The HDF Workshiop ended midday Friday, finally giving me a chance to get out and enjoy the city. Don’t get me wrong: I walked around the Tenderloin and Union Square neighborhoods a bit while window shopping and having dinner with some of the workshop attendees. But Friday afternoon I got the chance to see a museum and Adam Fuss at Fraenkel Gallery. And I even got a start on my Christmas shopping.
Yesterday I drove out to Davis to see Lucas and his mom and dad. (Apparently Leslie has a weblog but hasn’t told me how to see it.) On my way, I stopped in Dixon to see what happened since January. I tripped the shutter a few times as the heavy equipment worked in the background.
(This morning on the road to Bolinas I realized that I didn’t have film in the camera I used at Dixon. That’s reason #3 for getting a digital camera.)
I first learned about the hippy town of Bolinas in the Times a couple months ago when someone bought one of the town’s 580 water meters for $310,000 at auction. Place matters a lot to me, and I’ve found that my camera is my way to explore not only what a place looks and feels like, but the forces that make it that way, too. Bolinas seemed like an interesting place to visit.
The town was even stranger than I had expected. Despite the principles of love and peace that the flower-power era is alleged to espouse, the town has a genuine antipathy toward outsiders and a seething rage just below the thin veneer of civilization. Everyone seems to know everyone else — at least among the white folks — as with other insular communities. But unlike towns in Iowa and other places I’ve been in the West, the people in Bolinas either looked right through me or glanced at me and then, not recognizing me, ignored my greetings. Not some; no, all of them.
The town loves paint, too. Brightly colored murals along walls feature Jerry Garcia, dogs, cats, nature scenes, and so on. Simple, blank spaces may be anathema to this arty crowd, but it serves another purpose. The message behind the Bolinas border patrol sign echoes the graffiti that lines the sea wall: “Commuter surfers suck.” And while everyone in town knows each other, the writing on the wall says they don’t always like each other.
I was a bit worried that they would only have organic tea and whole foods at the general store. Fortunately my American money was accepted by the Patagonia-clad woman wearing surgical gloves behind the counter. I took my Diet Coke and Hostess Cup Cakes down the main drag in town, past the shop with the sign that says cell phones alter our DNA, and back to my car.
The rest of the drive up the Marin County coast was enjoyable. I watched a dark shape in the waters off Muir Beach for a while. I thought it might have been a whale when I saw the water break over it from the corner of my eye. “It’s not moving. . . . I think it’s a rock.” I looked over at the affluent woman who had walked down to the clifftop overlook with her dog. “Well, that would be disappointing, but I think you’re right.”
My last trip to the Bay, I headed south on Highway 1. Just outside of Carmel heading toward Big Sur this highway etched into the side of one of the continent’s deepest canyons narrows. My fear of heights and my love of driving cancelled each other out, and I enjoyed the lonely beauty of the central coast. The northern coast feels very much the same. Patches of trees fill nooks on steep, grass-covered hills. The road winds in switchbacks, a steep plunge to the ocean on the west side of the car.
But when I turned inland at Bodega Bay, the trees grew massive and tall. The air was so thick with the scent of cedars that it seeped into the car as I followed the Russian River upstream toward Sebastopol. California truly is amazing.
