Petaluma has many charms as we who live here know – but capturing those charms and sharing with the world in that enticing way that brings folks we want to visit here to visit – well, that takes years, focus and pr talent. As we move toward our Sesquecentenial celebrations throughout 2008, this focus will become more vivid.
The Eye On the Bay show is a pretty special edition to our media reputation, alright. Great story and views available 24/7 online. Contains our lovely Madame Mayor Pamela Torliatt walking across the draw bridge as she tells us her uncle used to operate it long ago and we experience vicariously what it’s like to be right there and making the thing do its thing. I used to be fascinated with a Chicago draw bridge as a babe, and now I always humm Over the River and Through the Woods when driving over the Draw Bridge. No special reason but it stuck! Love looking for a sec at the big boat on the right…which is???
Got me to thinking about how we experience out City and our River – and how the world sees us. It’s worth it to get out on the River and view it while on the water.
Couple of years ago, with help from Dave Yearsley and others, I arranged a Day on the River so 50 members and friends of Petaluma Tomorrow could get out and enjoy the beauty of the Petaluma River on the Sea Scout boat. Yes; it’s beautiful as you go south to Black Point and the San Antonio Bay just before you reach the San Francisco Bay. If its spring, the greenery is lush and the birds are thick, the breeze is substantial and its sort of – exhilarating. Especially liked when my River Keeper cap flew off and the Sea Scout kids retrieved it by turning the boat entirely around ! We added live folk music and great food; seemed about perfect that day.
Hope to revisit Day on the River again; makes a great day for folks and we learned about the wetlands restoration as the day progressed with the help of Grant Davis from Bay Institute, ecology wunderkind, Bill Kortum and others.
The recent Eye on the Bay show was arranged by former River Keeper and now founder of Friends of the Petaluma River, David Yearsley as well. Truly neat. Hope more Day Trippers, Tourists, Birders, explorers of Wine Country and the just plain curious make it up here from points south because of this show.
Reminds me of all the many ways the world watches Petaluma. Especially interested as a new video team of composed of HR Downs, Paul Francis and myself just put Larry Potts and his fine Hometown Hardware Store song on You Tube, then copied it to ibuypetaluma.org site. Fun! Larry sang his song at Copperfields when we taped it and today we followed that with an interview with Jeff Tomasini, owner of Rex Hardware Store serving Petaluma since 1907! Rex is famous for its “Polar Bear” (was a brown bear that bleached to white) that went up in smoke a year ago when the old Rex burned to the ground. Fortunately, good insurance was in hand and good neighbors flooded through to show Rex owners and staff we do want our Hometown Hardware Store up and running … and it will be again in July, just over one year since it got “totalled.” “Build it and we will come,” sings Mr. Potts in his exhuberant song.
The Future of Media is now on YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook. Author/environmentalist Paul Hawken even says the next presidential election will be won on YouTube. But video isn’t ever going to replace print or even online journalism though it will enhance our reading and viewing pleasure. Unfortunately, annoying rude people also produce!
Like our Madame Mayor, however, HR, Paul and I are attempting to hold ourselves and our work to a higher standard and cover stories that will enhance our knowledge of issues facing our region and the pleasures that are inherent in getting to know our neighbors, the ones who study what could make a city sustainable – and those who are content growing veggies to share with us. Well, basically, all the neighbors. You can’t just say some are neighbors and some aren’t. Separate but equal never did work out to be equal.
Official facts about Petaluma are pretty upbeat and easily had in the current Petaluma visitors guide, available at www.visitpetaluma.com, or by stopping by the Visitors Program office in the revitalized Depot on East Washington; contains a bunch of great info.
Did you know we’re 59,000 strong now? That Petaluma is a charter city since 1858 and composs 13,378 square miles? Sounds huge!
The pr stuff I recall is just inside the cover.
Travel and Leisure Magazine named Petaluma one of the Nation’s Top Ten Getaways Near a Major City,” Latitude 38, a boaters “bible” lists Petaluma as one of the “Bay Area’s Top Ten Leisure Boating Destinations,” etc., etc. A small, unnamed magazine featured Petaluma on its front cover and called us “Best Home Town in California”!
A favorite fact for me: Petaluma is innovative in its politics. We were first in the nation to go to the US Supreme Court and demand the right to proscribe our own boundary (Urban Growth Boundary or UGB). This boundary is now central to all development in 9 cities in Sonoma County. And then there’s the Egg Basket of the World moniker…Butter & Egg Days, anyone? Easy to see why so many of us want to stay and make this permanent.