On the outskirts of this seaside town, just after the road sign that tells visitors they are “entering a socially renowned, nature-loving city,” a large wooden sign displays a series of hand-painted numbers. They change every morning.
“Days without the Bolinas Post Office,” says the sign.
On June 1, that number reached 456.
That's how long it's been since the United States Postal Service was kicked out of its downtown Bolinas office amid a fight with its former owner.
In this small, artsy town in western Marin County, a haven for poets, painters, writers and actors, the loss was a hard blow. The 1,500 citizens of ZIP code 94924 have fought to reclaim their post office with their most precious tool: creativity.
They have demonstrated with signs that say: “Real mail, not email!” They have marched in local parades dressed as mailmen. They have composed songs, written poems and sent thousands of letters, in hand-painted envelopes, to USPS officials.
They even drafted their own plan for a temporary post office, offered to fund it, and sent it to Congress.
“It's a very Bolinas approach, breaking down bureaucracy through art, culture and supplication,” said John Borg, who helps lead the citizen campaign. “This has taken a lot longer than it should have.”
The approach is peculiar, but the loss is serious.
A sign at the entrance to Bolinas counts the days that the small coastal town has gone without a post office.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Most people in this aging rural community bordering Point Reyes National Seashore don't get home delivery. They relied on daily trips to the post office to receive packages, pension checks, and prescriptions in the mail, not to mention the opportunity to catch up on small-town gossip.
Now, they must drive at least 40 minutes round trip, through the woods on Highway 1, to a flood-prone post office in a campground in the even smaller town of Olema.
Enzo Resta, a longtime resident and founder of the new Bolinas Film Festival, compared the reaction to the loss of the post office to the so-called “hype cycle” around new technologies.
“There was a crash, where there was a lot of hope and indicators that we would recover – the peak of inflated expectations,” he said. “When this was pushed a little further, we entered the valley of despair and we're just trying to crawl our way out.”
The Bolinas Post Office closed on March 3, 2023. It had occupied half of an unadorned, single-story wood building on Brighton Avenue, most recently shared with a liquor store, for six decades.
The USPS was already a tenant when Gregg Welsh of Ventura County acquired the building about 50 years ago. He currently owns the family trust.
The relationship between landlord and tenant soured a long time ago.
Most people in Bolinas do not receive home delivery and rely on daily trips to the post office to receive their packages, pension checks and prescriptions in the mail.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
According to a statement provided by Welsh through his attorney, Patrick Morris, the USPS for years violated his lease, which required him to maintain and repair the apartment at his own expense.
The postal service, the statement said, discovered asbestos in floor tiles in 1998, but essentially kept it hidden from the owner for more than two decades and did not post warning signs for the public or employees.
When Welsh visited the Bolinas post office in late 2020, according to the release, he saw worn and broken tiles and exposed and deteriorated subfloor materials.
The owner and the postal service argued over who should pay for asbestos repairs and abatement.
The USPS lease, according to the statement, ended in January 2022, and the parties were still arguing over the issue. The postal service continued to occupy the building, without a lease, as a “suffering tenant.”
In a February 2023 email to USPS officials, which Morris provided to The Times, Morris said his client had not yet vacated the post office, in part because he did not want to deprive Bolinas residents of postal facilities sooner. that I could find a new location. But by that time, Welsh had had enough. He demanded the post office vacate the building within a month.
Kristina Uppal, a spokeswoman for the Bay Area-based USPS, did not respond to questions from The Times about the allegations made by the owner or about the alleged presence of asbestos in the building. She said the USPS was “forced to abandon the old facility due to the unexpected termination of a lease,” but that there are no plans to permanently close the Bolinas post office.
“We are as eager to resume retail operations in Bolinas as the community and provide better accessibility, such as expanding curbside pickup to alleviate any inconvenience,” Uppal wrote.
Bolinas residents sent more than 2,500 “artsy” letters with personalized appeals asking U.S. Postal Service officials to resurrect mail service in their city.
(John Borg)
Residents want their post office back, but their trust in the USPS has been eroded.
The controversy in Bolinas comes as U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, appointed when former President Trump was in the White House, is coming under fire for his efforts to consolidate postal facilities. In a May letter, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators criticized his 10-year plan, Delivering for America, arguing that cost-cutting measures have degraded service and disproportionately affected rural communities.
Bolinas residents say they have had little direct communication from the USPS over the past 15 months. Bolinas, they point out, had a post office since 1863, but townspeople were given less than two weeks' notice before it closed.
Your mail has been bounced: diverted first to Olema, then to nearby Stinson Beach due to flooding, then back to Olema. Sometimes their letters were left in unsecured containers on outdoor tables.
The relocation has been more than just an inconvenience for the city's older residents, many of whom don't know how to drive. There is little public transportation and more than half of the city's residents are 65 years old or older.
People began reporting problems getting mail-order medications shortly after the post office closed, according to the Marin County Board of Supervisors. They have also had difficulty getting lab results and health care coverage updates.
Borg, 62, is a type 1 diabetic who had his insulin delivered by mail before the shutdown. Now, he said, package delivery is so iffy that he drives two hours round trip to San Rafael each month to pick them up at a pharmacy.
Bolinas poets and painters have been an integral part of the city's campaign for a post office. Here, an artist who calls himself StuArt, creates the sign that will count the days that Bolinas goes without service.
(John Borg)
Borg runs a small company that makes stainless steel tumblers, and two five-figure checks for his company have been lost in the mail.
He said residents of the unincorporated city, which has no mayor or city attorney to advocate for them, had to band together to make their voices heard.
Drawing in the outside world is a tall order for a place so famous that, for years, a vigilante gang called the Bolinas Border Patrol stole traffic signs on Highway 1 directing travelers toward the city. Once, when the California Department of Transportation tried to paint BOLINAS on the asphalt, clever citizens quickly covered them up with tar.
“We are a small town that likes to keep to ourselves and divert attention and not be too profiled. But we are in the process where the city is changing,” Borg said, noting that an increasing proportion of Bolinas' limited housing stock is being used as second homes for the wealthy and short-term vacation rentals.
“The only thing holding this place together is the post office.”
There has been no viable commercial real estate in little Bolinas for the post office to permanently locate. And a 1971 water meter moratorium has effectively banned development for the past 53 years. The moratorium, which has been challenged and upheld in court, was implemented because Bolinas has a limited water supply, coming primarily from the Arroyo Hondo creek at Point Reyes National Seashore.
Last spring, residents drafted a detailed proposal for a temporary facility — a mobile office trailer in a parking lot next to the fire station — and offered to raise $50,000 for its installation.
Bolinas residents say they were given just two weeks' notice that their post office, a fixture in the city since 1863, was closing.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
They sent the plan to a supportive representative, Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), who sent it to DeJoy. A spokesperson for Huffman said his office has been in frequent contact with the USPS and shares the community's frustration with the slow process.
Uppal, the USPS spokeswoman, said the agency has “reviewed proposals” and “will select a site that best meets our operational needs and can provide continued service to the community over the long term.”
“I can confirm that there is a potential option being reviewed now,” he wrote. She did not provide details.
In his written response to questions from the Times, Welsh, through his attorney, said there have been conversations with USPS about the possibility of returning to its old building. No further details were provided.
For now, Bolinas residents continue to come to Olema and celebrate the simple pleasure of picking up their mail locally. Or, as one local poet put it in an ode written for a “Save the Post Office” rally:
I have gossip to send to Tomales,
Sorry to send to Limantour Beach.
But it is Bolinas – always Bolinas – that I dream of finding
at the return address of a letter they sent me.
