Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor
When you hear the term "yacht harbor", it usually conjures up images of guys with cravats and captain's hats, swanky clubhouses, and well-heeled folks living the good life.
The Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor is pretty much the exact opposite of that. Isolated in a murky corner of the San Pablo Bay near Richmond, this place is a funky mixture of ancient fishing boats, makeshift houseboats, and derelict half-sunken vessels too weird to describe. Unless you're behind the wheel of something similar, the place is only accessible via a single, pothole-ridden road that winds over the hills past Point Molate (which, incidentally, provides some great views of the bay). The parking area isn't paved, and features a weird assortment of ramshackle boats, abandoned motorhomes, and dumpsters full of junk.
With a tiny bit of caution, we walked around a bit and shot a few photos. Even thought it looked scary, the people around there were quite friendly. I got the impression that it's a pretty tight-knit community, and did notice that there were some genuinely cool-looking boats that people clearly took good care of. Many others, though, were frightening.
I kept trying to think of a suitable way to describe the place, and the best I could come up with was "floating trailer park". That's not even really very accurate, since most trailer parks are nowhere near this funky. 'Funky' doesn't even come close to describing this place properly, so you'll need to see it for yourself to truly understand what I'm getting at.
If anybody reading this happens to live there, please don't take offense to any of this. You probably already know that it's impossible to accurately describe the place without sounding fairly insulting.
Special thanks to our new friend KerriO for telling us about this place.
If you know of any other unusual locations in the north San Francisco bay area (the weirder and more remote, the better), please leave a comment. We're making a list, you know.
Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor
When you hear the term "yacht harbor", it usually conjures up images of guys with cravats and captain's hats, swanky clubhouses, and well-heeled folks living the good life.
The Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor is pretty much the exact opposite of that. Isolated in a murky corner of the San Pablo Bay near Richmond, this place is a funky mixture of ancient fishing boats, makeshift houseboats, and derelict half-sunken vessels too weird to describe. Unless you're behind the wheel of something similar, the place is only accessible via a single, pothole-ridden road that winds over the hills past Point Molate (which, incidentally, provides some great views of the bay). The parking area isn't paved, and features a weird assortment of ramshackle boats, abandoned motorhomes, and dumpsters full of junk.
With a tiny bit of caution, we walked around a bit and shot a few photos. Even thought it looked scary, the people around there were quite friendly. I got the impression that it's a pretty tight-knit community, and did notice that there were some genuinely cool-looking boats that people clearly took good care of. Many others, though, were frightening.
I kept trying to think of a suitable way to describe the place, and the best I could come up with was "floating trailer park". That's not even really very accurate, since most trailer parks are nowhere near this funky. 'Funky' doesn't even come close to describing this place properly, so you'll need to see it for yourself to truly understand what I'm getting at.
If anybody reading this happens to live there, please don't take offense to any of this. You probably already know that it's impossible to accurately describe the place without sounding fairly insulting.
Special thanks to our new friend KerriO for telling us about this place.
If you know of any other unusual locations in the north San Francisco bay area (the weirder and more remote, the better), please leave a comment. We're making a list, you know.