1970s San Francisco geography/research
October 23, 2014 10:59 AM Subscribe
Please help me with some basic research for my planned NaNoWriMo novel for November! It will be set in and around late 1970s San Francisco. I have one specific question regarding surrounding geography, and a request for general ideas/inspiration inside!
A big chunk of the story will take place at the headquarters/compound of a (made-up) cult, and I'm unsure where to place it. The property I'm envisioning would be several acres and include a farm. I'm looking for somewhere rural without any close neighbors that would be roughly an hour's drive from SF. The cult would have been there for at least 10-15 years by the late 70s. Can someone provide me with ideas about a good geographical area to set it in?
Also, I'm just looking for anything to get me in the mood for writing about 1970s California! For example, I really enjoyed "Season of the Witch" by David Talbot, a nonfiction history of SF from the 60s to the 80s, but I'd love suggestions of movies to watch, fictional books to read, albums/soundtracks to listen to, good pictorial archives online to look at. Thanks!
A big chunk of the story will take place at the headquarters/compound of a (made-up) cult, and I'm unsure where to place it. The property I'm envisioning would be several acres and include a farm. I'm looking for somewhere rural without any close neighbors that would be roughly an hour's drive from SF. The cult would have been there for at least 10-15 years by the late 70s. Can someone provide me with ideas about a good geographical area to set it in?
Also, I'm just looking for anything to get me in the mood for writing about 1970s California! For example, I really enjoyed "Season of the Witch" by David Talbot, a nonfiction history of SF from the 60s to the 80s, but I'd love suggestions of movies to watch, fictional books to read, albums/soundtracks to listen to, good pictorial archives online to look at. Thanks!
Jim Jones' People's Temple was about two hours up 101 in the Ukiah/Redwood Valley area in the 1960s, before they moved to San Francisco. I don't know if that would make it a good choice for your fictional cult or not, because you might want to avoid any too-obvious parallels with such a notorious group.
posted by theodolite at 11:10 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by theodolite at 11:10 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Near Bolinas in Pt. Reyes (had a ton of hippie communes in the 60s and 70s...and still has some).
posted by amaire at 11:22 AM on October 23, 2014
posted by amaire at 11:22 AM on October 23, 2014
Watch Dirty Harry.
posted by jeffamaphone at 11:24 AM on October 23, 2014
posted by jeffamaphone at 11:24 AM on October 23, 2014
West Sonoma County!
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:31 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:31 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
North Bay, pretty much anywhere in Marin or western Sonoma County (west of 101) has at had some sort of commune going on at one point or another (I have friends in Guerneville living in the still extant remnants of one that started in the late '70s). After living in Fairfax and the San Geronimo valley for a while, and hanging out in Sebastopol (even though I live in Petaluma), I pretty much can't read a Bay Area based commune or cult novel without thinking "okay, which of the various places I've heard about from all of the long timers is this a send-up of?"
Heck, I've had at least 5 different people tell me that T. C. Boyle's Drop City was definitely absolutely about "their" commune, none of those being the same place.
So, yeah, amaire's suggestion of the Bolinas area, the San Geronimo or Nicasio valley, or pretty much anywhere in western Sonoma County would work. If you need towering redwoods and a more enclosed feel, there's the Russian River area, outer Lucas Valley further south, if you want neighboring farms and a more open feel head further south on the west side.
What geography do you need? Does "without any close neighbors" mean "target practice and the neighbors won't investigate" or "run out in the middle of the night and there's no other door in walking distance to bang on"?
posted by straw at 11:35 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Heck, I've had at least 5 different people tell me that T. C. Boyle's Drop City was definitely absolutely about "their" commune, none of those being the same place.
So, yeah, amaire's suggestion of the Bolinas area, the San Geronimo or Nicasio valley, or pretty much anywhere in western Sonoma County would work. If you need towering redwoods and a more enclosed feel, there's the Russian River area, outer Lucas Valley further south, if you want neighboring farms and a more open feel head further south on the west side.
What geography do you need? Does "without any close neighbors" mean "target practice and the neighbors won't investigate" or "run out in the middle of the night and there's no other door in walking distance to bang on"?
posted by straw at 11:35 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Oh, duh: I read your question a little more carefully:
Maybe read up a little on some of the members the Baulines Craft Guild, like Art Espenet Carpenter, for some of how the back to the land hippies interacted with both the richer San Franciscans and those who'd already established a rural lifestyle as the '70s evolved.
Obviously, anything about the Grateful Dead in Marin. The aforementioned T.C. Boyle's Drop City.
Higher profile and easy to find web content on: Not established for a decade or so, but the Green Gulch Farm zen center, Spirit Rock was purchased in the '88, but a good portion of that community was probably banging around west Marin for a decade or two prior.
posted by straw at 11:46 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Maybe read up a little on some of the members the Baulines Craft Guild, like Art Espenet Carpenter, for some of how the back to the land hippies interacted with both the richer San Franciscans and those who'd already established a rural lifestyle as the '70s evolved.
Obviously, anything about the Grateful Dead in Marin. The aforementioned T.C. Boyle's Drop City.
Higher profile and easy to find web content on: Not established for a decade or so, but the Green Gulch Farm zen center, Spirit Rock was purchased in the '88, but a good portion of that community was probably banging around west Marin for a decade or two prior.
posted by straw at 11:46 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: What geography do you need? Does "without any close neighbors" mean "target practice and the neighbors won't investigate" or "run out in the middle of the night and there's no other door in walking distance to bang on"?
That is a really excellent and appropriate way to phrase it, in fact. Probably closer to the former.
posted by skycrashesdown at 11:47 AM on October 23, 2014
That is a really excellent and appropriate way to phrase it, in fact. Probably closer to the former.
posted by skycrashesdown at 11:47 AM on October 23, 2014
Armistad Maupin's Tales of the City is a good read. Bone up on Glide Memorial Church, that's where you went if you were just not into cults. So it's possible that a character could have attended there. FWIW that's where my family went.
My grandparents had 5 acres in Watsonville where they grew a metric shit-ton of pot. It had two houses on the property, and a fense around one of them housed the mutant, sticky plants. The rest of the farm had fowl, hogs and a steer. Also gardens and a creek. Bucolic and yet...we weren't a cult though. If anyone came around it just looked like hippies lived there. With old people.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:04 PM on October 23, 2014
My grandparents had 5 acres in Watsonville where they grew a metric shit-ton of pot. It had two houses on the property, and a fense around one of them housed the mutant, sticky plants. The rest of the farm had fowl, hogs and a steer. Also gardens and a creek. Bucolic and yet...we weren't a cult though. If anyone came around it just looked like hippies lived there. With old people.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:04 PM on October 23, 2014
West Sonoma, indeed. Sabastopol.
posted by humboldt32 at 12:11 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by humboldt32 at 12:11 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
If you want your cultists to interact with growing suburbia, you could go east. Brentwood, Antioch, Oakley, Discovery Bay - all those are still ruralish, and in the 70s were very much of the firing guns, nobody cares, but suburbia was slowly catching up.
posted by colin_l at 12:37 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by colin_l at 12:37 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Or, you could go south to a town like Pescadaro or other places around the Santa Cruz mountains / forests.
posted by mikepop at 12:55 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by mikepop at 12:55 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
I wrote a book about pre-eminent Bay Area cult The Moonies. They operated a big recruitment center up in Boonville, CA in a lovely pastoral stretch of the Anderson Valley that had its own local lingo, Boontling. If you were recruited in downtown San Francisco you might be invited to a nice weekend conference on world peace held up that way. For a great look at the mood of cult-mania SF I would check out the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the movie Split Image in which James Woods plays a hard-ass deprogrammer. Drop me a Metafilter email if you want more.
posted by johngoren at 1:27 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by johngoren at 1:27 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]
Reminds me of the Olompali Park Hippy Commune in Marin back in the 1970s.
posted by goml at 1:49 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by goml at 1:49 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]
You might want to take a look at the book Canyon by John Van Der Zee. It's about Canyon, California in the Bay Area.
posted by maurice at 6:27 PM on October 24, 2014
posted by maurice at 6:27 PM on October 24, 2014
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