Bolinas

Bolinas is supposed to be a California alternative town, a latter day hippie town, an off-the-grid kind of town, especially off the grid of mainlining American culture. CALTRANS used to put up signs on Highway 1 with arrows to Bolinas. The town would take them down. No sign is there today.

You expect to see old hippies and young hippies, all calm and cool in the fog of a Sunday morning. You are not disappointed. A cluster of unshaven old men in unwashed clothes lean back against wooden house steps, talking, a young man in unkept khakis takes patient care of an untidy two-year-old, a tie-dyed young woman gently pushes her child in a second-hand stroller, an old woman with blackened teeth and patched bluejeans repeats "inevitable" to everyone who passes by, a man with a guitar slung over his shoulder, wearing a tailored black coat, with a paisley scarf over his face, slow dances down Wharf Road and sings a cappella to himself.

But also the sheriff's deputy shuffles along, smiling, talking to all of the above, and to none of the following: heroic bare-chested surfers manly striding out to meet the waves, moustached, leather-clad bikers, cyclists in motley tights, affluent French tourists digitally taking photos, a middle-aged, well-to-do American man, alone, sitting on the lone stump in the deserted bare-grass park and afterwards ordering a meal and beer at the Coast Cafe, not eating the former but drinking the latter, elbow on table, head on hand, staring.

The center of town is an altar of flowers and antelopes, angels and buddhas, lots of them. Next to it are multi-colored sheets of paper to write messages "for divine love nectar to bubble up throughout America's communities." Ernesto Sanchez left an artist's statement, "A spirit house, a shrine, an altar--each is a manmade object that offers a portal to the unknown." The guitar man says to the sheriff's deputy, "Dude, that's what got me to reality."

Behind Bo*Gas is a little outdoor, sort of a non-gallery. On the rear door is written, "Wharf Road will only give you life."