Endangered Species
Exactly how many tasting rooms, boutique inns, artisanal dog bakeries and “elevated” farm-to-table experiences can one region absorb before the locals become an inconvenient afterthought?
The tri-county area has become a kind of open-air luxury queue. Everywhere you go—Sonoma, Napa, Marin—there are lines. Lines for coffee. Lines for brunch. Lines for wine. Lines for the privilege of standing in another line. Meanwhile, the people who actually live here circle downtown blocks like doomed vultures looking for parking spaces that vaporize like this AI bubble soon will.
Downtowns that once possessed a scruffy local charm now feel like airport terminals for the affluent. Entire neighborhoods seem calibrated for weekend visitors, not the people who built and carried these small towns before they were discovered by Insta-influencers. Some towns aren’t even recognizable to themselves any longer—it’s like the city planning version of Botox and buccal fat removal.
At some point, Wine Country stopped being a community and became a lifestyle concept. The irony is that tourists supposedly come here for authenticity while helping pave over the very thing they’re seeking. Perhaps the next civic improvement project should involve building a museum dedicated to the extinct species once known as “locals.”
Cassady Caution
Moving to Boise
WWJD?
Do you think Jesus would have validated Chump while knowing EVERYTHING about Epstein?
Gary Sciford
Santa Rosa
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