Lost at Sea
Poverty and Paradise Collide at the Edge of America
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A deep and personal look into the lives of “anchor-outs”—a homeless community in California living at sea on abandoned boats—casting light on the struggles and resilience of those surviving on the fringes of society. Set against the backdrop of Richardson Bay, Lost at Sea explores the lives and motivations of a unique Californian community known as the “anchor-outs”: a seafaring community who’ve repurposed abandoned vessels into their homes. In recent decades, the animosity between the anchor-outs and the wealthy residents of Marin County—one of the richest in the whole country—has devolved into pure class warfare, with many of the hillside mansion-owners upset that their view of the water is obstructed. Kloc found that life on the anchorage is a lens into the struggles of so many homeless people who are at odds with societal norms, as well as those with significantly more means. The residents of Marin County, for example, pose environmental concerns about the anchorage; simultaneously, their aged sewage system is prone to spewing literal garbage on the streets. In many ways, the story of the anchor-outs is the story of being poor in America. Examining profit-driven policies that exacerbate the contemporary housing crisis, Lost at Sea weaves together stories from within the anchorage alongside the rich history of the region, spanning from the Gold Rush era to the devastating fire of 1906. From a contemporary vantage point, it delves into the intense conflicts that arise between the anchor-outs and the affluent hillside communities which seek to dismantle the community for financial and recreational purposes. Along the way, Kloc discovers a quiet beauty in the community built within the anchorage: how they’ve learned to care for each other, push back against capitalism and harmful policies, and, ultimately, advocate for a way of life that looks different than it does on shore. In doing so, Lost at Sea sheds light on the stark contrast between wealth and destitution within this very community—and speaks to the tragic, complex effects of homelessness writ large across America.
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Interesting Expose Of A Particular Community, Suffers From Problems Typical Of Its Form. As an almost anthropological examination of a particular culture that arose over decades in a very specific region of California - the roughly six square mile region known as Richardson's Bay, an offshoot of San Francisco Bay - this text is a pirate's treasure trove. Specifically, as it examines the "unhoused" people who have claimed homes among the derelict and otherwise vessels floating in the bay, the so-called "anchor-outs", it truly does a phenomenal job detailing the history of how the culture arose, a lot of the features of the specific culture, and even a lot of both the key historical figures of it and at least some of its living practitioners.
As a *journalistic* piece... it may fly in today's "lived experience" version of "journalism", where objectivity and distance from subject are defenestrated in favor of being "up close" and "real"... but it still would have been enhanced by being a more old school journalistic type text, at least to my mind.
Instead what we get here is almost an action, thriller, and memoir mashup wherein the author inserts his own views into the text, but the story itself becomes one of a community's fight for its right to survive and the dastardly developers and government officials seeking to eradicate it from history once and for all.
Which for a narrative, works well. For what is supposed to be a nonfiction work... maybe doesn't work as well.
The star deduction comes in from the dearth of bibliography, which is likely due to not much written work existing about this particular group or its history, but still, there is quite a bit here that *could* have been documented more thoroughly, if even detailing newspaper or other media reports about various events over the years.
Very much recommended.
Originally posted at bookanon.com.