Opposite: Travelers in front of the San Francisco Downtown Hostel.

BILL O'BRIEN

LOOKING FOR A ROOM WITH a view? One at an historic lighthouse, perhaps, with the Pacific Ocean crashing on the rocky bluffs below your window? Or maybe you'd prefer blufftop lodgings in a coastal city, with a view of ships gliding through the mist?

How much are you ready to pay? One hundred dollars? Two hundred? How about $16? That's how much it costs to stay in one of the 25 hostels run in California by American Youth Hostels, Inc., including the Montara Lighthouse Hostel, the San Francisco International Hostel, and 15 others along the coast. At the International Hostel the $16 fee even includes breakfast.
      Youth hostels have a long tradition in many European countries. They provide a clean, safe bed and an easy meeting ground for young people traveling by train, bicycle, and even on foot. They are places where you can find good conversations and pick up travel tips. Most visitors come with their own sleeping bags and food to cook in a common kitchen.
      In North America the first hostels opened in the 1930s; there are now 225 in the United States and Canada affiliated with AYH, welcoming people of all ages. Few Americans, however, are familiar with hosteling or know of the hostels' existence in this country.

San Francisco International Hostel at Fort Mason has views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

 
"A Growing Movement"
THERE'S A SIGN NEXT to the steps at the Montara Lighthouse Hostel with arrows pointing wildly in every direction: "Nepal 7699 miles; Tahiti 4446; Rio 6641; Cairo 7585." Are they places visitors come from, or destinations they dream about? Probably both, says manager Rich Lilley. More than 11,000 travelers stayed the night at the lighthouse during the past year, more than half of them coming from abroad.
      In summer, he says, it's well-nigh impossible to find a bunk here, especially on the weekends. In winter, the slow travel season, the place is used for seminars, retreats, community meetings, and even yoga classes.
      The Montara Hostel is part of a larger vision: a string of hostels - more than three dozen - along the state's coast, each no more than 40 miles from the next so that bicyclists could travel from one to another in a single day. In 1976, the state legislature passed AB 400, which instructed the director of Parks and Recreation to submit a plan for hostel construction. "Given safer routes and more suitable accommodations more people would choose such travel means to reach and enjoy scenic areas and recreation facilities," the bill stated. In 1978, State Parks issued a report stating that "hostels can be an important asset to the trails system" and identifying 37 potential hostel sites in state parks along the coast. "The long-range goal . . . is to provide facilities in conjunction with all major recreation corridors throughout the state," the report stated. That year's State Parks budget provided $1.9 million for capital outlays for hostels. Two years later, two new lighthouse hostels opened: Pigeon Point, and, 25 miles north, the Montara hostel.
      The Coastal Conservancy advanced the vision as part of its program to provide maximum feasible access to the coast. The Conservancy funded hostel projects and worked with others to find additional sites, especially in historic buildings that could be refurbished for this use. Among these are the Redwood-DeMarin House, an old Del Norte County farmhouse; the Carmelita Cottages in Santa Cruz; a Civil War-era barracks, later used by the Army as a dispensary, at Fort Mason, which now houses the San Francisco International Hostel; and the original City Hall of Santa Monica, built around the turn of the century, which later housed a silent movie studio.
      Today there are 17 hostels along the California coast, and a few more are in the works. The pace of progress toward the 1978 vision has slowed considerably with the shrinkage of public agency budgets and mounting pressures to generate revenue from park facilities. In addition, permit requirements for retrofitting old buildings have grown more stringent, raising costs, Barbara Wein says. Nevertheless, she adds, "I see this as a growing movement, particularly along the coast."
      Both AYH and the Coastal Conservancy, working with others, have found some opportunities to move forward. In Sacramento, an 1885 Victorian house, the Llewellyn Williams Mansion, was moved and restored at a cost of $2.5 million and opened in April 1997 as the Sacramento International Hostel. Two hostels are being planned on Monterey Bay, and Wein says, "We are now looking at a historic ship, the Wapama, in Sausalito."

Sacramento International Hostel.

 
Steps Toward a Vision
SO BIG ARE THE GAPS in the envisioned string of coastal hostels, however, that it's barely a string yet. A bicyclist heading south from Redwood National Park would have to pedal 300 miles before reaching the hostel at Point Reyes. She would find five hostels between there and Santa Cruz, then just one - in San Luis Obispo - before reaching Santa Monica. Continuing south she would find eight more, including one recently opened in an old hotel in San Diego's Gaslight District.
      In Monterey, where a typical hotel room costs upward of $100, Peter Cambras, a member of AYH's Central Coast Council's board of directors, has been working for more than a decade to find the right building for a hostel. The first one selected was a once-elegant, now boarded-up, Victorian home known as the Parmelee Mansion. But snags have developed. Meanwhile, another opportunity has materialized.
      The local carpenters' union, which was going to donate the labor to renovate the Parmelee Mansion, decided to move out of its headquarters building, just a couple of blocks from Cannery Row. The union offered the building to AYH, which jumped to accept and is now raising the money needed to turn it into a hostel, perhaps by next spring, Cambras says. Work on the Parmelee Mansion project continues. Because the need for hostel space on Monterey Bay is so great, AYH is also applying to take over several buildings in Fort Ord.

Point Montara Lighthouse Hostel.

 
Spreading the Word
CAMBRAS SAID OPPOSITION to hostels sometimes comes from local residents who confuse them with homeless shelters. AYH then must carefully explain that the guests are visitors to the city, not street people, and that the hostels are run under strict rules, with curfews and prohibition of alcohol.
      Most guests are single travelers aged 18 to 25, but the percentage of senior citizens, couples, and families has grown steadily, AYH has found. The latter folks tend to prefer private rooms to the traditional dorm-style accommodations, so some hostels are remodeling to meet that demand. The San Francisco International Hostel is taking over seven more buildings at Fort Mason while in San Diego the Gaslight Hostel, which has room for 112 guests, will soon open a second floor to accommodate another 80.
      AYH is getting the word out to a broader range of travelers about the San Diego hostel, which is just a few blocks from the city's convention center. The local AYH council is working with tourism officials to attract people who want to come for conferences and other events at the center but may be held back by hotel prices.
      The concept of the hostel has changed over time, but the basic purpose remains the same: to provide simple, inexpensive lodgings and a meeting place for travelers with a low budget. "People want to travel in a way that expands their horizons," says Sterns. "The biggest obstacle [for us] is finding the financial resources for developing new hostels. There is no question that prime locations exist." 

Bill O'Brien, a freelance writer, lives in Berkeley.