Light on the Water
"They come to find a place in which they can operate and they can move. The reason that they’ve come is because the world, that is, your world, cannot accommodate their needs. They either have too much energy, too much talent, or too much rebellion."
—Piro Caro, playing himself, at (the filming of) the Marin County Supervisors meeting, Last Free Ride (1974).
A while back Oregon film and photoist Bill Daniels reintroduced "a stoned and song-filled documentary shot in Sausalito’s hippie houseboat community." Waldo Point (1970), by film student Saul Rouda paved the way for a second longer film, Last Free Ride (1974), a docu-drama chronicling the Man's attempts to rid the bay of its counterculture flotsam. Augmented by the music of resident rock band The Red Legs, the actors in Free Ride were the actual residents of the floating utopian community. Virtually lost for decades, the film played Cannes and briefly toured Europe but it never found decent commercial distribution in the States. Apparently now Rouda is selling DVD and VHS copies of Last Free Ride.
On a related note, there's a newish Waldo Point website where former residents dish "the latest scuttlebutt on this die-hard crew of nostalgic aging hippies, poets and pirates from the Sausalito Waterfront." It features an open forum discussing everything from the sinking of the Light on the Water which cost the lives of nine houseboat denizens (including Seagull, One-Eyed Roger, and Parking Lot Patty), to fond memories of the community's most famous troubadour, Dino Valente. Most unsettling is the RIP section in which we learn the fates of various "tribe" members. A couple jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. A couple died down south with the Heaven's Gate cult. And one commited hari kari. For a gentler view of Richardson Bay houseboat life and its fascinating history, check Larry Clinton's "A Short History of Liveaboards on the Bay."