Page 28 - Sonoma County Gazette - August 2018

Summer days in Geyserville have been hot but beautiful.
SDAT is here to listen; develop a local vision, Aug 13-15
We’ve been having temperatures clinging to the 90s and, oddly, often rising even higher on the weekends. I heard once in Southern California that automobile traffic patterns can also affect weather, but in the relatively low- traffic area of Geyserville, I wouldn’t expect that to necessarily hold true.These weekend heat spells make me wonder.
If you could, what would you tell an unbiased team of architects, planners, economists and sustainability experts offering to help us design a viable, healthy, sustainable Healdsburg? This August everyone in 95448 has that once- in-a-generation opportunity. Come, be heard at the Healdsburg High School gym, Monday, Aug 13th, at 6PM. Then don’t miss August 15 when the team presents Healdsburg with a sustainable roadmap to 2040. (Read story on page 1)
Died and gone to Healdsburg!
I love that everyone’s friendly! Su gente amable. Small town character—
big town sophistication. Keep our hospital open. Raise school enrollment. Love residents & visitors. A safe place to raise families. FFA Parade! Our neighborhood was extended family, now too many weekenders. Open a gay bar. Bring Garrett’s Hardware back downtown! Too many tasting rooms, real estate offices, high-end boutiques. We drive to S.R. to buy underwear. Equity & inclusion for ag workers. Long live Downtown Bakery “bench bunch.” Mi sueño es que siga asi de tranquilo y pacifico. Spend more on education than wine. Bring the train here NOW. Equitable sewer rates. Remove ethnic & class barriers. Me gustaria que estén todos los días abierta la alberca. Open a late-night coffee shop. Think next generation. Dia de los Muertos—Beautiful!
Pass a housing bond. Artists’ lofts and live/work opportunities. Co- operatives=common interest, not money interest. Infill housing rocks. Mixed use all along Healdsburg Ave. Stop sprawl; ag land is priceless. No big developments. More subdivisions. Build incrementally. Design 4-plexes that look like one home rather than big motels. Cottage courts. Keep it real, mix it up, no rich or poor ghettos. Build big apartment complexes south of the bridge. Raise building heights around the plaza; make top story residential. Decent affordable housing for farm & service industry workers. Build for below 40% AMI; housing for everyone who works here. Help homeowners & renters; eliminate building fees for ADUs. Shelters, tiny houses! Healdsburg land trust— purchase some downtown retail buildings. Who says affordable can’t be well designed? Offer substantial rent reductions for people who walk, bike and don’t own cars. No sprawl south of the bridge. Limit usually vacant second homes.
Buy local. Protecting the environment protects jobs. Waste is a wasted opportunity. Local recycle and compost centers. Tool lending library. Protect
soil & family farms. Ban plastic takeout containers. Plant more lawns, hang flower planters on lamp posts. Be the nation’s model for urban permaculture. Greywater systems required in all new buildings. Reduce toxic runoff to the River and Creek; install rain barrels/rain gardens. Plant more trees; plan replacements for aging Plaza trees. Solar energy rooftops downtown and all new buildings. Urban Permaculture & transportation integrated: no car traffic on bike & walking paths. More plazas. Relocate the Foss Creek rats. More River access. Rebuild the train bridge. Reduce pollution: Use “LESS” (Local Electric Shuttle Service) to deliver neighbors to/from farmers’ market & Tuesday concerts. Who says we have a parking issue; we just have a shortage of shade trees. Embrace simpler, more efficient living before unsustainability forces us to.
Diversify now! Too many eggs in the tourism basket. Become known for our arts & crafts school with student dorms and studios near the train station. Más fuentes de trabajo. Need a public restroom next to the Plaza. More hotels and resorts; are you kidding? Has tourism peeked? Manufacture prefab homes locally. Hotel discounts for guests arriving by bicycle. Repeat movie night in the Plaza. It’s a Round-About bank-account. Under age music at the Raven. Build an indoor soccer field in the Cerri Building. Bring back our TV station. Government/Community partnership. TRAINS NOW! Affordable retail for people who live here. Community-friendly businesses to balance out wine tasting. Renovate the Raven Theater; give local performing groups a home. Expand Healdsburg Museum in the back. Keep us homegrown: focus on what locals need. Medical marijuana dispensary.
One change of note in “downtown” Geyserville—our tiny public park is no more. While this would be a tragedy in most places, the majority of Geyserville seems happy to see the unusually-designed small plot of land back as a temporarily vacant lot before it is redeveloped. The avant-garde park design didn’t seem to blend well with the old-west flavor of Geyserville, and the unusual disposition of plants and ropes and rocks made it a bit unclear to some as to whether it was a park at all.
Just up the road...While Geyserville does not have its own weekly street fair and music fest, we are ideally located to take advantage of the Friday Nights in the Plaza put on by the Cloverdale Arts Alliance in Cloverdale
and the Tuesdays in the Plaza event in Healdsburg. Slightly less well-known beyond our own borders is the Thursday night “Happy Hour” series at Trentadue, where each week a band plays and a gourmet food truck provides bites to go along with very specially priced glasses of Trentadue wine. Bring your chairs and join in before the summer is over! August second features The Third Rail with Food for Purchase from Croques & Toques followed by a special Rebuild North Bay Fire Relief Fund edition of Happy Hour Thursday held up at the Ranch at Lake Sonoma. Jinx Jones plays and food options are Yay!Paella and Nellies’ Oysters—plus the usual array of wines from Trentadue. All proceeds go to the Rebuild North Bay Fire Relief Fund.
Need some ideas for the SDAT visit? The following comments are from neighbors responding to “What concerns you, what do you wish for and what do you love about Healdsburg?”
Then it is back to “normal” with the August 16th event held at Trentadue, with rock & country group Court ’N’ Disaster and Venezuelan food from Pilon Kitchen. The following week features old-school rock from The Hots and food offered by A Guy and His Grill. The last show of the season
is on August 30th, with the Pointless Sisters Rockin’ Show Band closing the summer with lively dance music. Yay!Paella makes a repeat food visit with Got Balls Meatball Factory. Trentadue is located at 19170 Geyserville Avenue; Geyserville, CA 95441-9603; T: (707) 433-3104 · info@Trentadue.com
In addition, the Geyserville Grille is offering periodic music nights and some special dinners—call for details. The Geyserville Gun Club cocktail lounge
in the heart of downtown at the Oddfellows Building also has a full roster
of music acts on Saturday nights and some of the best and most unusual “bar food” in the county. August music dates include the Awesome Hotcakes on the 4th, Blue Radio on August 11th, and the Blind Barbers on August 18th.
We’re frying, the river is drying up. Another glass of wine?
I had an enjoyable time recently renting a boat to explore Lake Sonoma for the first time with some out-of-area visitors. The day spent on
the calm green waters made me curious about what the area was like before the Warm Springs Dam was put into place, and I was pleased to discover just the right resource to answer some of my questions. “Before Warm Springs Dam—A History of the Lake Sonoma Area, Sonoma County, California” is available for free to read on-line from the Anthropological Studies Center of Sonoma State University. You can find it at web.sonoma.edu/asc/projects/ warmspringsindex.html. (It’s also linked from the official Lake Sonoma website at spn.usace.army.mil/Missions/Recreation/Lake-Sonoma/ but the link has
a period instead of a colon—fix that in the URL and it will take you straight to the website.) Especially fascinating are the profiles of Pomo and settler families who lived in the area, but there is also an abundance of material on natural features and details of life in the early days.
Artists can’t live or work here anymore. You’ll miss us!
Let me know your news and what makes life in Geyserville special for you! Email me at the address above.
Take the Geyserville SOUTH Exit to enjoy the beginning of the SCULPTURE TRAIL that travels through Geyserville all the way up the highway to Cloverdale. Be AMAZED!
28 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 8/18
OMG, my kids can’t afford to live here. That’s awful!