Election Day in Bolinas

Yesterday in Bolinas, California, this ballot measure passed with 67.4% of the vote:

Shall the following language constitute a policy of the Bolinas Community Public Utility District? Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful.

Comments

[matt]

what the fuck?

[Jean Bart]

As English is not my native tongue, can someone please explain what this means? Is this some sort of political "shorthand?"

Thankyou. 🙂

[Steve in CO]

Jean, you are not alone! I was getting ready to post 'WTF?' But, Matt beat me to it.

🙂

[joe]

Looks like "to like to eat the mushrooms in cow fields is not hatred of filing ballot measures."

[keith]

Ah, but with a supermajority, the people have spoken.

[StMack]

and they were afraid the recall circus was making them look stupid?

[JDM]

Someone's been taking their bottle of Dr. Bronner's too seriously.

[JSM]

This is an article on Measure G

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/11/05/BAGLL2QJFS1.DTL

"The quirky coastal hamlet of Bolinas is now officially a nature- loving town that also likes blueberries and bears and even skunks."

Quirky? Or Kooky?

[Russ D]

Reminded me of Mencken's "Declaration Of Independence in American".

[Anonymous]

And this was on SMARTVOTER.org!

[Anonymous]

It's an only-in-Marin kind of thing. The author of the measure is a woman who lives on the streets and is best known for wearing burlap leggings, a hat made of bark and painting her face black.

Well known around town, she managed to gather the signatures needed to qualify the measure.

Here's a brief AP story from last month....

Thu, Oct. 16, 2003

Bolinas' Measure G ensures the love of skunks, foxes, blueberries
Associated Press

BOLINAS, Calif. - On Nov. 4, Bolinas residents will vote on a curious ballot measure that, in meandering prose, promotes "nature-loving" and the preservation of the local skunk population.

Jane Blethen, better known around Bolinas for walking around town wearing hats made of tree bark and newspaper, gathered 263 signatures to get Measure G on the ballot.

"Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful," the measure reads.

Bolinas is a small Marin County community about 20 miles north of San Francisco.

[Jesse Walker]

Thanks for the Chronicle story, JSM. Personally, I find the whole thing kind of charming.

[fyodor]

Once when I was hanging out in SF, the local news had a story on how a road sign to Bolinas kept getting stolen. I.e., the locals didn't want anyone to know where they were! Seems like it's kind of the ultimate hippy town (and probably shouldn't be lumped in with the rest of California, except maybe as the extreme example of one particular element). I think we can pretty much assume this ordinance will have zero effect other than to make some of us smile and others scratch their heads or roll their eyes or whatever...

[David Tomlin]

The surprising thing is that the sentence beginning "Vote for Bolinas" turns out on careful examination to be grammatical, although deficient in commas.

[Josh]

What does "Dakar." mean?

[Douglas Fletcher]

This is what you get when you 'rock the vote.'

[SickOfItAll]

I can't wait for the first poor schmuck to get arrested for not acknowledging the town, socially of course, as a nature loving town. Or perhaps for going against the ways of "Dakar."

Hah.

[Anonymous]

Dakar is a black thing

[Douglas Fletcher]

This will be real charming until the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals court uses it as a precedent for something like requiring that all California schools teach gay-friendly Esperanto.

Ever eat a pine cone?

[Jesse Walker]

This will be real charming until the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals court uses it as a precedent for something like requiring that all California schools teach gay-friendly Esperanto.

Surely you don't want them to learn homophobic Esperanto.

[Daniel Imfeld]

Google turns up a number of results for Dakar. It's the capital of Senegal, the name of an Israeli submarine, and a video game in which you drive in the Paris-Dakar rally race. Knowing this, I still have no idea what the author of the measure meant.

[Anonymous]

She calls herself Dakar.

[Brad S]

Hopefully, next year Bolinas will pass an ordinance stating:

"Flowers for birds! And the bunnies!"

[Gene]

Dream on. This is a good example of what happens to the mins when too many of the cells are fried.

[Anonymous]

Dakar is what she calls herself. Read the Chron story referenced JSM at 4:56 above...

[Anonymous]

it's actually called Bowlinos.

[hey]

and this was referenced on wired.com as "makes more sense than what rumsfeld has said recently"

i know catty partisanship.. but really... that chick was really fucking high.. and then they passed it...

bolinas, stoner capital of california (which says something)

[Rick Barton]

To get hep to the meaning just open up and feel the vibes when you read it. Dig it? OK, groovy.

"to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats".

That is like, so beautiful. Love nature AND technology. Heavy truth brothers and sisters.
peace
love
freedom

[Constantine]

I'm now convinced, once and for all, that the advantage of representative democracy, rather than direct democracy, is that it helps prevent us from getting the government we deserve.

[Lonewacko: Arkansas is Great!]

Let's try it this way:

to like to
drink the water out of
the lakes
to like to
eat the blueberries
to like the bears is not
hatred to hotels and motor boats.
Dakar.
Temporary and
way to save life, skunks and
foxes
(airplanes to go over the ocean)
and to make it beautiful.

[Kevin Carson]

I thought it was a William Carlos Williams poem.

[Andrew Lynch]

Where was Dakar when we were voting for our new Governor? 🙁

[Anonymous]

Does this mean if you accidentially hit a skunk on a dark road in that town they can string you up at the nearest lightpost?

[Diego]

I can only dream that those weirdos try to get friendly with the bears. Hey, have you hugged a bear lately? Try it, they love it. Especially the ones with young cubs.

[nm156]

WHAT THE FUCK????? I mean really . . . analyze it all you want, and it still comes down to: How stoned are these people?

[joe]

Does this mean if you accidentially hit a skunk on a dark road in that town they can string you up at the nearest lightpost?

No, this has no legal implication at all. They're just talking about their feelings. Odd use of the ballot initiative, but no harm, no foul.

[Brendan Perez]

I for one am glad that this town took the time to focus on that which is really important.

[Brad S]

Check out a picture of this woman, and it will all make a bit more sense...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object.cgi?paper=chronicle&file=BAGBC2MBE81.DTL&directory=/c/a/2003/10/30&object=/chronicle/pictures/2003/10/31/ba_bolinas55_mk.jpg

Oh, my...

[Happy Day]

darkened with hoisted nestles and eating for the love of things which fed you.

[David Tomlin]

An English degree is useful for deconstructing post-modern deconstructionism.

Meaning is a primitive vulgarity.

[Maurkov]

Heh. Bolinas is the Free State Project for hippies. The take-home point is that once you reach a critical mass of like-thinking people, you win, because nobody else would want to live there.

[Michael]

joe, is "to like to eat the mushrooms in cow fields" an allusion to certain mushrooms that grow rather well in cow fields ?

[Mark A.]

Maurkov,

That's why I left the South! 🙂

[Anonymous]

"Check out a picture of this woman, and it will all make a bit more sense..."

In the background of one of those pictures, I'm pretty sure I spotted a lady carrying a log, and a dwarf in a red coat.

[Mark Borok]

While we're all talking about the Republicans and the Democrats, the Dadaists are quietly taking over.

[fungi dread]

Definitely the brown acid. Hadn't seen this kind of space adventure since the swarming of the bees over the monterrey pop festival of 73. Far out. Way, way far out, man.

[Evilcor]

This is why the insanity plea usually fails.
NOBODY can do "psycho" like a genuine psychotic.

[Evilcor]

Watch for John Ashcroft to start expanding the scope of federal investigations under amendment XVII of this bill.

[Frenk]

Well, it's weird, but they have a point... it doesn't mean you hate the SUVs and snowmobiles just want some blueberries and competing with bears is fine i mean who doesn't like bears and they are nature's finest creatures. Frenk. The world frankly could use more nature and cheese and also some more beer that is cheap but good in washington you can get Ranier Ale that has seven percent to make you feel good when you drink a forty.

[Anonymous]

Charming??!!

Isn't that the reason many people voted for Bill Clinton?

[StMack]

But these folks most certainly inhaled

[Neb Okla]

Kind of reminds me of the Radiohead lyrics to "Fitter Happier":

more productive
comfortable
not drinking too much
regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
at ease
eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)
a patient better driver
a safer car (baby smiling in back seat)
sleeping well (no bad dreams)
no paranoia
careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)
keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then)
will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in wall)
favours for favours
fond but not in love
charity standing orders
on sundays ring road supermarket
(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants)
car wash (also on sundays)
no longer afraid of the dark
or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate
nothing so childish
at a better pace
slower and more calculated
no chance of escape
now self-employed
concerned (but powerless)
an empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)
will not cry in public
less chance of illness
tires that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)
a good memory
still cries at a good film
still kisses with saliva
no longer empty and frantic
like a cat
tied to a stick
that's driven into
frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness)
calm
fitter, healthier and more productive
a pig
in a cage
on antibiotics

It shouldn't be long before we see an album with a track entitled "Bolinas Measure G".

[Herself]

Can we not find even one English major to offer, er, "compositional advice" in matters such as these? Or were the ones in Bolinas all to busy partaking of the herb of the field, too? (C'mon, a degree in English has got to be of *some* use, hasn't it?)
It's okay to get all hazed. It's okay to fiddle with the arcane machinery of politics. But folks really ought think twice about doing them simultaneously. (Remember, don't drink and solve differential equations! LSD and ionizing radiation don't mix!)

I used to object to literacy requirements for voting. Now I wonder if they ought not be applied to all forms of participation in the political process. (OTOH, simply kicking government down the stairs and burying the corpse at a crossroads by the light of a full moon to prevent it ever returning holds a certain appeal -- if only it was that easy!)

Pi is going to be set equal to 3 again, I can see it coming. Hope you all saved your hexagonal tires from the last time!

--Herself

[Garth]

I have seen "dakar" used in lieu of "d'accord" once or twice.... Could she mean that on all the prior points we should agree?

[Bruce]

This woman wouldn't happen to be a descendant of Joshua Norton would she.
I guess this is a better ballot measure, and focus of politcal energies than something compelling or fobidding something that is actually enforceable.

[Sssargon]

I don't know if anyone posted this yet, but Dakar is the woman's nickname...

Just trying to help make this make a little sense... 🙂

[Sssargon]

I don't know if anyone posted this yet, but Dakar is the woman's nickname...

Just trying to help make this make a little sense... 🙂

[Tina]

Um.. would it help to know that in Bolinas she is known as "Crazy Jane"? She is old and seriously unhinged, although harmless, so I think the communal mindest was -- why upset her if she is actually interested in setting what is left of her mind to a purpose?

If you hae any questions aobut Bolinas or any more comments about the amount of pot we smoke, you may direct all questions to me, a 15 year Bolinas resident, English major, and non-inhaler.

[Tina]

Um.. would it help to know that in Bolinas she is known as "Crazy Jane"? She is old and seriously unhinged, although harmless, so I think the communal mindest was -- why upset her if she is actually interested in setting what is left of her mind to a purpose?

If you have any questions about Bolinas or any more comments about the amount of pot we smoke, you may direct all questions to me, a 15 year Bolinas resident, English major, and non-inhaler.

[Walker David]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
IP: 61.221.15.131
URL: http://preteen-sex.info
DATE: 05/19/2004 11:38:48
To go to war with untrained people is tantamount to abandoning them.