Larry Moyer faced me beyond a anarchic board table in the sitting allowance of the houseboat Evil Eye.He was cutting a amber suede vest.His eyes gleamed affably below a amethyst beret.A white bristles billowed down his neck, blubbery as the smoke from his attenuated atramentous cigar.
Though Shel Silverstein has been gone 13 years, his spirit seemed to be with us as we airy in his aloft houseboat.Moyer—a filmmaker, painter and columnist who now admiral the Evil Eye—traveled with The Giving Tree columnist for years, if they formed calm as a writer/photographer aggregation for Playboy during the magazine’s aboriginal two decades.That was a while ago; Moyer angry 88 beforehand this year.But he acutely recalls the adventure of how he and Silverstein accustomed here, in Sausalito’s allegorical houseboat community, 45 years ago.
“In February 1967, if I lived in a Greenwich Village apartment, a acquaintance beatific me a altogether present: A woman alleged Nicki agape at my door, accustomed a hot pastrami sandwich and a pickle.” Accepting just alternate from San Francisco, Nicki appropriate that the blossom Haight-Ashbury arena would accomplish a abundant affection for Playboy.
“So Shel and I got beatific out West.We spent three months in the Haight.While we were there, we visited a acquaintance of Nicki’s—rock guitarist Dino Valenti—here on the Sausalito waterfront.”
Moyer and Silverstein took in the scene.“There were a few hundred boats.It was absolute freedom.The music, the people, the architecture, the nudity—all we could say was, ‘Wow!’ So Shel bought a boat, and I bought a boat.And that was that.”
Today, 245 amphibian homes adenoids into the 5 docks at Sausalito’s Waldo Point Harbor.The scene’s a bit beneath wild.Pilots, physicians and admiral now allotment the Richardson Bay beach with artists, writers and abiding sea salts.Some of the houseboats are simple and unpresuming, aggressive with adhesive gnomes and patrolled by tomcats.Others—custom-built dream homes admired upwards of $1.3 million—have appeared in films and magazines.And admitting the characters are as alluring as they were in the ’60s, there’s a notable abatement in accessible nudity.
Walking the docks in the aboriginal morning is a abstracted experience: an escape into a annex of ample light, attenuate motion and seabird calls.
The array of houseboats is astonishing.Though they’re physically close, the architectural styles are worlds apart.Each reflects the acuteness (and/or means) of its owner.Some attending like shotgun shacks, others like pagodas, bungalows or Victorians.Most baffle a class altogether.There’s the arresting Owl, with its horned board belfry and believing windows; the SS Maggie, a aloft 1889 beef schooner, now appointed like Thurston Howell III’s retreat; and the Dragon Boat, with its categorical bottle and Asian statuary.Quite a few attending like what they are: aloft Navy ships, reimagined as clandestine homes.They acceleration up from barges, tugboats, World War II landing craft, even subchasers.A couple, including the Evil Eye, are congenital aloft airship barges, ships whose lofted cables were advised to allurement kamikaze aircraft.
Beyond the docks, a few alone houseboats bedrock in the accessible bay.These are the “anchor-outs”: aloof water-dwellers who await on row boats and top tides to accumulate their homes provisioned.One of them is Moyer’s painting studio.The others accord to added ambiguous souls.They accommodate the adjacency an air of mystery.
Larry Moyer’s accession adventure isn’t typical, but his activity for the abode wasn’t unusual.For assertive people, activity on the baptize has a alluring appeal.Even today—as the anchorage prepares for a makeover that will abolish abundant of its acclaimed past—the docks action a faculty of association and an adorable ambiance activate about boilerplate else.
The houseboat era began in the backward 19th century, if flush San Franciscans kept “arks”—floating anniversary homes—on bounded rivers and deltas.After the 1906 earthquake, some became semi-permanent refuges.
But the avant-garde annex of Sausalito’s houseboat change began afterwards World War II.Marinship Corporation, on Richardson Bay, operated a ability for architectonics Liberty ships: basic transports that agitated burden into the Pacific theater.More than 20,000 bodies formed acutely on that effort.When the war ended, though, Marinship accomplished operations about overnight.Tons of wood, metal and atom were larboard behind.Richardson Bay angry into an amphibian deliver yard, a flat basin of possibilities.
Ecologist and Whole Earth Catalog artisan Stewart Brand, who has lived on the tugboat Mirene aback 1982, tells how “the aloft shipyard became a semi-outlaw breadth and riffraff confused in—floated in.” During the 1950s and ‘60s, as the Beats gave way to the hippies, the adventitious to assemble rent-free homes out of alone boats and flotsam was a siren song that drew a spectrum of characters.Some were alive artists, like Moyer, who bought and bigger old boats.There were aswell musicians, biologic dealers, misfits and added fringe-dwellers.The beach swelled into a association of squatters who, as Brand puts it, “had added assumption than money.”
“People lived actuality because they could allow it,” agreed Moyer.“You could acquisition an old acquit bark to body on, and there was consistently being to recycle because of the shipyards.Whatever you wanted.If you bare a axle of copse ten anxiety connected by one bottom wide, one would appear amphibian up.” Through the aboriginal 1970s, the Sausalito houseboat arena was a array of agitator commune.The affection and body was the Charles Van Damme, a abaft 1916 bear that served as association center, restaurant and rumpus room.
Shel Silverstein wasn’t the alone celebrity in the mix.Artist Jean Varda aggregate the bear Vallejo with Buddhist writer/philosopher Alan Watts.In 1967 Otis Redding wrote his hit “Dock of the Bay” on a Sausalito houseboat (which one, exactly, is still a amount of controversy).Actors Sterling Hayden, Rip Torn and Geraldine Page all kept amphibian homes.The cycle alarm would in time cover Brand, columnist Anne Lamott, Bill Cosby and environmentalist Paul Hawken.
But the acceptable times didn’t last.A paradise for some, the anarchic community—with its absurd architecture, filched electricity and basic sewage—was an atrocity to others.Local developers set their sites on revamping the Sausalito waterfront, with its boundless absolute acreage potential.
At the park’s bend angle the aged paddle caster and beef assemblage of the Charles Van Damme, all that abide of the now austere ferry.Doug Storms, a bartering diver who has lived on the beach aback 1986, led me accomplished a baby beach garden.
“In the 1960s and aboriginal ‘70s, there was the archetypal action amid the haves and have-nots,” said the able-bodied Storms."Between the developers and the bounded community, abounding who were active actuality rent-free."
The aftereffect was a connected and animal action accepted as “The Houseboat Wars.” Dramatized in a aloof 1974 blur (Last Free Ride), the action pit the waterfront’s face association adjoin the accumulated ability of the bounded police, city-limits board and Coast Guard.
Ultimately, the developers added or beneath prevailed.Most of the houseboats were relocated forth a alternation of 5 new docks, congenital by the Waldo Point Anchorage company.Their electricity and carrion curve are now up to code.The action of gentrification on the new docks has been abiding and not altogether unwelcome.Though they barb at the account blooper fees, abounding old-timers accept apparent the amount of their amphibian homes skyrocket.
But a baby association of mavericks, including Storms, banned to be bullied.The “Gates Co-op,” as their berth is called, charcoal a bequest to the old days.With its tangles of electrical wire, fluctuant walkways and aberrant sanitation, it looks added like Katmandu than California.
And so it will break untilJuly, if Waldo Point Anchorage is declared to activate a long-delayed reconfiguration process.Along with abounding added “improvements” (depending on your point of view), the blue address will be dismantled, and its association relocated in subsidized houseboats at new or absolute berths.
Will it in actuality happen? No one knows.The obstacles to accepting annihilation done on the beach assume endless.There’s a much-loved archetype of this phenomenon, accepted artlessly as “the pickleweed story.”
Some years ago, the adventure goes, a dupe lived at the address docks.It aching freely, agriculture all the adjacent pickleweed.Then, as now, the parking lots abreast the docks abounding at top tides, sometimes antibacterial cars.The locals had a permit—approved by the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers—to accession the parking lots, application landfill.
As happens every few years, the Army colonel in allegation was rotated out.Around the aforementioned time, the dupe died—and the pickleweed grew back.When the new colonel toured the area, he befuddled his head.“Pickleweed agency these are wetlands," he said.“And you’re not accustomed to body on a wetland.” And so, for the accident of a goat, went the permit.
“Every year they say they're traveling to do the reconfiguration,” Joe Tate abreast me with a grin.“But annihilation has afflicted actuality actual much—not aback they austere the Charles Van Damme aback in 1983.”
Anniversary berth at Waldo Point Anchorage has its own audible personality and a akin pride."South 40" hosts some of the quirkiest houseboats, including the majestic old Owl. (Jeff Greenwald)
Today, 245 amphibian homes adenoids into the 5 docks at Sausalito's Waldo Point Harbor. (Panoramic Images/Getty Images)
Artisan Jean Varda aggregate the bear Vallejo with Buddhist writer/philosopher Alan Watts. (Jeff Greenwald)
Henry and Renée Baer accept lived on the "Train Wreck," one of the a lot of arresting dwellings on the Sausalito docks, aback 1993.It was congenital by artisan Keith Emons about the bisected accustomed of a 1900 Pullman car. (Jeff Greenwald)
Appearance of the kitchen from the author's busy houseboat at berth South 40. (Jeff Greenwald)
Larry Moyer—a filmmaker, painter and columnist who now admiral the Evil Eye—traveled with Shel Silverstein for years, if they formed calm as a writer/photographer aggregation for Playboy during the magazine's aboriginal two decades. (Jeff Greenwald)
Joe Tate accustomed in Sausalito in 1964 and was the insubordinate baton during the Houseboat Wars.He was aswell the advance singer/guitarist for the allegorical RedLegs, the waterfront's acquaintance bedrock band. (Jeff Greenwald)
Ecologist and Whole Earth Catalog artisan Stewart Brand has lived on the tugboat Mirene aback 1982. (Jeff Greenwald)
Doug Storms, a bartering diver, has lived on the beach aback 1986.According to him, "In the 1960s and aboriginal '70s, there was the archetypal action amid the haves and have-nots." (Jeff Greenwald)
Walking the docks in the aboriginal morning is a abstracted experience: an escape into a annex of ample light, attenuate motion and seabird calls. (Jeff Greenwald)
The belligerent Tate, now 72, accustomed actuality from St.Louis in 1964.He was the insubordinate baton during the Houseboat Wars, and advance singer/guitarist for the allegorical RedLegs, the waterfront’s acquaintance bedrock band.(Their accepted incarnation, The Gaters, plays a lot of Saturday nights at Sausalito’s No-Name Bar.) Tate grew up forth the Mississippi, area his ancestor was a riverboat pilot.His canoeing and architectonics skills—and adventuresome acceptable humor—are axiomatic to anyone who’s seen Last Free Ride.
“I’m accepted as the ‘King of the Waterfront,’ and I don't apperceive why.” Tate conceded.“I did advance the allegation adjoin the developers—but in 1976, in the average of the accomplished thing, I sailed abroad with my family.” Tate, weary of the affiliated struggle, headed south.“We went to Costa Rica, to Mexico and to Hawaii.I anticipation we were traveling to acquisition something better.” He shrugged.“We didn’t.”
Tate confused aback to the beach in 1979.He now lives on the Becky Thatcher: the aforementioned houseboat (albeit renovated) that Larry Moyer bought in 1967 for $1,000.From his active allowance window Tate can attending assimilate a ample channel, belted by amphibian homes.“They say they’re traveling to ample all that up with boats from the co-op.I’m not analytic advanced to that,” he sighed.“But a lot of the bodies they’re traveling to accompany over are old accompany of mine.”
I asked Tate if he feels that, in retrospect, the Houseboat Wars were won or lost.
“We didn't lose completely,” he said.“I mean, they were traveling to run us out of here!” By angry back, the Gates Address bodies accomplished an acceding with the developers; those who confused assimilate the Waldo Point docks got 20-year leases.“So we’ve acclimatized into a abiding accompaniment of exploitation,” the aloft insubordinate sighed, “where the hire goes up every year.”
“But we’re managing,” he accustomed cheerfully.“With all the old ‘Gaters’ and the new people, too.After all these years, we’re still a community.”
There are pros and cons to houseboat living, but Tate hit the attach on the head.One afternoon, while exploring the docks with a San Francisco physician alleged Paul Boutigny, I accepted the accent of association to this ascendancy of Sausalito.
Boutigny and his wife are new arrivals on Main Dock, accepting confused there from the Haight in 2010.Young and affluent, they represent the oft-maligned trend against gentrification.Still, they’ve been accustomed by their neighbors.Sharing a meal with Boutigny, who’s acutely bugged by his new neighborhood, it’s simple to accept why.
“Everybody who moves actuality brings something different,” he said passionately.“And everybody, affluent or poor, is allotment of the waterfront—from the anchor-outs to the huge houseboats at the ends of the docks.Everybody’s affiliated by one fact: We reside on the water.Now that doesn’t beggarly that we all apperceive anniversary other.But there’s a commonality we all share.”
“There are bodies on welfare, there are millionaires, there are outstanding artists, there are computer whizzes,” agreed Henry Baer, a retired dentist on berth South 40.“I’ve lived in accommodation barrio with 20 units; maybe you apperceive your next-door neighbor, because you accommodated them at the mailbox.Here, walking to and from your boat, you accommodated bisected the bodies on the dock.Yes, we all appear from assorted bread-and-butter backgrounds.But if there’s a problem, everybody comes out and helps one another.”
Day afterwards day, on berth afterwards dock, I heard acknowledging stories: bodies traveling out in kayaks, blockage their neighbors’ moorings afore an El Niño storm; houseboats rescued from blaze or flood, even while the owners were on addition continent.There’s an accepted cipher of cooperation, choleric by a hard-wired account for privacy.
“It’s not something we indoctrinate bodies about,” said Larry Clinton, admiral of the Sausalito Historical Society and a houseboat citizen aback 1982.“We don’t put bodies through an acclimatization if they move here.They just get it.It’s the a lot of amazing abnormality of self-help in a association that I’ve encountered.”
Another big advantage is that the community, as Clinton acicular out, is not bound to humans.“The angle and birds change from division to season—even with changes of the tide, because some birds adopt low tide.The egrets and herons appear out afresh and beak thru the mud.”
A sea bobcat swam past, casual briefly at its animal neighbors.Clinton laughed.“My wife says that analytic out our bottle doors is like accepting the Nature Approach on all day long.”
Not all the creatures are as benign.At low course raccoons can access houseboats through accessible windows, causing comestible mayhem.And in the summer of 1986, Richardson Bay association were bedeviled by an awesome thrumming that articulate like a Russian sub, or an conflicting spaceship.A abyssal biologist was alleged in.He apparent that the babble came from creatures alleged bustling toadfish, which absorbed themselves to the hulls during alliance season.(Instead of angry the creatures, the association alleged an anniversary anniversary afterwards them.)
What abroad goes wrong? Well, the parking lots still flood at top tide.And accustomed a amount of advantage amid car and baiter is no fun in the active rain.
Sometimes, just the angle of a “floating home” is abundant to agitation newcomers.Henry and Renée Baer accept lived on the “Train Wreck,” one of the a lot of arresting dwellings on the Sausalito docks, aback 1993.Built by artisan Keith Emons about the bisected accustomed of a 1900 Pullman car, it’s a masterpiece—and a awe-inspiring investment.
“In the aboriginal days, every time we came aback from a cruise I would run up the berth in a panic,” Renée confessed, “until I could see our roof.Then I’d animation a blow of relief, because I knew it was still there.It hadn’t sunk, or floated out to sea, with all my clothes and aggregate gone.”
Realistically, though, houseboat owners accept beneath accustomed catastrophes to argue with than their accompany in San Francisco or the Oakland Hills.
“We don’t affliction about earthquakes here,” Stewart Brand acicular out as we aggregate cafeteria aboard Mirene.“Or wildfire.We don’t even affliction about sea akin acceleration actual much…yet.” (Of all the houseboats, I learned, Mirene is the alone seaworthy vessel.The docks are added like a bivouac esplanade than an RV campground, with a lot of of the houseboats encased in accurate hulls.It’s a Faustian bargain: They’re adequate from rot and ocean bacilli at the amount of immobility.)
“And I was afraid to discover,” he continued, “that the absence of copse is not a bug, its a feature.Leaves do not abatement on your deck.Trees do not abatement on you.And if you wish to see the sun, its consistently there.”
South 40, “A” Berth and Liberty; Main and Issaquah; anniversary of the five-plus Waldo Point docks feels like a affiliated settlement, with bloodlines extending beyond the waterfront.All accept a audible personality and a akin pride.Some are accepted for their abundant plantings, others for their camp sculptures, cocktail parties, beastly cats, or flights of architecture.
South 40, area I spent several bitter nights, won my fealty.It hosts some of the quirkiest houseboats, including the majestic old Owl, the Train Wreck, the Becky Thatcher and the Ameer, the alone aboriginal 19th-century ark still afloat on Richardson Bay (and the aloft home of admired Sausalito biographer and artisan Phil Frank).
Though every berth is different, calm they’re a subculture.It’s not simple to assort the bodies who approach against houseboats—but allure with the ever-changing abyssal ambiance is a accepted denominator.
Cyra McFadden, a biographer and editor whose 1977 The Serial peeled the appearance off the Marin amusing scene, has lived at Waldo Point for 14 years.Her ample home, with its fireplace, affected artworks and picture-book appearance of Mount Tamalpais, “is absolutely a boondocks abode on a barge,” McFadden acknowledged.“It doesn’t feel decidedly like a boat.But it moves—ever so slightly—and the appearance will change through the window.Or I’ll be at the table accepting breakfast, al of a sudden acquainted that the wind is advancing from a altered direction.I adulation the acrid noises, and the bubbles that the baiter makes if the course comes.I adulation the actuality that this abode is alive.”
“I anticipate bodies appear actuality because they don’t wish to feel boxed in,” added Susan Neri, a account artisan who lives aboard the baby but comfortable landing craft Lonestar.“It’s an ecosystem area the baptize meets the land, and annihilation is absolutely the aforementioned from day to day.There’s aswell the reflective quality of active here.It may appear from the reflections that we reside with every day, off the bay and the boats, in the abode and all about us.” She looks out her window, a active appearance of clouds and gulls.“For me, its a bit of active on the edge,” she said.“It’s magical.I can’t brainstorm active on the acreage again.”
My final afternoon, I stop by the Evil Eye for a chat with Larry Moyer.The beach academician greets me acquiescently and lights up a cigar.
“I’m a bit overwhelmed,” I acquaint him.“I’ve heard added belief than I can possibly absorb.But I’m still analytic for a through-line; something to tie it all together.”
Moyer nods.A war-torn bobcat curls up in his lap.“Look abaft you,” he says, “and weep.”
I about-face around.There’s a bookshelf aloft his desk, overflowing with blur reels, videotapes and cassettes.During his decades as a columnist and artist, Moyer has attempt hundreds of hours of film: scenes of the houseboats, the community, the music, the blue escapade on the docks.I about-face aback to him, afraid by this abundance of footage.Moyer cool and shrugs his shoulders.
“I’ve lived actuality 45 years,” he says.“And I don’t accept a through-line!"
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