“Pacifica Moods” — is this the future of the Coastside?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jef Raskin, one of the pioneers of the personal computer industry, wrote these words about Pacifica in the introduction to an essay called "Pacifica Moods". Raskin, who died in February of 2005 in Pacifica, captured the frustration of living in seaside community that was wrecked by unplanned development and which could have been so much more. Reprinted with permission of Raskin’s family.

Pacifica is a sadly flawed community on the Pacific coast about five miles south of the city of San Francisco. Created in 1957 by combining a string of tiny towns along the coast, it is a location that could have been a place of rare scenic beauty with advantageous proximity to a major metropolitan area and its extensive suburbs. It could still become one, if the citizens were to come to their senses and elect and maintain a city government with vision and chutzpah. Instead, it stands as living proof that you can make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. A few decades ago the coast highway, California Highway 1, rolled through like a pizza cutter, splitting a strip of coast from the majority of town residents. But, symbolic of Pacifica’s failure to do anything-good or bad-to completion, the freeway coming south from San Francisco peters out halfway through the city to become a four lane strip that goes past ugly, unkempt shopping centers.

Yet Pacifica, if you put on blinders and look narrowly here and there, has its charm, spots of intense beauty, and even little magnificences. Walk along the rocks at the south end of Linda Mar beach at low tide in the early morning light. Go as far as you can go, then look across Shelter Cove at the diagonally striped rocks off Pedro Point, the tops shining brilliant white in the early sun. It is an inspiring sight, as beautiful as anything on the west coast of America. As you might expect for Pacifica, the dazzling white you see is guano (bird droppings), and the decorative stripes result from of the massive restructuring of the earth that signals its ongoing process with occasional devastating earthquakes. The views of San Francisco, Pacifica, other nearby towns, and the Pacific Ocean as seen from Montara mountain, an easy climb of some 2000 feet along groomed trails, are stunning. Except for the perpetually problematical and leaky sewage outfall pipe at the municipal pier, there is little pollution, the air is usually clear of smog and other signs of civilization. The clean air is due to the winds that blow in from the ocean most of the year. The climate is very temperate, without extremes. Three or four times a decade you might find a bit of ice on a puddle in the morning. It will be gone by noon. A handful of sultry days each summer will be in the high 80’s or low 90’s, but by nightfall the heat will evaporate.Summer is usually spent in the 60’s and 70’s. Pacifica people are like people everywhere, the ones we have met range from selfless saints, to family folk, to real rotters, and everything in between.

The city government, more so than some others I have seen, is one of petty cliques and ad hominem rivalries. It often behaves like a dysfunctional family, yet (echoing the town’s schizophrenic character) it has its moments of wisdom and dignity. Few of the council’s decisions are made on rational grounds. To give you its flavor I can do no better than to quote the absolutely perfect lead in the weekly Pacifica Tribune written by the paper’s talented reporter, Elaine Larsen: "Whatever semblance of congeniality City Council was struggling to maintain shattered Monday night as members went head-to-head in a bitter confrontation over whether to hold more conflict-resolution workshops."

The geography of Pacifica makes it ideal for tourism and recreation, stores fail right and left since the population centers of the San Francisco - San José corridor are four or five miles away, making stores just over the hill that separates us from the rest of the peninsula far more profitable. Yet the city fathers (or mothers; the city made headlines recently when we elected the all-female city council referred to above) have no more wit than to try to encourage more stores to come into town to "improve the tax base." The public school system is underfunded and generally atrocious, a typical Pacifica institution. The schools’ few bright spots cannot lift the overall pall of mediocrity.