FROM THE BOOK

It was in the 1960s that they came here to live on a shoestring and to party on the outskirts of that no-good, mainstream, conformist, 9-to-5 society. Janine Boneparth arrived much later, with a healthier budget that would buy her an upscale houseboat, but she still does her part to save the world, wearing peace earrings and picking up plastic litter from the ground each day as an environment- friendly gesture. There is a legacy at work here; a whisper carried on the salty winds, words that were once spoken in a hippie dream.

Decks and docks and, yes, dreams: wooden ships, cottages nailed to barges, shacks of the shotgun type, bulging flowerpots, luxurious and meticulously decorated homes, colliding colors and angles, rafts connected by haphazard walkways, electric wiring hanging perilously close to the water’s surface...

Some days, as the sun sets with a reddening apricot radiance, this may look like an Indochinese riverfront with rickety structures from salvaged materials piling up against one another, making use of whatever drifts by and has not yet sunk. Then turn your head just a few degrees and you are in pastel plastered Suburbia, where trimmed planters abound and design magazines knock on doors. Having made this their place on earth, the hippies and the upper middle class professionals now share the brackish tidal waters of Richardson Bay just north of San Francisco and they will all tell you that this is about feeling good, feeling free, and finding an attractive lifestyle off the beaten track.

Sausalito, the small coastal town on the northern side of the Golden Gate Bridge leading out of the city, is home to more than 400 houseboats; an impressive fleet and a vibrant floating homes community.

Once driven by notions about ecstasy and withdrawal from the rules and regulations of the mainstream, and the need for inexpensive housing, the place is becoming more gentrified by the day while insisting that the term ”alternative” still has a ring to it.

This stretch of shoreline, sheltered from the Pacific wind and pretty much secluded, had been used during World War II as a shipyard for landing vessels, cargo ships, and submarine chasers. The abandoned mudflats, filled with scrap, barges and recyclable materials, then caught the eye of the countercultural dropouts looking for rent-free, unpretentious quarters.

It was a peaceful occupation of what had just recently been military land.

Now you will encounter the lawyers and doctors and retired literature professors, who appreciate the relaxed and somewhat different lifestyle, the younger office workers who commute to the city on a local ferry, and some of the old-timers who fought for a hard-to-find Utopia. Today’s mix on the docks is fascinating, but the gentrification also generates mixed feelings, of course. There is an ongoing project aimed at moving some of the unstable and unsafe home-built boats with their totems and junk sculptures to new, more secure spots, integrating them into this separate world of real estate agents and interior decorators.

While these changes take place, the whole neighborhood still appears like a small universe of its own, filled with luscious plants, cozy breakfast decks and a myriad of imaginative boat names. - Lars Åberg