On the Lam on the Docks

By Larry Clinton

The Sausalito waterfront has provided refuge for many nefarious characters, including 1960s radical Bernardine Dohrn.

As a member of the Weather Underground, Dohrn helped create a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government, and was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.  The group derived its name from Bob Dylan’s lyric: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

On October 31, 1969, a grand jury indicted 22 people, including Dohrn, for their involvement with the trial of the Chicago Eight. She was indicted again in 1970, along with twelve other Weathermen, on conspiracy charges in violation of anti-riot acts. In the film “Weather Underground,”Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary in 2002, Dohrn reveals that back in 1970, she and Ayers sought refuge in Sausalito’s nascent houseboat community. “I knew we were going underground but of course I didn’t know how precipitously it would happen,” Dorhn recalls.  “My parents weren’t political… they didn’t have any way in which to put that into a framework. But I took a last trip to visit them, and I didn’t want to scare them more than they were already, but I did want them to think back and remember what I said, that I didn’t want to hurt them and that I loved them. So I have a vivid memory of saying goodbye to them at the airport, and of walking away and turning around and looking at them waving at me, and knowing that I wasn’t going to see them again.”

In the 2002 film, while strolling on Issaquah Dock, Dorhn says, “We’re in Sausalito, at the houseboats, right across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and we lived here when we first went underground. They were really looking for us.  There were pictures everywhere, and rewards everywhere, and indictments falling from the sky.” Looking around at the Issaquah Dock homes, she notes: “It was much less built up than this.”

The filmmakers then show archival houseboat footage, including shots of the iconic Owl and Madonna structures, while Dorhn continues: “For us it was perfect. There were dropouts from all walks of life – gay people fleeing Iowa, people fleeing the Midwest and the draft.  So there was a lot of outlaw culture.”

Following a decade in which Dorhn and Ayers moved around anonymously, Dohrn gave herself up in 1980. She recalls: “We had a new baby and we immersed ourselves in a whole new life with parents and children, and moved to the East Coast, and sort of started over.  The baby was getting old enough that it was obviously getting complicated. To never have anybody know where we lived and never have anyone come over to our house.  So I made that decision in the summer of ’80, and once I made the decision – finally – it was just a matter of holding my nose and going through with the surrender.”

While some charges against her were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct, Dohrn pled guilty to charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping, for which she was put on probation. After refusing to testify against another ex-Weatherman, she served less than a year in jail.

At the time the film was made, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were still married and living in Chicago.  Ayers became an author and Northwestern University professor, while Dorhn was a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law.


Bernardine Dohrn on Issaquah Dock, three decades after going on the lam here.
Image from the film, “Weather Underground.”

Juanita and Her Galley

By Eric Torney

The following lightly edited excerpt is from Eric Torney’s video history: “Sausalito After the Bridge”:

Juanita Musson was a restaurateur and social icon of the mid to late 1960's who existed on the Northern periphery of the Sausalito houseboat community. She had several restaurants, not all of them in Sausalito.

Juanita was one of the most colorful entrepreneurs to ever open a restaurant in Sausalito. The other woman, also a restaurateur, who approaches and perhaps who may prevail over Juanita as the most famous, was Sally Stanford and her Valhalla. Sally and Juanita knew each other. Juanita would say “There is a Madam on one end of town and a drunk on the other.” Sally actually was the more proper of the two. But they did not necessarily get along. At one time there was an uneasy truce between them. In Juanita's words: “Sally sent me a fox. But, wait a minute, maybe she meant him to bite me. “

Her most famous restaurant was Juanita's Galley, a restaurant established on the decommissioned ferry Charles Van Damme, which was beached on the mudflats north of town. Besides a restaurant it was a night club. The floor was quite uneven. Patrons typically did not notice such unevenness as a warped floor, their own state of mind often being more warped than the floor. Access was by a flimsy ramp. Parking was on a dirt lot. You came before dark because there was no lighting outside.

There were numerous fund raisers (Save the Galley Rallies), attended by a host of luminaries. Sterling Hayden, Glen Yarborough, and Vince Guaraldi to name a few, all of whom had enjoyed the one woman side show and wanted the fun to continue.

Juanita's Galley was the most appropriately named restaurant she ever opened. In 1963 the place was closed down by the IRS for unpaid taxes and the contents sold for a measly $540. Not to be deterred, she soon opened another Juanita’s in Fetters Hot Springs, near Sonoma. Regrettably, that restaurant burned to the ground.

She was a large woman who typically wore a Hawaiian muumuu. Live chickens regularly roamed her establishment, as well as an occasional monkey, pig, or goat (Juanita loved animals). Patrons never knew what to expect. One thing patrons could count on was good food. Juanita knew how to cook. Service was the same as the food. Juanita had the inclination to hire cute waitresses, who were as much of a draw as the food. Regardless of the food quality and the service, the entertainment value of the place was unsurpassable and guaranteed.

If you complained about something you might end up getting physically thrown out (personally, by Juanita herself), or having your plate of food thrown onto your lap, whether you paid your bill or not. Juanita was not to be offended. If you stayed cool and got into the scene, your experience was guaranteed to be fine.
Juanita was not easy to work for. Her drinking interfered with good judgment. One cook's helper was fired one night. The next day,knowing Juanita well, he showed up for work as usual. It was as if nothing had happened the night before. 

Juanita's generosity was as legendary as her disdain for those who she felt did not deserve it. Juanita was as welcoming and supportive of individuals in genuine need as she was intolerant of those not deserving of it. In Juanita's words, “If she is wearing Patchouli perfume, out she goes.”

The evictions were not always only verbal. One of Juanita's favorite stories concerned a woman patron at her Glen Ellen restaurant about a dispute over some issue long ago forgotten. As Juanita would have told the story, “We battled head over heels through the dining room, through the bar, onto the porch and into the parking lot. And then she ripped my dress off.”

Juanita is now serving happily at the big restaurant in the sky. She passed away in February of 2011. Residents of Sausalito, both Hill and Boat people alike, held a raucous wake in her honor.

“Sausalito After the Bridge” is available at the Ice House on DVD, or may be checked out from the Sausalito Library.


Juanita with a chair probably broken after a biker rumble.

From the book “Juanita!” by Sally Hayton-Keeva

Sunday Sails with Varda

By Betsy Stroman

The following is excerpted from Betsy’s new book, “The Art and Life of Jean Varda.”

    Jean (Yanko) Varda, the collage artist who moved onto the old ferryboat Vallejo on the Sausalito waterfront in the late 1940s, was an avid sailor. He built his first boat at the age of 12, while living in Smyrna, a port city in the ancient Ottoman Empire, and he liked to tell people that his first profession was that of a boatbuilder. During the more than twenty years he lived on the Vallejo, he built several sailboats. The larger ones all shared a distinctive design. He converted them from old metal lifeboats, readily available on the Sausalito waterfront at the time for about sixty dollars. Most of his sailboats had a lateen or triangular sail, mounted at an angle on the mast, commonly featured on the boats that fishermen in the Mediterranean sailed.
    Varda frequently painted eyes on the hull of his boats. Some speculated that the eyes kept people safe on the boat, but many people thought that Varda himself had a protective magic. In an interview with Sausalito writer Annie Sutter, the artist Gordon Onslow Ford, who for a time shared the Vallejo with Varda, explained that Varda “was a Greek sailor from ancient times … a lucky person. … He was quite fearless and would put to sea with his cargo of beauties and they never came to any harm.” Friends who sailed with Varda claimed that, to the astonishment of proper yachtsmen, he could “whistle the wind,” by which they meant that when he whistled, he brought the wind, and the boat sailed faster.
    Varda built the first of these boats. the Chimera, in the early 1950s, a few years after moving onto the Vallejo. Writing to a friend, he reported, “My sailing boat is a marvel and with a crew of the choicest I spend my Sundays in the Bay. We generally go out 18 of us with gallons of wine, with tons of food, with singers & musicians.”
    The Chimera was followed by the Perfidia. Alan Watts, the writer and Zen popularizer who lived on the Vallejo with Varda beginning in the early 1960s, described the Perfidia as “the bravest boat on the Bay, with eyes on the prow, a broad band of vivid red below the gunwale, and a honey-colored lateen sail.“ As in the past, Varda and his friends would spend Sundays sailing on the bay, well supplied with bread, cold chicken, and gallons of wine. “Seeing this craft gliding in full sail by the wooded cliffs of  Belvedere,” Watts wrote, “it was impossible to believe that this was the United States and not the islands of Greece.”
    Varda refused to install a motor on his earlier boats, and there were times when the sailing parties ended up becalmed, or the tides were going the wrong way. When a motorboat came by, according to Varda’s friend Alexis Tellis, who accompanied him on many of these outings, sometimes Varda shouted, “Give us a tow and we’ll give you a girl.” Varda got a lot of tows, Tellis added, but he never gave them a girl.
    In the fall of 1966, Varda, along with some young helpers, began working on his last sailboat, the Cythera. By this time Varda had reluctantly become convinced that a motor would be a good idea and one was installed. The Cythera ended up much larger than any of Varda’s earlier sailboats. In addition to the customary lateen sail, red in this case, there was a yellow mainsail, painted with a sun, and a white American jib. “When the Cythera is fully rigged she resembles an exotic Chinese junk,” one of Varda’s friends wrote. “No one would guess the craft is a resurrected rusty iron-hulled lifeboat.”
    Sunday sails on the Cythera frequently included as many as 40 guests, who would board the boat, dressed in their most colorful garb, and scramble to find cushions in the hull.    Yanko sat on a box and give orders to the crew — friends who knew how to sail. In short order, two or three bottles of burgundy would be uncorked. An old piano top, hoisted across the motor, served as a table. It was soon heaped with cold marinated liver, French bread, cheese, and other delicacies. As the guests sat and enjoyed the food and wine, Varda would begin to talk about painting, or tell one of his fabulous stories.    
    Young women who boarded the boat in their colorful but filmy hippie garb in the early afternoon would soon find that they were freezing. Varda, the ever thoughtful host, kept a bunch of old coats, which he had bought at Goodwill, on board, and the young women would be very pleased when Varda came by with a glass of wine and draped a coat around them.     
    One of Varda’s friends from that era, Margaret Fabrizio, who sometimes joined the Sunday sails, later recalled that often fancy yachts sailing on the bay would make a special trip to the boat “to get Varda’s blessing.” People just wanted to have some kind of interaction with Varda, she said. There was something about the kind of energy and joy that emanated from his colorful homemade boats and its colorfully clad occupants that attracted those expensive yachts like a magnet.
From June 1 to July 13. The Historical Society is proud to sponsor an exhibit of Varda’s works at the Bay Model.


Jean Varda’s Cythera under sail
Photo from Varda family archives

Students explore local history

By Steefenie Wicks - Sausalito Historical Society

Her mother brought her back to the center of town and dropped her off at her destination, the Sausalito Historical Society’s Ice House on Bridgeway in downtown Sausalito. 

“Are you sure about this?” her mother asked. She looked back at her mother with determination and said, “Yes, I know this place. I’ll wait here for you.” With that, she turned and walked up the stairs to the front door, opened it and stepped inside. The young girl approached the docent on duty that happened to be Robin Sweeny former Sausalito four-time mayor, and announced forcefully, “I am here to see the artifacts.” She was one of over three hundred third grade students who have experienced the Sausalito Historical Society Schools’ Program about local Sausalito history. 

Photo Courtesy of Susan Frank

The idea to begin a schools’ program sponsored by the Sausalito Historical Society at Bayside/MLK and Willow Creek Academies was the brainchild of Susan Frank who, along with volunteers Bob Woodrum and Jesse Seaver and teachers Anne Siskin and Paula Hammonds put together a pilot program in 2010. The goal of the program was to encourage teachers and students to explore Sausalito’s interesting past asking two fundamental questions: what is history and what part do I play in history? The initial unit featured a then-and-now appreciation of Sausalito’s historic downtown buildings and businesses. The second and third units, developed in subsequent years, introduced colorful personalities and families from Sausalito’s past and the Marinship World War II shipyard.

Susan Frank and present-day co-director Margaret Badger both bring an educational background to their work. Frank graduated from UC Berkeley in History, started a child development center in Minnesota and on returning to California worked in the Ingram pre-Schools in Menlo Park. On settling in Sausalito, she participated in local school programs. Badger has a BA in History from Vassar College and a Masters in Education from Yale University, and is a California credentialed teacher with a career in teaching and curriculum writing. Working in concert with Bayside teacher Jim Scullion and Willow Creek teachers Anne Siskin and Kevin Breakstone, the program continues to challenge young students to learn about local history and to understand how they are part of it.

Kevin Breakstone, the newest teacher to take part in the program, sums up the experience this way. “Through hands-on experience, access to museums and displays, and roleplaying, the Sausalito Historical Society guided the kids into true conceptual and factual knowledge of Sausalito and Marin City history. The awareness that they live in a town shaped by history, and that they are part of that history will live with my students forever.”

Jim Scullion of Bayside Academy in Marin City writes that this program has given his students “an opportunity to learn about and research buildings and people of Sausalito from long ago. It also gave them insight into the importance of the Marinship and Marin City. The students talked for days about their visit to the Bay Model Marinship display. They never realized why this area was so important. They feel very special that the area where they live and go to school was such an important part of history.”

Finally, Anne Siskin of Willow Creek Academy writes, “as we looked carefully at the historical photographs, maps, newspapers, artwork, documents and artifacts collected and displayed at the Historical Society, Ice House and Bay Model, and visited historical buildings built in the downtown district on field trips, we could imagine what it was like to have lived in the past. Like the docents of the Historical Society, we too became historians as we learned about the history of the city where we live.”

The program has thrived because of the cooperation of teachers and administrators and the dedicated work of the docents who take information to the classrooms, reenact snippets of history, and lead field trips. Community support from Waterstreet Hardware, Lapperts Ice Cream and Bob Woodrum of Sausalito Picture Framing encourages us all to keep having fun and to keep asking, “What is history and where do I fit in?

Inquiries about becoming a docent should be directed to the Sausalito Historical Society at 415-289-4117 orinfo@sausalitohistoricalsociety.org and copies of the Marinship booklet can be purchased at the Bay Model in Sausalito.

Richard O’Keeffe: Shipwright/Docent, Matthew Turner Project

by Steefenie Wicks Sausalito Historical Society

Boatbuilding in Sausalito has been a continuing activity from William Richardson’s time to present. The Sausalito Historical Society has photo images from over 100 years ago that show the productivity of this maritime trade.

Now for the first time in 100 years there is a new tall ship being built in Sausalito. The design is that of the prolific boat builder Matthew Turner and is being fashioned after one of his fastest ships, the Galilee, which still holds the record for the fastest run between San Francisco and Tahiti. This new vessel will be called the Matthew Turner, and will be part of the Educational Tall Ship program. Founder Alan Olson has taken this vast building project on. When completed the vessel will be a two-masted brigantine rig that is 85-foot on the water line and 100-foot on deck (note: 32 feet shorter than the original ship) with a 25-foot. beam drawing about 10 feet underwater.  She will be fitted out with 38 births for cadet training, a galley, captain’s quarters, and toilets.

As a working shipwright and part-time docent on the ship, Richard O’Keeffe is quick to tell you that this is a “once in a lifetime project,” that he is lucky to be involved with.  O’Keeffe, born in Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland, came to the US 15 years ago to look for work.  A carpenter all of his life, who spent a good deal of time working on boats, he found the Matthew Turner project an answer to a dream. He was attending the Arques Traditional Boat Building School with instructor Bob Darr, when he heard about the project.   They were just getting started so he turned up to volunteer.  After his skills as shipwright were recognized, he was offered a paying position that he holds down today.  He mentions that the volunteers on this project are awesome individuals who drive in each morning form different parts of the Bay Area just to work on this ship, being part of something that is very special, with a group of talented crafts people.

Photo by Steefenie Wicks

For O’Keeffe, this is his first time working on a project that is not only vast but has a real historical significance.  Watching something like this come together is exciting.  Using some of the same methods that were used 100 years ago in shipbuilding, then integrating them with the new materials that are produced today, is like watching history meet the present. “When she is finished, she will be a ‘beast,’” he says.” She is being built to go to sea, and trust me, this vessel is seaworthy.”  He continues, “She is built like a tank, a 190-ton vessel that is a good solid boat based on the design of another good solid vessel.  She has a soul; when you walk her decks, you can start to feel that aspect of her coming alive.”

He continues, “Tall ships are great when they can be built for a town or city.  Because the idea of building a wooden boat is so unreal today, building one is historically significant.  To see a vast vessel like this come alive, gives you a chance to see the action that goes into a project such as this.   This vessel will now be part of Sausalito’s maritime history.  Each day someone stops by and wants to know what’s going on, so it’s great to stop and tell them what we are doing because the next time they stop by they want to be involved. The project as a whole is thrilling because you get to look forward to seeing the vessel finished, so she can begin carving out her own history on the water.”

O’Keeffe looks off into the distance as he continues, “With a project like this you always think, ‘will we be able to do this?’ Then you see all of these people, these volunteers, they come by every day to give their time and talented skills, and then you know this is going to happen.  We are building a tall ship.”

Welcome Aboard the Matthew Turner On June 7, you’ll have a unique opportunity to inspect the progress being made in the building of the Matthew Turner Educational Tall Ship.  Also to being able to tour the completed portions of the replica brigantine, several shipbuilders will be on hand to answer questions.

Tickets for this 4-6 PM fundraiser are only $50 per person, $40 for members of the Historical Society. Children under 12 free when accompanied by an adult.  Each ticket buyer will automatically be entered into a raffle with the Grand Prize being a sail on the Matthew Turner once she is launched.  Other prizes include additional outings on the bay, a seaplane ride, and use of a Southern California beach house for a week and many more.  Each ticket buyer also will receive a free drink and complimentary appetizers.  A no-host bar will be available for your enjoyment.  Support two great causes and attend the Sausalito Historical Society event at the Matthew Turner Educational Tall Ship.