24–29.06.2026
Last weekend Biscuit, the missus, and I drove back to the close-knit Fairfax neighborhood that had sustained us through some pretty heavy changes from the mid-oughts through to the edge of lockdown, with caring, understanding, and a healthy dollop of humor.
The block-long American sycamore-lined street had once been the end of the line for those escaping the chill of a San Francisco summer by rail. An electric train once ran from Sausalito to a turnaround at the end of our block. Travelers bound west to Cazadero could then jump on a steam train that entered the pastoral world of West Marin through a tunnel at White’s Hill.
The completion of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937, along with investment in highway infrastructure rang the death knell for trains in Marin, leaving a short street of vacation bungalows built in the 1920s available for year-round suburban inhabitancy. At least that’s how I imagined it went down, all the better to explain the lack of any insulation against the very real rainy season in the Mt. Tamalpais watershed.
We had been introduced to the pocket neighborhood by a coworker at a guitar magazine in San Rafael who had recently become dis-enamored by the semi-exposure to the winter cold and damp a non-renovated 1920’s summer bungalow provided. The missus and I had just endured the opposite problem, as our second-story, south-facing apartment on Sir Francis Drake had become an unlivable human terrarium during an unprecedented 11-day heatwave in which the temperature never dropped below 100 degrees. A casual invitation to come down and join a block party in the shady glen across the way had become a matter of survival as we staggered down into the relative cool of the holler.
I remember sitting on a lawn chair in the middle of the blocked-off street, enjoying a frosty one, when one of my new acquaintances asked, “Where did your wife go?” An extensive, village-wide search later, I found her sprawled out on the grass under the downtown redwoods, crazy from the heat. That was how we met the people who would become some of our best friends and support community for the next decade and change.
What brought us back on Saturday, was a last chance to visit in situ with Donna and Shirley, the undisputed mavens of Marin Road who are decamping for a place in Oregon. Shirley, an expert gardener, had turned their lot-sized yard into a garden paradise over the years, one that we were lucky to end up living next to. Donna’s main love is in the kitchen—although she’ll tell you it’s not—raising vegan cuisine to a delicious art form in the interim.
Donna, the older of the couple, has a quiet feistiness possibly born from sticking up for her sexuality in a time, even in the Bay Area, where one could get in big trouble just dancing with the same gender. Shirley, a decade younger, enjoyed the social progress made in the interim and brooked no shit from anyone that would dare to comment on any choices she may or may not have made.
Their story is not mine to tell, but Goddamn if we didn’t have some fun, whether it was strumming guitar and sipping tequila around their fire pit, slinging tamales at roller derbies, or trekking out to their place in Idaho (along with half the neighborhood) to witness a total solar eclipse. I love them both madly and already miss them terribly.
Román Leão 
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