The next Carmel
“Mendocino, Mendocino,
Where life’s such a groove,
You’ll blow your mind in the morning.”
Back in 1969, Mendocino was worthy of this tribute by the Sir Douglas Quintet. Those were good times for the Northern California coastal town, which looks like a quaint New England fishing village — if you can pretend that the big body of water next to it is the Atlantic Ocean.
In the 1960s, Mendocino was saved from becoming a ghost town by a group of artists who came up from the Bay Area and started the Mendocino Arts Center. It was known as “the next Carmel,” which at that time was taken to mean a replacement for Carmel, a one-time arts colony that had turned into a tourist town.
Forty years later, the “next Carmel” has become just like Carmel. It’s full of bed and breakfast establishments, restaurants, gift stores and real estate offices. On a recent visit to the coast, I took a stroll through Mendocino and found some real bargains listed in the windows of the offices. Million dollar properties had been slashed to $900,000 — the perfect incentive for encouraging struggling artists to come to this community of 1,000.
There are many sad tales of cities that struggle and fail to survive economically. Mendocino is in a different category. It’s a victim of its own immense success. A story in BusinessWeek.com confirms that if you want to find a good place to invest in real estate five to 10 years from now, you should look at where artists are living now. “Sociologists and policymakers have long been touting art and culture as the cure-all to economically depressed neighborhoods, cities, and regions,” the article states.
Mendocino has become economically secure by exploiting its artsy ambiance and reinventing itself as a tourist town. At one time, some of the tourists may have been interested in the work of the artists who lived in Mendocino, but nowadays the main draw seems to be to experience a weekend in an uncommonly pretty place and spend a lot of money on food, lodging and gifts.
But little towns aren’t so pretty when they’re crowded. I visited Mendocino on a Thursday in early April and had a hard time finding a parking place. It must be a nightmare to try to go there on a Saturday in July. The main appeal of a place like this is its sense of solitude.
Mendocino and Carmel can serve as cautionary tales for communities, such as Chico, that are attempting to capitalize on their artsy ambiance. Promoting cultural tourism should not distract us from creating and bringing in good-paying jobs. If we do that, we won’t have to rely on visitors to keep the economy afloat.