Excerpted from Travel Diary> June 2000> Visiting Gate Five Sausalito
With The World's Best Jazz Vocalist

Jackie [Ryan] and I drove off to Sausalito on a sentimental journey. I had not visited Gate Five Sausalito since the fateful night I brought the newly published Living On The Earth to Jean Varda in September, 1970. The next morning he boarded a plane for Mexico, where he was murdered. I wanted to see what had become of the houseboats at Gate Five, where I had lived in 1967 and 1968, and the Industrial Center Building, where I had my first art studio during that time. Jackie has some Sausalito memories, too--she was one of the fabulous, wildly dressed hostesses at the Trident Restaurant in its heyday.

Clearly Jean Varda has not been forgotten here; a street is named in his honor.

The Vallejo ferry boat, half of which was inhabited by Alan Watts and half by Varda during the 'seventies, seems to have acquired a coat of white paint since then.