Spring has brought warm weather to Bolinas after a long winter, and kids are resuming their yearly outdoor escapades. Whether it’s on skateboards, surfboards or mountain bikes, one thing is for sure—motorized dirt bikes are out after a cherished track at Mesa Park was shut down when a neighbor complained to the county.
The modest track was established nearly a decade ago, and its legacy dates back more than 50 years to David Duffin, an aviator-motocross mensch who dedicated his life to helping children get on the straight and narrow through dirt bikes, road trips and good manners. The nonprofit he founded, Oasis for Kids, connected children across the Bay Area to motocross tournaments and the joy of riding a dirt bike.
“He wasn’t a guy driven by much policy,” said Bolinas native David Callagy. “He was a MacGyver of life and if he thought something was a good idea, he’d go for it, but it was always based on a high moral compass.”
Now, two of Mr. Duffin’s early disciples, San Pablo resident Richard Quinones and Bolinas resident Chris Martinelli, want to breathe life back into the club. They hope to raise funds to resume motocross visits and retreats, buy street-legal electric bikes and find an alternative location to serve as a headquarters for Oasis for Kids. But with their busy lives, they have little time for fundraising events or club meetings.
When Mr. Duffin died of cancer in June 2021, many of his friends did not know he was sick. Mr. Martinelli recalled busting down Mr. Duffin’s door to wrangle an answer about why he had withdrawn from the public eye. At a packed memorial at the firehouse the following month, his friends and fans vowed to continue the program in his memory.
Mr. Duffin, who died at age 78, was born in Philadelphia and served as a marine in Japan during the Vietnam War before moving to Bolinas to pursue a career as a photojournalist while driving the bus for Bolinas-Stinson School. In 1970, a 10-year-old Mr. Callagy crashed his Honda miniature dirt bike in front of Mr. Duffin’s house, hurdling over the handlebars. Mr. Duffin heard the racket and found Mr. Callagy lying in the dirt with a mangled finger. He carried the boy down the street, grabbed the keys to the kid’s father’s car and drove him to the clinic in Point Reyes Station.
On their drive home, Mr. Duffin lectured a sore and dizzy Mr. Callagy on the importance of safety pads and helmets, telling him about his days racing motorcycles in college.
Mr. Duffin soon became the dude for Bolinas boys and girls interested in fixing and racing bikes. In 1971, when the school founded its art and woodshop programs, Bo-Stin teacher’s aide Greg Hewlett encouraged Mr. Callagy and his friends to ask Mr. Duffin to help create a mechanics program. Mr. Duffin wrote a letter to the school detailing a three-day-a-week class in which he would teach the ins and outs of a bike motor—and help put kids on the right path.
The program was approved to the joy of many children, and to the ire of those tired of hearing loud engines and smelling caustic exhaust.
“Motorcycles in Bolinas always had some resistance,” said Mr. Callagy, who lives in Santa Rosa. “Dave was a big advocate, but he surely came under fire from time to time—people running out and yelling at kids on bikes or others trying to convince him of what children are or should be. In Bolinas, there are cranky customers and Bolinas originals—you have plenty of both.”
Ellen “Granny” Bourne offered her garage and the school granted Mr. Duffin a $300 stipend to jumpstart the program. Les Horning, the school principal, was surprisingly supportive of the project, according to Steve Aikenhead’s 1993 book, “Group Memories: School Days in Bolinas and Stinson Beach.”
In a letter reprinted in the book, Mr. Duffin wrote, “I was worried about our project at one time. Actually many times. One day I watched Granny Bourne come out of her house and come to see what was happening at ‘the shop.’ Colin Dunn was revving up his Honda up to about 10,000 RPM. The noise was ear-shattering. I thought, ‘Well here goes the shop! Granny is going to explode at this kid and his noisy monstrosity.’ She stooped down and put her ear right up to the motor, looked at me right in the eye and said, ‘the pulse of youth.’ I never worried about the shop again. Thanks, Granny.”
Over the years, the program grew beyond the school grounds. Motocross underwent a popularity boom in the ’70s as global engine manufacturers competed with one another and the American Motorcycle Association established the American Motocross Championships in 1972. That same year, a 16-year-old Californian boy won the first supercross in Los Angeles.
As tracks were cropping up across California, Mr. Duffin organized trips to Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area in the Central Valley, the Sonoma Raceway and the now-defunct Alameda Speedway. “As kids, we’d pile into his ’74 Ford extended cab with a camper shell, see races and then hit Baskin-Robbins on the way back,” Mr. Quinones said. “In ’79, we saw Roger DeCoster race at the Trans-AMA in Livermore. He crashed and was airlifted to the hospital. Well, one of the kids snuck onto the helicopter. We sat at the track for hours waiting for him to get back.”
Mr. Duffin created a sanctuary for kids whose interests lay outside the box, or who were headed down a dark path. He saw working on motorcycles as a way to harness a child’s focus and direct it to something positive.
“They were learning how to work on these things with patience and responsibility,” Mr. Martinelli said. “Dave always looked at the bike as bait. They’d listen to him because he’d let them ride. He made sure they learned manners, saying please, thank you and writing letters.”
After seven years of teaching at Bo-Stin, Mr. Duffin moved to Alameda, using his expiring G.I. Bill to fund flight instructor training and sunsetting the Bolinas program with the permission of his students. But even in Alameda, he remained connected and brought kids to his hangar, where he taught some of them to fly.
In the early 2000s, Mr. Duffin, still living in Alameda, founded the Oasis project out of Bolinas, sponsored by the umbrella nonprofit Full Circle, where Mr. Duffin had worked part-time in the ’70s. A few years later, Oasis for Kids got its own nonprofit status. With seed money from founding member Jason Kentfield’s trust and a $5,000 donation from philanthropist Warren Hellman, the club gained traction.
“Our goal is to take a group of up to 12 young people to a place of contentment, light and peace. Oasis is a place where they can appreciate the idea—‘To thine own self, be true,’” Mr. Duffin wrote on the nonprofit’s website. “The malls, street corners, theaters, and sports arenas of America present an irrational, distorted picture of the future to our next generation. They are being pressured on all sides—whom should they follow?”
Although the program was kept afloat, it never received the level of funding that Mr. Duffin had hoped would turn it into a large-scale operation with monthly trips and a salaried staff.
In 2014, he and many of the adults who had graduated from his program at Bo-Stin built a dirt track in the field behind Mesa Park. The park was a haven for motocross families and had its own cargo container filled with dirt bikes and tools to fix them up.
“Dave wanted it to be really basic,” Mr. Martinelli said. “We all wanted to put jumps on it but he said, ‘No, that’ll attract a bunch of adults.’ Over the last few years, kids added jumps to the park, but it’s always been about making a place for beginners and for the kids.”
In January 2022, Paul Smith, a lawyer who represents Fox Hill Family Farms, a property adjacent to the bike track, sent a letter to a code compliance specialist for the county’s Community Development Agency. Mr. Smith stated that the track violated county zoning laws and should be shut down immediately.
County inspectors determined the track was indeed illegal and told the Bolinas Community Public Utility District, which owns the park, that the nonprofit must cease all use of the property for motocross activities. If it didn’t, BCPUD would be charged fines of $2,500 per day with additional penalties. With a 4-1 vote, the board shut down the track.
Mark Lucanic is a member of the Mesa Park Board, which manages the park. “It wasn’t sanctioned, but there was this arrangement that if they stayed in this unused area of the park, [the Mesa Park Board] would look the other way,” he said. “A lot of people were ambivalent about the track but believed in Dave’s ethics. But once we found out we couldn’t have a track there, it was the end of the conversation for us. But it was weird—like for at least 10 years people have been riding, and then all of a sudden it stopped.”
At age 18, Will Delorimier is one of the older boys involved in Oasis for Kids. He grew up riding on the track and saw Mr. Duffin pass the torch to Mr. Quinones.
“We’re all so bummed on it,” he said of the closure. “I go up there sometimes and just look at it through the fence. The sheriffs get bummed if we ride on the roads and they get bummed if we ride at the sewer ponds.”
The group has been dormant since the track was shuttered but interest remains high in kids of all ages. Mr. Delorimier said there are around eight kids his age and 30 younger kids from all over Marin who want to see the program return.
So Mr. Quinones is revving up for more trips. In February, he organized a visit to an AMA Supercross race at the Oakland Coliseum, shelling out $900 to make it happen. He is working to organize another trip in June, funding it himself and using his truck and trailer to transport dirt bikes for the kids. But with his own children and a full-time job, it’s hard to maintain the nonprofit now that the track is closed.
“That was a big setback,” he said. “We need the right exposure and we need some e-bikes to get past this noise ordinance and permitting issue at the track. I’ve got to write letters for some fundraising to get this going again. We just want to keep the legacy going before it dries up and isn’t here anymore. Some of Dave’s ashes are out there and I bring flowers out every time I go.”