What 'Gorgeous' Bodega Bay Is Missing

BusinessWeek reader Peter Laufer says BW's recognition of his California community failed to mention that it's lacking one

By Peter Laufer

A resident of Bodega Bay, Calif., Peter Laufer is an avid BusinessWeek reader and a veteran journalist and published author whose next book is titled The Dangerous World of Butterflies. Sherry Loeser

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Item: BusinessWeek names Bodega Bay, Calif., one of the most expensive small towns in America.

Item: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat responds to the news with the headline, "Worth the Price."

Plenty of bumpers in Bodega Bay sport the too-cute sticker that reads, "Bodega Bay—a quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem." In fact, one of the most serious problems with Bodega Bay is neither fishing nor drinking. It is that this jewel on our coast—the place I call home—lacks even a remote sense of community.

Part of the problem is geographic. Bodega Bay stretches for a few miles hugging the coastline and its few streets are just offshoots of its main drag: Highway One. Summertime and weekends, Highway One is jammed with tourist traffic, and its lack of sidewalks and shoulders makes walking treacherous. There is no focal point or crossroads. Bodega Bay offers no main square, village green, natural or traditional gathering point.

Since the Tides remodeled, there's no saloon featuring the type of atmosphere that attracts tourists and locals alike. The Tides, which gained fame as one of the locations in Hitchcock's The Birds, now looks and feels more like an airport departure lounge than a place to play liar's dice and tell fish stories. We're lucky for the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop up at the north end of town, but it's too tiny to serve as a hangout. We have no library, bookstore, hardware store, drugstore soda fountain, or even a city park.

Fleeting Encounters

The closest thing to a community center in Bodega Bay is the post office. If we happen to show up at the same time to collect our mail, we may get a chance for a quick chat with neighbors. Funeral notices are posted ad hoc on the post office doors, and if we're lucky Jaime, Sue, or Mary may linger over local gossip when we buy stamps.

Exacerbating the geographic and commercial challenges to community-building is the social and economic stratification of the place. At the south end of town is Bodega Harbour, or "Harbor with a 'U'" as I call it in an effort to mock its pretentiousness. Bodega Harbour is our wannabe Sea Ranch, a golf course surrounded by fancy houses, most of them vacation rentals. On the west side of the bay, the University of California Marine Lab draws more short-timers: students and researchers. Old Town maintains the last vestiges of the fishermen and their wives who built the first houses along the bay. Abalone shells decorate their yards and boats sit on trailers alongside motor homes. Old Town still feels blue collar. The house trailers and cabins at Porto Bodega house much of our Mexican immigrant community.

But as a journalist, what I miss most of all is a local newspaper. Despite all of these challenges to community, a viable weekly Bodega Bay newspaper would serve a vital purpose: It would bring the 1,423 of us who live here together on its pages. It would introduce us to each other and tell of what's happening in our midst. It would unite this disparate collection of strangers who for whatever reason chose to settle here and it would help explain us to ourselves. Or as my wife says, "I live in a vacation paradise. May I go home now?"

Needed: A Rip-Roaring Read

Last year the Bodega Bay Navigator stopped printing and moved its operation to a minimal Internet presence. "Not enough advertising dollars," is the reason cited by editor and publisher Joel Hack (a great name for a newspaperman). "Bodega Bay is a small retail market, and the merchants in Sebastopol and Santa Rosa don't need us." Hack shifted his attention down to West Marin, joining with a handful of reporters and editors to start up a newspaper in Point Reyes Station to compete with the now infamous Point Reyes Light.