Locals Have the Right of Way

Commentary by Dennis Green

Our favorite cowboy/biker/locals bar — Steiner’s on the Plaza in Sonoma — once had a little sign on the wall behind the bar that read simply, “Locals Have the Right of Way.” The first time I noticed that sign, some seventeen years ago, I felt a little threatened by it, because I had not yet made a commitment to love and respect these people. I was not a “local,” but a tourist, a visitor, a day tripper, a newbie.

I was, in short, from a more civilized part of the world than these yokels. I had lived in San Francisco, Berkeley, Walnut Creek, Alameda! I was superior.

The first time I met one East Bay editor, she told me that her previous assignment had been in Eureka — with the Humboldt Times/Standard — and how the people living there were such rubes and hicks and rednecks, these sawmill and fishing folk. I then mentioned that I had grown up there, graduating from Eureka High School in 1958, and that my father had worked in sawmills. Imagine her surprise.

So I emailed some old friends in Eureka, who told me that as an editor, this woman had impressed them as a condescending, aloof snob. Imagine my surprise.

So that’s what a “newbie” is — a state of mind of the more recent arrival who has not yet put down roots, who looks disdainfully at the natives and old timers and feels superior. “How can locals have the right of way? I’m not a local, but I’m always right!”

I no longer feel that way when I spend the day in Sonoma. Not since we attended the funeral of our favorite bartender, Sam, at the little cemetery on the edge of town. Sam was a Marine, and a ‘Nam vet, we learned only that day, because he’d never talked about it, referring to himself merely as a “recovering attorney.”

All the locals were there that day, and they treated us like locals too.

Over the years, a wonderful sea change had come about. We had demonstrated that we could be counted on to be good sports, to buy the occasional round for someone we especially liked and admired, that we loved the town and would live there if we could. The time came when we would enter Steiner’s and a cry would go up, “ALAMEDA!”

People ask us, knowing Diane and I like to have lunch at the Swiss Hotel, out front in the patio with the lovely waitress Sharon, where we can have our dog Lucca beside our table, “So what did you have for lunch today?” They tell us stories about their families, their love lives, what it’s like growing up in Sonoma. They know we don’t resent the fact that locals have the right of way.

Many people come to Alameda, this former Navy town, with that same attitude of superiority toward the long-time, working class locals. They do so, however, at their own peril, and they will learn that these people are very bright, and uncanny in their wisdom. They know something about this island that it takes many years of living here to learn.

And they always have the right of way.

[545 words]

©2010 Dennis Green