Occidental Oriented by Gino Gaffney — January 2020
By Gino Gaffney
Happy New Year and New Decade everyone! I hope your Holidays were fun, festive, familial, and not too fattening.
I just looked back at the previous two years of January columns I have written for the Gazette. 2018 I was promoting an event I had signed up to participate in called Climate Ride. In 2019, I highlighted efforts to raise funding for the replacement of the gym floor at the Community Center.
As we turn the page to another new year, I have definitely been thinking about the need for more exercise in my life. I play basketball once a week (Tuesdays at 5:30pm at the Occidental Community Center – open to all) and get a fair amount of walking/hiking in with my dog, but I could certainly use more exercise in general. I realized in reading that column from 2018 that I only took two bike rides the entirety of 2019, sad. It’s always amazing how with the combination of time flying by and constant distractions coming along that I can neglect something like bike riding that I get so much enjoyment out of that also happens to burn calories along the way.
The January 2019 column focus has thankfully come to fruition. The new gym floor is great, much improved over the tired, old floor it replaced. We just had another successful craft faire in the Community Center last month and the new floor made it through unscathed. I wasn’t really worried about it going in, but I would say twenty vendors (with tables and chairs) and hundreds of attendees all on the floor was a really good test of its resiliency. When you spend forty grand on something there is a little stress involved even when it wasn’t much of your own money making the purchase. Many thanks to all the donors who made it possible, with an extra loud shout-out to the Bothin Foundation who put us over the top with their donation last year of twenty thousand dollars.
I know there are efforts in the process with the county to move forward on upgrading the bathrooms at the community center. The upgrades would bring the bathrooms into ADA compliance, add exterior entrances to provide the town with its first permanent public restroom, as well as include a water fountain. Hopefully these will be something that can get completed in 2020, fingers crossed.
As I mentioned previously the Occidental Craft Faire in December was a success once again, thanks to all the vendors, volunteers and to the community at large for coming to shop, eat, mingle and enjoy a fun local event. Now, we at the Occidental Community Council get to figure out where around town the money raised from the Craft Faire should be spent. We are always happy to have input and/or help from local residents who would like to get involved or have a good idea of a local need to pass on to us.
You can send us an e-mail through our website ( www.occidental-ca.org ), or come to one of our meetings which are generally the third Saturday of the month at 10:30am at the Community Center (January’s meeting will be held on Saturday the 11th).
I was really intrigued by the new Occidental Holiday Weekend event that has been created around the Craft Faire and Community Choir events. It started in 2018 with a tree lighting, live music, & shops open late. This year it expanded to include a lighted people parade of carolers from the Community Center up to town, and Santa cruising up to the tree lighting on one of our Occidental Fire Department trucks, super cool. Someone at the Craft Faire asked me if this was an annual tradition and I replied, “I think it will be.” Remember when the Fools Parade or Farmers Market were just getting started? They have both grown in size over the years and also grown into wonderful traditions for our town. I love how an event can be born from a good idea, and some dedicated effort and all of a sudden you think “how did we not have this before?” I look forward to seeing what great things can become of this new Occidental Holiday Weekend tradition.
It sure is nice to have both lanes of Coleman Valley Rd. open again. I give thanks to the County for making this a priority and hope that their efforts will pay off in the form of this fix being a long lasting solution.
