Latest news with #PostalService-themed
San Francisco Chronicle
27-04-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Secluded Bay Area beach town getting post office back after residents' ‘monumental effort'
The secluded West Marin beach town of Bolinas is finally getting its post office back, marking the culmination of a more than two-year-long fight to restore services. The U.S. Postal Service announced Friday that it would resume operations in Bolinas, an unincorporated township 20 miles northwest of San Francisco, by early fall after the completion of 'all necessary construction.' The Postal Service said in a statement that it 'sincerely appreciates its customers and thanks them for their patience as efforts are made to reopen the location back in the Bolinas community.' The anticipated reopening follows a rigorous campaign by residents to save the post office. They launched an online petition, persuaded Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, to lobby U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, marched in local parades and performed Postal Service-themed songs and poems at community rallies. John Borg, one of the Bolinas residents who spearheaded the campaign to reclaim the community's post office, called it a 'monumental effort,' driven by residents without much political representation. 'Being just a small town with volunteer activists working on it, we didn't have necessarily have a lot of juice with the Postal Service,' Borg said. 'So the town is extremely happy. … This is a new chapter.' Originally established in 1863 when Bolinas was a popular lodging outpost, the post office temporarily shuttered in March 2023 amid a dispute over the lease. The post office was located in a commercial space at 20 Brighton Ave. for more than 60 years until a disagreement over asbestos in the building sparked a sudden lease termination by the Postal Service. Only a small portion of the artsy coastal community's roughly 1,500 residents receive home mail delivery, which means that for the past two years hundreds of residents have been forced to make long journeys to retrieve their mail and packages. Services were temporarily relocated to Olema, a 40-minute round trip from Bolinas, and then later to Stinson Beach, which cut the trek roughly in half. For residents of Bolinas, which for decades has been a place for hippies, artists and surfers to escape into nature, the post office served as a cherished gathering spot and a critical lifeline, especially for elderly locals who depended on it for their medications. 'When a main meeting place like the post office goes away, it really kind of chips away at the soul of the town, and it creates a void in our downtown,' Borg said. 'People are having to go to other post office to get their mail, so they're going to do their grocery shopping there, and there's a lot of residual implications of the closure.' Borg and other Bolinas residents spent the first year of the closure working on a plan to establish a temporary post office in a Bolinas parking lot. They consulted with postal experts, created architectural designs and developed budgets, but their proposal was rejected by the Postal Service, according to Borg. So instead, they went to the post office's longtime landlord and brought the two parties back together for another round of negotiations. After President Donald Trump got elected and his administration began making significant government cuts, many residents lost hope. Yet Borg and other activists remained steadfast. 'It's been a long time coming,' Borg said, 'but we were able to persevere.'
San Francisco Chronicle
26-04-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Secluded Bay Area beach town getting its post office back after a yearslong fight
The secluded West Marin beach town of Bolinas is finally getting its post office back, marking the culmination of a more than two-year-long fight to restore services. The U.S. Postal Service announced Friday that it would resume operations in Bolinas, an unincorporated township 20 miles northwest of San Francisco, by early fall after the completion of 'all necessary construction.' The anticipated reopening follows a rigorous campaign by residents to save the post office. They launched an online petition, persuaded Rep. Jared Huffman to lobby U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, marched in local parades and performed Postal Service-themed songs and poems at community rallies. Originally established in 1863 when Bolinas was a popular lodging outpost, the post office temporarily shuttered in March 2023 amid a dispute over the lease. The post office was located in a commercial space at 20 Brighton Ave. for more than 60 years until a disagreement over asbestos in the building sparked a sudden lease termination by the Postal Service. Only a small portion of the artsy coastal community's roughly 1,500 residents receive home mail delivery, which means that for the past two years hundreds of residents have been forced to make long journeys to retrieve their mail and packages. Services were temporarily relocated to Olema, a 40-minute round trip from Bolinas, and then later to Stinson Beach, which cut the trek roughly in half. For residents of Bolinas, which for decades has been a place for hippies, artists and surfers to escape into nature, the post office served as a cherished gathering spot and a critical lifeline, especially for elderly locals who depended on it for their medications. In a statement, the Postal Service said it 'sincerely appreciates its customers and thanks them for their patience as efforts are made to reopen the location back in the Bolinas community.'
