Congratulations to the graduating 8th graders of West Marin School. The best of luck as you go forward in high school. The changes come big and fast from here on out.
Sadly, there are only eight students graduating this year. This exodus of the young should be obvious to everyone and it’s not difficult to imagine the trend continuing until shortly there will be so few students in the Pt. Reyes area that the school itself cannot continue. One can chart a graph and see where it ends easily enough. If you add up the years of all the graduating class it barely approaches the median age of an Inverness resident.
In a decade or so when their formal schooling is over will any return to where they grew up? Let’s look at what they have to face:
The foul greedy monster himself, or at least his most apparent manifestation, greets the returning youth. Where to live? $850,000 will get you a small house but last I checked Wells Fargo isn’t issuing any 400-year mortgages. Master’s Degree in hand and a good job or not, just scratch the possibility of buying anything off your list. Probably forever. Go to Mississippi or South Dakota if you want the American dream. This surprises nobody certainly but it’s important in establishing where our youth stands, on what side of that fat green line he will find himself.
Let’s just suppose, so we can continue, that the problem of where to live is somehow surmounted and relatively affordable housing is secured. Housing—now there’s a word which puts one in his place immediately. Housing is for criminals, soldiers, and, in our case here, the poor. The old men and women of Inverness do not have housing, they have homes. Say to them “That’s a beautiful housing unit you’ve got there” and you’ll get some mighty queer, angry looks. It’s a telling, class-defining difference. Housing is for tenants, not landlords. People in housing refer to where they stay, not where they live. People in homes have a lifetime of memories; people in housing have a 30-day notice to vacate.
So a tenuous residency in the Pt. Reyes area is established which only eats up about three-quarters of his salary and gives him 150 square feet of a converted woodshed on someone’s three-acre estate. Try not to think about sharecropping or feudalism. As long as your face is white you’re okay. And certainly, if you’re living here your face is white. Very good. Time to enjoy. Hopefully, he likes the outdoors. The beaches and the trails are free, available to all (and never mind the irony that the only entity here whose purpose isn’t to turn a profit is everyone’s favorite target of contempt). As for cultural diversions—well, let’s just hope he likes ecstatic dance and bluegrass music. Maybe a one-woman show every now and then.
Or how about a nice dinner out? Well, for about what a new Model T cost in 1915 (and I use this as an example only because it will be familiar to so many people living here) you and your honey have the choice of about three different establishments determined to fleece every rich tourist rolling down State Route 1 with the promise of some foodie paradise.
And if our young couple enjoying dinner should marry and have a child or two? Let’s just hope that they never run out of diapers and have to make an emergency trip to buy some locally. Whatever savings they may have scraped together will be wiped out with a single package of Pampers. We’ve gone wildly out of balance here; the economy is warped by a tourist surcharge on everything from gas to bad, inauthentic Mexican food.
So who is to blame? Should we blame the rich who have gobbled up the houses only to let them sit vacant, gold in the vault, to be cashed in at some future age? We could, but they’re not here to blame and wouldn’t listen anyway. Bang your head against that wall a while, comrade. Besides, who was it that sold the house to them in the first place? The old. Or, more likely, the sons and daughters of the old who were left the house.
Must it be? Probably. The Grandi Building no doubt will be transformed into an expensive hotel with yet another overpriced, unwelcoming restaurant or two on the ground floor, not a community center. The few funky shops will close to be replaced by boutiques. The sound of children playing in Inverness will grow even more faint, then not heard at all. Houses will be sold at whatever price the market will bear, not a dollar less. It’s Capitalism son, nothing but, don’t look so appalled. Pt. Reyes will become an expensive museum, something to gawk at during lunch before roaring out of town again with a trunk full of souvenirs.
There is no amount of talk, no amount of writing, no amount of pseudo-grassroots signage or lockstep dogma going to make a difference when it comes down to money. We can Occupy Pt. Reyes and Ban Fracking all we want but we’ll need to gas up the Prius first before heading back to occupy our lovely million dollar Craftsman. Then again, who knows what seemingly innocuous event might change this ugly ancient course we’re set upon. Maybe one of our graduates, despite it all, comes back here determined to make it a home, not just a place to stay. Maybe you won’t even notice. We’ll grow our beards out and head to the mountains—symbolically of course, don’t worry.
Name withheld by author’s request.
Anonymous Submissions, Citizen policy:
Recently we have received some excellent submissions that, regrettably, were anonymous. Our policy is that sometimes they are permitted and appropriate, but handled case-by-case. One case was a person who gave a false name and address, which we didn’t consider for publication once we discovered that the name and address did not exist. We agreed to publish this week’s guest column without the name of the person after consulting with the author who lives in Inverness who has some concerns that the letter could put his family’s housing situation and livelihood at risk.
Published July 3, 2014