On the surface, Marin County has it all.
Rolling hills, redwood forests, golden beaches and panoramic views of the San Francisco Bay, set in a prime location just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
It has tremendous wealth and sublime weather. Residents can surf, mountain bike and paddle board all in the same weekend.
What Marin County did not have until recently was a public space to ridicule the flip side of all that supposed perfection: the progressives who try to outdo one another in righteousness, and the relative lack of ethnic, economic and political diversity.
Every king needs a court jester, and one has finally arrived here in the form of Marin Lately, a satirical online publication. It’s like The Onion, but filled with inside jokes that only Bay Area residents might appreciate. Or “Portlandia,” the television series about Portland, the Oregon city similar in spirit to Marin.
Add to it a dash of mystery reminiscent of the television series “Bridgerton,” in which the townspeople pore over Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers while speculating about who among them is dishing their dirt.
At yard parties and around the Marin Country Mart, everyone seems to be asking the same question: Who is behind Marin Lately? If anyone knew, they weren’t telling. Until now.
The answer, dear readers? Scroll on.
It all started in February with a simple headline: “Tiburon Still Boring.”
The article referred to the town of about 9,000 best known for its multimillion-dollar bayside mansions. The story, purported to be an interview with Tiburon’s mayor about a “landmark study” concluding that the town lacks much of anything to do.
“Tiburon is a beautiful, affluent community with outstanding views of the Golden Gate Bridge,” the mayor supposedly says. “That is all.”
Some residents immediately got the joke. Others did not. Was this real? And if not, who was making fun of Tiburon?
David Sutton, Marin’s public defender, immediately loved it. And he lives in Tiburon.
“It’s quiet, it’s beautiful, it’s picturesque and ideal,” Mr. Sutton said of Marin County. “It’s probably a step below ‘Stepford Wives.’”
Once known for its dairy farms and natural beauty, Marin County in recent decades has been caricatured more nationally as an enclave of privileged hippies. President George W. Bush in 2002 dismissed John Walker Lindh, a young man who grew up there and had joined the Taliban, as “some misguided Marin County hot-tubber.” The president quickly felt the wrath of locals. “I am chastened,” Mr. Bush wrote to the Marin Independent Journal, “and will never use ‘hot tub’ and ‘Marin County’ in the same sentence again.”
While the liberal politics remain, they are accompanied by even more wealth than existed in the Bush era, much of it generated by the Bay Area’s tech boom.
All of this is perfect fodder for satire. After Marin Lately’s first post in February, more headlines and articles emerged on its basic website, and on social media. The content quickly spread across the region by word of mouth, and texts to friends telling them that they just had to read the latest story.
“Marin Parents Arrested for Not Taking Kids to Tahoe,” one headline declared. Soon after there was, “ ‘Tundra Has a Playdate With Yucatán’: Situation With Kids’ Names Reaches Breaking Point in Marin County.” And then: “Marin to Be Hit Least-Hard by Whatever Happening in World, Experts Say.”
The more the headlines generated laughs, the more they were shared, typically with knowing nods. Yes, that’s us, Marin County seemed to tell itself.
But not all of Marin County.
Critics took to social media to say they did not like it, because it made fun of people. Others have called it a sham. And then came the worst criticism of all for a humor site: that it was simply not funny. None of the detractors responded to requests for comment.
Mr. Sutton, the public defender, said he figures the Marin Lately math like this: “Sixty percent are laughing guttural laughs, 20 percent don’t get it, and 20 percent are mad.”
He said that when each new article comes out the attorneys in his office share it immediately. In addition to chuckling over the content, he likes scanning the angry responses they prompt on Nextdoor and Reddit.
Michael Natenshon is also a huge fan — of both bucolic Marin County itself and the publication satirizing it. He is the founder and chief executive of Marine Layer, a popular clothing company, and lives in Mill Valley, where, he said, the biggest quandary is “What quadrant of the rear window of my Rivian should I put my son’s Stanford sticker on?”
(That’s a reference to the electric S.U.V.s and pickup trucks that have grown popular among affluent, liberal families in Northern California, often replacing the Teslas that have been deemed no longer acceptable because of Elon Musk.)
Mr. Natenshon said Marin Lately captures what it’s like to live in a bubble.
Marin remains one of the most liberal counties in the country. In November, 80.6 percent of its voters backed Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, over Donald J. Trump, the highest percentage of any county in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a wine entrepreneur, recently bought a $9 million mansion in the Marin community of Kentfield.
But Marin does not always live up to its ideals, Mr. Natenshon said.
“Everybody’s got their Black Lives Matter sign on their lawn, but it’s one of the least diverse places in the world,” he pointed out.
Less than 3 percent of the county is Black. Residents regularly fight against efforts to construct affordable housing units, and the town of Sausalito was recently sued when it tried to put low-income housing on a patch of underwater eelgrass to satisfy its state obligations.
Marin Lately has tackled some of that, too.
“Ross to Tentatively Welcome First Resident Not Traced Directly to Mayflower,” read one headline. “Marin’s Last Blue-Collar Resident Caught, Tagged,” read another.
The site has grown so popular that Danielle Svetcov, a local literary agent, said she thinks the Marin Lately stories could make a good book. “It is the most delicious pleasure, our very own kombucha-swilling, B.S.-detecting muckraker who calls us out on our pampered brand of insanity,” she said.
She said the fact that it was written anonymously has made it even more delectable.
“People like to wonder, ‘Is it a man or a woman? Is it an old person or a young person?’” she said. “Is it a jaded 20-something who can’t afford to live here?”
After seven months in hiding, the mystery man agreed to reveal himself to The New York Times. He is Patrick Heij, a 45-year-old writer who acknowledged that he perfectly fits some of the stereotypes he has skewered.
“It had to happen one day,” he explained.
He is raising three children and a dog in Marin. He loves mountain biking. He enjoys gardening.
He grew up in San Francisco, the son of Adair Lara, a local writer, but moved to Marin for more space and an escape from the fog as his own family grew. He and his partner, who forecasts trends for the clothing brand Athleta, bought their home from a Buddhist couple in their 90s, who left a temple behind in their backyard.
The home sits in the hills of Corte Madera, a town centered around an outdoor mall dotted with furniture stores. He has skewered that, too.
“Corte Madera: The Couch, Lamp and Ottoman Empire.”
Mr. Heij was a writer for “Vice News Tonight” and has written humor pieces for The New Yorker. Years ago, he occasionally freelanced for The New York Times. Now, he focuses on his children and Marin Lately.
The idea came to him at a dinner party, when he realized the attendees had nothing much to talk about.
“There’s a tacit agreement around here that everything is perfect,” he said in an interview. “It’s, ‘The schools are so great! The kids are starting surf camp as soon as they get back from Tahoe!’ That’s the opener and closer.”
He said he wanted to inspire more conversation and banter, and he is doing just that. He had more than 8,000 active users this month, and 80 percent of Marin Lately’s free subscribers open the emails they receive.
He does not see himself as making fun of Marin so much as describing it.
“Mocking to me implies you’re making fun of someone for an outside audience, and this is more doing it to their face,” he said, noting he has been pleasantly surprised by how much his devoted readers are glad to be in on the joke.
He has just one concern going forward: finding new material.
“We’re several small towns on a land mass that’s mostly forest,” he said. “Even if you’re making up the news, you run out of stuff pretty quick.”
Heather Knight is a reporter in San Francisco, leading The Times’s coverage of the Bay Area and Northern California.
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