After the war, we had the fabulous ‘50s,” Schubert says. “People came up in flocks. The freeways came along and brought them in droves.”

Then came the 1960s, when seekers after the alternative straggled in, lured by nature, privacy and cheap rent. Drugs and bikers followed. The river deteriorated, polluted by towns upstream. The resorts fell into disrepair. Families that had summered here for generations began to stay away.

Peter Pender, a wealthy Philadelphian, changed all that when he bought the old Murphy’s Ranch Resort, renovated the property and reopened it in 1978 as Fifes--the Russian River’s first gay playground.

What followed was nothing short of a revolution, with most of the larger resorts following in Fifes’ footsteps, adding discos and bars, hosting leather parties, Women’s Weekends and “bear” parties in honor of the eponymous hefty, hirsute homosexual men and their admirers, and advertising widely in the region’s gay press.

Weekenders from San Francisco’s Castro district thronged the area. Gay- and lesbian-owned businesses sprang up.

But while the influx revitalized the region, “it could get very tense downtown, with public displays of affection” that old-timers found offensive, says Larry McDonald, a local writer, Web site builder and former Chamber of Commerce president.

“When I came here in the early ‘80s, it was the Provincetown of California,” says John Casey of Oakland, referring to the Cape Cod, Mass., resort that styles itself as “the gayest place on Earth.” “In the early ‘80s, you came here or Palm Springs.”

But then recession hit, followed by the deepening AIDS crisis, major flooding in 1986, 1995 and 1997 and landslides this year. The owners of four major resorts--including Pender--and several resort managers died of AIDS.

At least six major resorts have changed hands in the last several years, victims of disasters both medical and natural, and at least two others have closed for good. From 100 to 150 hotel rooms are believed to have been lost--an estimated quarter of the available rooms and a big blow to the local economy.

“AIDS was pretty devastating--not only in the loss of life, [but] it sapped the emotion out of the town,” Young says. “There was heavy loss. It was like going through a war. That’s changed.”

The Lower Russian River was not the only gay resort area to feel the effects of the AIDS virus, says Agustin Merlo, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Assn. Provincetown was hit and so were Key West, Fla., and other popular spots.

“But the travel business survives because it adjusts to change,” Merlo says. Resorts like the Russian River “adjusted by offering more than just a party atmosphere, bars and stuff. . . . It’s a little more sophisticated, I think.”

In fact, many here believe that the basic Lower Russian River visitor has changed along with the town. Sure, an estimated 60% of all businesses in Guerneville are still owned by gays and lesbians. And yes, homosexuals make up close to 50% of the population, according to local real estate agents.

But by 1995, business at the gay and gay-friendly resorts had slid perceptibly, according to Barrett, although statistics are not kept on the sexual orientation of travelers.

Flooding Brings Appeal for Aid

That same year the region lived through the second-worst flood season in this century. Fifes endured $1 million in damage and was forced to close for a year. The river flooded twice in 1997. And earlier this year 140 homes were threatened by mudslides in neighboring Rio Nido; 40 are still uninhabitable.

The slides brought more than just misery to the waterlogged residents. They also brought Gore, who visited the area in February to inspect the devastation.

At a closed-door meeting with Russian River residents, coffeehouse owner Young raised his hand. “What can you do to help the community?” he asked the vice president.

Gore’s answer was more or less what the region could do to help itself: Put together a 10-year plan, addressing the money required and problems that need fixing. Then, apply to become an empowerment zone or enterprise community, to gain access to federal funds available to America’s hardest-hit neighborhoods.

And so began the community conversation.

The area’s resorts had already begun an effort to increase gay tourism by pooling money and advertising in gay publications from Los Angeles to Seattle as “Northern California’s Gay Playground.”

A human rights and education campaign was kicked off in response to a small number of verbal and physical assaults on gays in Sonoma County; now a caller to the Russian River Chamber of Commerce can book a room, find a canoe and report a hate crime with one phone call.

Town Meetings Focus on Future

Along with local activists Bill and Carolyn Dowd, a straight couple that moved here in 1983 to escape the bustle of Santa Rosa, Young started an economic development task force aimed at winning federal grants. Town hall meetings were convened and the debate began: Just what do we want our Russian River to be, five, 10, 20 years down the line?

High points from the discussion:

Carolyn Dowd: “There really aren’t jobs here. This strategic plan is about creating jobs--tourism and cottage industry. There’s a question: Is this predominately a gay resort?”

Barbara Barrett: “I don’t want to be just a gay resort. In order to survive, we have to accommodate gay people and families.”

Larry McDonald: “I believe very firmly that the future of this area is in family tourism, not in upscale resorts and wineries.”

Lynn Crescione, owner of Creekside Inn and Resort: “We’re near the wineries. We’ve got the redwoods. We’re on the river. We’re near the coast. We can appeal to the same people who go to Healdsburg or Napa on a year-round basis if we solve some of [our] problems.”

Creekside Inn, which welcomes all travelers but caters largely to straight families, is holding its own this year. And Crescione argues that family tourism is what has kept her going in flood years and drought.

Although this year’s tourist season had an inauspiciously wet Memorial Day kickoff, there have been signs that life along the Lower Russian River is picking up.

So far this season, resort occupancy rates have been healthy, says Judy Boyce, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce.

“Once the summer started this year, I’m really, really pleased,” she says. “The town has been bustling these weekends. If we can keep up this momentum through the fall, we’ll be in the ballgame.”

On Aug. 20, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved a plan to establish a redevelopment agency, which could pump $30 million to $41 million into the Russian River corridor to improve roads and sewer systems, woo private investors and upgrade the substandard housing stock.

And maybe, just maybe, the beautiful young men who put this area on the gay resort map will return to test the locals’ theory that a family resort and a gay resort can be the same resort.

Earlier this month, a San Francisco promoter of so-called circuit parties--controversial events that attract gay men from throughout the world--staged a morning party called Sundance. It was Guerneville’s first foray into a jet-set arena that more often favors urban settings over rural.

More than 1,000 buffed-out gay men--shirtless, chest-shaved and lightly oiled--landed on a grassy meadow at Fifes Resort one recent Sunday to cavort on a dance floor among the redwoods.

Anyone with a covered chest was woefully overdressed; anyone without a tan was seriously underclothed. Drinks flowed, music blared, nipple rings flashed in the summer sunlight.

A few of the Russian River’s older gay visitors questioned the hosting of circuit parties--which are viewed by some in the era of AIDS as opportunities for risky behavior--here among the redwoods.

Others noted wistfully that in the early 1980s, every summer weekend here looked a lot like this, all flat abs and traffic jams.

To Sundance promoter Gus Bean, a visitor here through good times and bad, the gyrating bodies spelled success--and a reason to bring the party back every year.

“In the early ‘90s it kind of died here,” Bean shouted over dance tunes blaring from man-sized speakers. “I thought the time was right for Guerneville. It needed TLC and some PR. The younger people had never been here. The older people thought it had floated off.”