Bodega Bay, CA

After showing Bodega Bay property last week I took a leisurely drive up the coast. There are a few homes facing the risk certainty of falling into the ocean. This image shows the residue of former waterfront land now existing as rocks off the shore. Coastal property that fronts the ocean is beautiful and valuable, but just on loan from nature.

Tippi Hedren will once again grace us with her presence at The Tides Wharf in Bodega Bay, CA this Memorial Day Weekend. The Tides Wharf was one of the locations for the filming of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" in the early 1960's.

Visitors come from all over the world to see landmarks from the movie including the Church and Schoolhouse in the town of Bodega and The Tides Wharf and Bodega Harbor in the town of Bodega Bay.

The Tides Wharf Restaurant and parking lot were used for the gas station, cafe and boat docking scenes.

When the (then) owner of The Tides (Mitch Zankich) agreed to allow Hitchcock the use his restaurant in “The Birds” he made three stipulations;

1) the town in the movie would be called Bodega Bay
2) the male lead (played by Rod Taylor) would be named Mitch
3) Zankich would have a speaking part in the movie (it was "What happened, Mitch?")

So if you are a die-hard fan of "The Birds", this is your chance to get a personalized autograph from Tippi Hedren and visit some familiar sights.

I'll be the first to admit this photo doesn't look like much, but it's what you don't see that speaks louder than words.

What looks like a small round pond, started out as a man-made hole that spreads 142 feet across and 120 feet down. You could lower a 10 story building into this hole if it wasn't filled with rain water.

This hole, known as "Hole in the Head", was not dug to provide the public with a place to swim. This was going to be the location of a nuclear power plant. The utility company behind it (Pacific Gas & Electric) was building "the biggest boiling water reactor yet scheduled". The plan was to boil ocean water ... the Pacific Ocean.

"Hole in the Head" is located on Bodega Head (hence the name) in Bodega Bay, CA. From the beginning, this "project" was scrutinized by a handful of feisty Bodega Bay citizens. The County, at the time, referred to these critics as "nervous Nellies" whose fear of Nuclear energy was nothing more than lack of knowledge.

All of this was taking place in the early '60s, and Geologists didn't understand tectonics as they do today. Neither did the protesters, but they knew that a nuclear reactor didn't belong 100 yards away from the Pacific. Over the next several years, the critics notified newspaper reporters and talked their way into radio stations to spread the word.

This was how a Geophysicist, Pierre Saint-Amand, heard about the nuclear reactor being built on Bodega Head. He came to take a look, becoming the first to observe the sites proximity to the San Andreas fault. Saint-Amand then alerted the Atomic Energy Commission who ultimately shut the project down in 1964.

Today, we still have "Hole in the Head" to remind us how Japan's recent nuclear disaster could have been our own. Instead of a nuclear power plant, we have a deep hole filled with fresh, clear, uncontaminated water.

* A look at "Hole in the Head" in the early '60s.

When folks visit Bodega Bay, CA they are usually trying to find all of the film locations from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds". They can be found, they just don't look much the same anymore. The Tides Restaurant and Wharf was completely rebuilt in 1990 and has no semblance whatsoever of the film version in 1963.

But this week, all of the activity is centered around Spud Point Marina. Commercial crab fishing starts Sunday and the word is that the Dungeness crab are plentiful and big this year. Sport fishermen got a head start last week, and they have been hauling in their limit of 10 crabs each within an hour.

Sunday the commercial boats will be trudging out Bodega Harbor, the same harbor that Tippi Hedron was crossing to deliver the caged love birds to Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). Hopefully, though, the fishermen will be escorted by the gulls, not attacked.

As long as the fishermen can agree on a price per pound, crab will be available on the docks and in stores on Monday. And that makes me one happy crab ... eater.