Historic Waterfront Photos at Bay Model

The Bay Model will exhibit photos from Catherine Lyons-Labate’s book SAUSALITO once upon a waterfront from February 15—March 26. These photos tell a story of people from all walks of life who came together on the waters of Sausalito and created a community like no other. Catherine hitchhiked to the...

The Fabulous Houseboats of Dal Lake

The more we learn about other floating home communities around the world, the more we realize what similar challenges we all face. The BBC has posted a short documentary on Dal Lake in the Kashmir region of northern India, where thousands of residents live on 910 houseboats. One Indian official...

The Shaman of Rainbow Bay

Recently we mentioned a plan, put forth by Michael Haas, to turn the drydocks in Richardson’s Bay into a “Lunar Village,” a completely self–sufficient biosphere. The plan never materialized, but that didn’t stop Haas, AKA “the Shaman of Rainbow Bay,” from creating another fantasy for an old dredging barge moored...

Dry Docks: Icon or Eyesore?

Long before Forbes Kiddoo’s man–made island gained fame in the 1980s, a set of dry docks became a major landmark in Richardson’s Bay. In a two–part series for Marinscope, Annie Sutter wrote about the four drydocks, “the many tons of wood, iron and granite ballast that were deposited in Richardson...

Love Letter to San Francisco

Recently, my wife Jane and I joined Julie Durbin and Ed Lopez at a performance of a circus–themed extravaganza called Dear San Francisco. This acrobatic love letter to our neighbor across the Golden Gate is being presented at the legendary Club Fugazi in North Beach. The beautiful bandbox of a...

The Godfather of the Waterfront

Donlon Arques is well known as the man who fostered Sausalito’s early houseboat community when he snapped up portions of the abandoned Marinship property and made them available to folks looking to live cheaply on the waterfront after World War II. But how did that come about? Arques was a...

Jim McCullough’s Pyramid Scheme

In 1988 Jim McCullough and Meli Cook moved to Liberty Dock from downtown Sausalito. But over a decade before that, what started as an idea to turn a quick buck on a national holiday morphed into a potential million-dollar idea for Jim. The story was told in a recent issue...

Richardson Bay Bridge Milestones

The recent announcement of late-night lane closures for emergency repairs to finger joints on the Richardson Bay Bridge aroused my curiosity about the history of the local landmark, which is a prominent feature of our view from Gate 6 ½ in Kappas Marina. In the Anne T. Kent California Room’s...

Silent Auction Kicks off Virtual Gala

The silent auction portion of the Floating Homes Virtual Gala and Tour is now open for bidding. You don’t have to be a ticket holder to bid, but you will need a ticket to watch the Virtual Gala at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 9. The auction closes at the...