It’s hard to imagine Point Reyes Station without Cabaline, the quirky saddlery and emporium that’s been in town for 46 years. And it’s impossible to imagine Cabaline without Vicki Leeds, the woman behind the counter whose life has been entwined with horses from the very start.
Her first ride, at the age of 2, was on a granddaughter of Man o’ War, widely considered the greatest racehorse that ever lived. (Her dad was a friend of the mare’s trainer.) She took a weeklong trip on horseback through the Trinity Alps Wilderness when she was just 5, and her favorite book growing up was “Sand Dune Pony.”
“All I ever wanted was a horse for Christmas,” said Ms. Leeds, who grew up in San Francisco and cleaned stables in Golden Gate Park as a teen. “I used to dream that my parents had built a stable in the garage, and I’d wake up and find there was a horse inside.”
That never happened, but many horses have since come to visit her store, including her daughter’s horse Happy, who once ventured inside without knocking anything over—a feat, considering how packed the place is with merchandise from floor to ceiling.
Cabaline has adapted over the years, and it now carries everything from clogs to stuffed animals to tie-dyed pajamas. But you can still find anything you need for your horse, if you happen to have one.
“There are not many stores in the entire country that enjoy the longevity that Cabaline Country Emporium enjoys,” said Steve Weil, C.E.O. of Rockmount, the company that has supplied western wear to Cabaline for four decades. “There’s something special about walking into a store like Vicki’s, in an historic building in a small northern California town. It’s the way life used to be, and sadly it’s only found in rare spots today.”
An authentic ’60s flower child, Ms. Leeds opened Cabaline in 1978 with her friend Janice Tweedy. They had moved to West Marin from a commune in Oregon that was featured on the cover of Life magazine while they lived there. They both arrived in West Marin with horses in tow, Ms. Tweedy settling in Bolinas, Ms. Leeds in Point Reyes Station. When the pair heard that a tack and feed store in Novato was closing, they decided to open a saddlery of their own. They thought about opening in Novato but didn’t relish the idea of driving over the hill each day to get to work.
Cabaline opened in a tiny storefront in the Creamery Building, selling bridles, brushes and other stable gear. The owners settled on the name after coming across the word in a British thesaurus. “It comes from the same Latin root word as caballero,” Ms. Leeds explained. “It’s the feminine form for ‘southwest horseman.’”
After a year, they found a larger space in the former Point Reyes post office, which once stood next to the Grandi building. In 1989, as they were preparing to move down the street to the Emporium Building, an earthquake struck and damaged the building, hastening their move. Ms. Leeds was refinishing the floors in the new place when the earth shook. Not long afterwards, Ms. Leeds bought out Ms. Tweedy.
Outside Cabaline, the bust of a horse juts over the sidewalk, beckoning customers to canter inside, and two racks of sale-priced toys, clothing and footwear stand by the front door, piquing the curiosity of passersby.
Inside, a colorful array of blankets hangs from a balcony. At the counter, you’ll find a carefully curated display of contemporary, Native and southwestern jewelry, with lots of silver, turquoise and colorful beads.
The saddles and other equine supplies are in the back, and the front is where you’ll find the bestsellers: clothing and shoes. (Ms. Leeds is the leading purveyor of Blundstone boots in Northern California, or so her sales rep tells her.)
There’s an extensive array of shirts from Pendleton and Rockmount, the company that put splashy modern cowboy clothing on the map and invented snap buttons. (Snaps appeal to the cowboy whose shirt might get tangled on a bucking bronco, as they don’t pop off like buttons, leaving the hapless cowpoke to sew them back on.)
“Vicki really takes care of her customers,” said Anne Sands, a Dogtown horse owner and longtime Cabaline customer. “If they’re having trouble finding a particular thing, she will help them find it. She knows a lot of people in her industry. And she goes out of her way to find interesting things that are made from environmentally sustainable materials.”
Ms. Leeds takes pride in the fact that Cabaline was one of the first enterprises to be certified in the Marin County Green Business Program.
Her customers are a mix of locals, tourists and horse people from near and far. The inventory evolved organically, accommodating her personal needs and the requests of her customers.
“If we were asked for something three or four or five times, we’d look into carrying it,” she said. “That’s how we started carrying men’s underwear. They kept saying, ‘My wife forgot to pack my underwear.’”
Something men never said: “I forgot to pack my underwear.”
Now, forgetful males can choose from a selection of boxers, boxer briefs and tighty-whities, not to mention cowboy hats and custom-made boots. One customer who availed himself of the latter option was the crown prince of Tonga, Tupouto‘a ‘Ulukalala, who showed up years ago after his assistant found Cabaline in the Yellow Pages during a visit to San Francisco.
Rock ’n roll and Hollywood royalty have also come to browse, including Linda Ronstadt, Robert Plant, Ashley and Wynonna Judd, Jamie Lee Curtis, Hal Holbrook and Christopher Reeve.
But these were not Ms. Leeds’s first encounters with celebrities, about whom she seems blasé, perhaps because she’s known so many of them. As a teenager, she became enmeshed in the Bay Area rock scene after her best friend’s older sister started dating Rock Scully, the manager of the Grateful Dead.
They spent a lot of time hanging out with the band. Big Brother and the Holding Company played at Ms. Leeds’s high school dance—at her invitation. A former model for Macy’s, she dated Peter Fonda. With her best friend, she once posed for an artful nude photograph that took up half a page on the inside cover of Rolling Stone. (John Lennon was on the front.)
From her rock ’n roll days in the Haight through her equine years in Point Reyes Station, horses have been a constant in her life. Over the decades, she’s owned eight of them: Chico, Dune, Smokey, Happy Sara, Sky, Seqreet, Shimmeree and Stormy.
Now 74 and a grandmother, Ms. Leeds retains the look of an elegant flower child, favoring wire-framed glasses, embroidered blouses and jeans. She’s in the store most everyday with her two little dogs, Blossom and Blaze, long-haired chihuahuas.
Another dog of hers, Sunny, who has since passed away, was known as the mayor of Point Reyes Station. She made the rounds to check in with her human friends, never failing to stop by the Old Western Saloon for a hard-boiled egg or a piece of pepperoni. At Toby’s Feed Barn, she would snag a treat from the bins. (Well behaved, she never took more than just one.)
Over the years, Ms.Leeds has engaged in community affairs, helping to organize the Point Reyes Disaster Council, hosting a radio show on KWMR and serving as president of the Point Reyes Business Association. She’s poured drinks at the Western and even danced on the bar.
An accomplished rider, Ms. Leeds has also been a regular at Western Weekend. She once rode in an elegant 1880s French buggy driven by Silvio Picciotti, a rancher from Petaluma with an extensive array of carriages who taught her to drive teams of horses. During the parade, he wore a zoot suit and she wore a Victorian dress. They drove past Cabaline, a store that also echoes an earlier time.
“Vicki has a business that feels like it’s been there forever,” said Dewey Livingston, a West Marin historian and a Cabaline customer. “It’s like stepping into a Point Reyes Station of 1900, with the smell of leather and merchandise, floor to ceiling.”