Bolinas? Baloney!

Which brings us to the Bolinas sign. There used to be a sign, you see, out on Highway 1, a small green-and-white affair that named the town correctly and gave passers-by an idea of its general location. The revolutionary Bolinians hacked the sign down during those heady '70s days when the world, or at least the town, was going to be a better place. Like tea thrown overboard, it became a symbol of revolution and resistance.

The real sign is still not there, out on Highway 1. But all over Bolinas -- on T-shirts and sea walls and driveway fences and store walls -- the sign lives on in various forms: silk-screened, spray-painted, carved into wood. The sign has become an icon, more important in its absence than in its presence, a symbol of victory in a war with the world Bolinas seems not to have won.